[GJM] Fw: [globalnetnews-summary] Finally, the U.S. Mega-Bases in Iraq Make the News

[mary rose]

No end to the madness.


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Subject: [globalnetnews-summary] Finally, the U.S. Mega-Bases in Iraq Make 
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Finally, the U.S. Mega-Bases in Iraq Make the News
Tom Engelhardt, Tomdispatch.com.

June 15, 2008

It's just a $5,812,353 contract -- chump change for the Pentagon -- and not 
even one of those notorious "no-bid" contracts either. Ninety-eight bids 
were solicited by the Army Corps of Engineers and 12 were received before 
the contract was awarded this May 28th to Wintara, Inc. of Fort Washington, 
Maryland, for "replacement facilities for Forward Operating Base Speicher, 
Iraq." According to a Department of Defense press release, the work on those 
"facilities" to be replaced at the base near Saddam Hussein's hometown, 
Tikrit, is expected to be completed by January 31, 2009, a mere 11 days 
after a new president enters the Oval Office. It is but one modest reminder 
that, when the next administration hits Washington, American bases in Iraq, 
large and small, will still be undergoing the sort of repair and upgrading 
that has been ongoing for years.

In fact, in the last five-plus years, untold billions of taxpayer dollars 
have been spent on the construction and upgrading of those bases. When asked 
back in the fall of 2003, only months after Baghdad fell to U.S. troops, Lt. 
Col. David Holt, the Army engineer then "tasked with facilities development" 
in Iraq, proudly indicated that "several billion dollars" had already been 
invested in those fast-rising bases. Even then, he was suitably amazed, 
commenting that "the numbers are staggering." Imagine what he might have 
said, barely two and a half years later, when the U.S. reportedly had 106 
bases, mega to micro, all across the country.

By now, billions have evidently gone into single massive mega-bases like the 
U.S. air base at Balad, about 60 miles north of Baghdad. It's a 
"16-square-mile fortress," housing perhaps 40,000 U.S. troops, contractors, 
special ops types, and Defense Department employees. As the Washington 
Post's Tom Ricks, who visited Balad back in 2006, pointed out -- in a rare 
piece on one of our mega-bases -- it's essentially "a small American town 
smack in the middle of the most hostile part of Iraq." Back then, air 
traffic at the base was already being compared to Chicago's O'Hare 
International or London's Heathrow -- and keep in mind that Balad has been 
steadily upgraded ever since to support an "air surge" that, unlike the 
President's 2007 "surge" of 30,000 ground troops, has yet to end.

Building Ziggurats

While American reporters seldom think these bases -- the most essential U.S. 
facts on the ground in Iraq -- are important to report on, the military 
press regularly writes about them with pride. Such pieces offer a tiny 
window into just how busily the Pentagon is working to upgrade and improve 
what are already state-of-the-art garrisons. Here's just a taste of what's 
been going on recently at Balad, one of the largest bases on foreign soil on 
the planet, and but one of perhaps five mega-bases in that country:

Consider, for instance, this description of an air-field upgrade from 
official U.S. Air Force news coverage, headlined: "'Dirt Boyz' pave way for 
aircraft, Airmen":

    "In less than four months, Balad Air Base Dirt Boyz have placed and 
finished more than 12,460 feet of concrete and added approximately 90,000 
square feet of pavement to the airfield. Without the extra pavement courtesy 
of the Dirt Boyz, fewer aircraft would be able to be positioned and 
maintained at Balad AB. Having fewer aircraft at the base would directly 
affect the Air Force's ability to place surveillance assets in the air and 
to drop munitions on targets... The ongoing flightline projects at Balad AB 
consist of concrete pad extensions that will provide occupation surfaces for 
multiple aircraft of various types."

Or here's a proud description of what Detachment 6 of the 732nd 
Expeditionary Civil Engineer Squadron did on its recent tour in Balad:

    "'We constructed more than 25,000 square feet of living, dining and 
operations buildings from the ground up,' said Staff Sgt. John Wernegreen. 
'This project gave the [U.S.] Army's [3rd Squadron, 2nd Stryker Cavalry 
Regiment] and Iraqi army [soldiers] a place to carry out their mission of 
controlling the battlespace around the Eastern Diyala Province.'"

And here's a caption, accompanying an Air Force photo of work at Balad: 
"Airmen of the 407th Expeditionary Civil Engineer Squadron pavement and 
equipment team repair utility cuts here June 11. The team replaced 
approximately 30 cubic meters of concrete over newly installed power line 
cables." And another: "Expeditionary Civil Engineer Squadron heavy equipment 
operator, contours a new sidewalk here, June 10. Sidewalk repair is being 
accomplished throughout the base housing area to eliminate tripping 
hazards." (The sidewalks on such bases go with bus routes, traffic lights, 
and speeding tickets -- in a country parts of which the U.S. has helped turn 
into little more than a giant pothole.)

Or how about this caption for a photo of military men on upgrade duty 
working on copper cable as "part of the new tents to trailers project." It's 
little wonder that, in another rare piece, NPR's defense correspondent Guy 
Raz reported, in October 2007, that Balad was "one giant construction 
project, with new roads, sidewalks, and structures going up. all with an eye 
toward the next few decades."

Think of this as the greatest American story of these years never told -- or 
more accurately, since there have been a few reports on a couple of these 
mega-bases -- never shown. After all, what an epic of construction this has 
been, as the Pentagon built a series of fortified American towns, each some 
15 to 20 miles around, with many of the amenities of home, including big 
name fast-food franchises, PXes, and the like, in a hostile land in the 
midst of war and occupation. In terms of troops, the President may only have 
put his "surge" strategy into play in January 2007, but his Pentagon has 
been "surging" on base construction since April 2003.

Now, imagine as well that hundreds of thousands of Americans have passed 
through these mega-bases, including the enormous al-Asad Air Base 
(sardonically nicknamed "Camp Cupcake" for its amenities) in the Western 
desert of Iraq, and the ill-named (or never renamed) Camp Victory on the 
edge of Baghdad. Troops have surged through these bases, of course. Private 
contractors galore. Hired guns. Pentagon officials. Military commanders. Top 
administration figures. Visiting Congressional delegations. Presidential 
candidates. And, of course, the journalists.

It has been, for instance, a commonplace of these years to see a TV 
correspondent reporting on the situation in Iraq, or what the American 
military had to say about Iraq, from Baghdad's enormous Camp Victory. And 
yet, if you think about it, that camera, photographing ABC's fine reporter 
Martha Raddatz or other reporters on similar stop-overs, never pans across 
the base itself. You don't even get a glimpse, unless you have access to 
homemade G.I. videos or Pentagon-produced propaganda.

Similarly, last year, the President landed at Camp Cupcake for a meeting 
with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki with reporters in tow. You could 
see shots of him getting off the plane (just as he does everywhere), goofing 
around with troops, or shaking hands with the Iraqi prime minister but, as 
far as I know, none of the reporters with him stayed on to give us a view of 
the base itself.

Imagine if just about no one knew that the pyramids had been built. Ditto 
the Great Wall of China. The Hanging Gardens of Babylon. The Coliseum. The 
Eiffel Tower. The Statue of Liberty. Or any other architectural wonder of 
the world you'd care to mention.

After all, these giant bases, rising from the smashed birthplace of Western 
civilization, were not only built on (and sometimes out of bits of) the 
ancient ruins of that land, but are functionally modern ziggurats. They are 
the cherished monuments of the Bush administration. Even though its 
spokespeople have regularly refused to use the word "permanent" in relation 
to them -- in fact, in relation to any U.S. base on the planet -- they have 
been built to long outlast the Bush administration itself. They were, in 
fact, clearly meant to be key garrisons of a Pax Americana in the Middle 
East for generations to come. And, not surprisingly, they reek of 
permanency. They are the unavoidable essence -- unless, like most Americans, 
you don't know they're there -- of Bush administration planning in Iraq. 
Without them, no discussion of Iraq policy in this country really makes 
sense.

And that, of course, is what makes their missing-in-action quality on the 
American landscape so striking. Yes, a couple of good American reporters 
have written pieces about one or two of them, but most Americans, as we 
know, get their news from television and -- though no one can watch all the 
news that flows, 24/7, into American living rooms, it's a reasonable bet 
that a staggering percentage of Americans have never had the opportunity to 
see the remarkable structures their tax dollars have paid for, and continue 
to pay for, in occupied Iraq.

This is the sort of thing you might expect of Bush-style offshore prisons, 
or gulags, or concentration camps. And yet Americans have regularly and 
repeatedly seen what Guantanamo looks like. They have seen something of what 
Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq looks like. But not the bases. Perhaps one 
explanation lies in this: On rare occasions when Americans are asked by 
pollsters whether they want "permanent bases" in Iraq, significant 
majorities answer in the negative. You can only assume that, as on many 
other subjects, the Bush administration preferred to fly under the radar 
screen on this one -- and the media generally concurred.

And let's remember one more base, though it's never called that: the massive 
imperial embassy, perhaps the biggest on the planet, being built, for nearly 
three-quarters of a billion dollars, on a nearly Vatican-sized 104-acre plot 
of land inside the Green Zone in Baghdad. It will be home to 1,000 
"diplomats." It will cost an estimated $1.2 billion a year just to operate. 
With its own electricity and water systems, its anti-missile defenses, 
recreation, "retail and shopping" areas, and "blast-resistant" work spaces, 
it is essentially a fortified citadel, a base inside the fortified American 
heart of the Iraq capital. Like the mega-bases, it emits an aura of 
American, not Iraqi, "sovereignty." It, too, is being built "for the ages."

A Land Grab, American-style

The issue of the mega-bases in Iraq first surfaced barely days after Baghdad 
had fallen. It was on April 20, 2003, to be exact, and on the front-page of 
the New York Times in a piece headlined, "Pentagon Expects Long-Term Access 
to Key Iraq Bases." Thom Shanker and Eric Schmitt wrote: "American military 
officials, in interviews this week, spoke of maintaining perhaps four bases 
in Iraq that could be used in the future," including what became Camp 
Victory. The story, and the very idea of "permanent" bases, was promptly 
denied by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld -- then essentially 
disappeared from the news for years. (To this day, again as far as I know, 
the New York Times has never written another significant front-page story on 
the subject.)

Now, however, the bases are, suddenly and startlingly, in the news (and, of 
course, being written about and discussed on TV as if they had long been 
part of everyday media analysis). This week, in fact, they hit the front 
page of the Washington Post, due to protests by Iraqi leaders close to the 
Bush administration. They were angered by, and leaking like mad about, 
American strong-arm tactics in negotiations for a long-term Status of Forces 
Agreement (SOFA) that would officially embed American-controlled bases in 
Iraq for the long-term, potentially tie the hands of a future American 
president on Iraq policy, and represent a sovereignty grab of the first 
order. (A typical comment from a pro-Maliki Iraqi politician in that Post 
piece: "The Americans are making demands that would lead to the colonization 
of Iraq.")

The growing Iraqi protests -- in the streets, in parliament, and among the 
negotiators -- certainly helped spark coverage in this country. A persistent 
and intrepid British reporter, Patrick Cockburn of The Independent, 
helpfully broke the story of Bush administration demands days before it 
became significant news here.

But most of the credit should really go to the Bush administration itself, 
which, despite the long-term flow of events in Iraq, still wanted it all. 
Greed, coupled with desperation, seems to have done the trick. In all the 
years of the occupation, the officials of this administration have had a tin 
ear for the post-colonial era they inhabit. It's never penetrated their 
consciousness that the greatest story of the twentieth century was the way 
previously subjected and colonized peoples had gained (or regained) their 
sovereignty.

The administration indicated this, back in 2003, with its very dream of 
garrisoning a major, potentially hostile, intensely nationalistic Arab 
nation in the heart of the oil lands of the planet. That the building of 
enormous American bases and the basing of troops in relatively peaceful 
Saudi Arabia after the First Gulf War led to disaster -- think: Osama bin 
Laden -- mattered not a whit to top administration officials.

It couldn't have been clearer just how little they cared for Iraqi 
sovereignty or pride when L. Paul Bremer III, George W. Bush's personal 
representative and viceroy in Baghdad, before officially "returning 
sovereignty" to the Iraqis in June 2004, signed the infamous (though, in 
this country, little noted) Order 17. As the law of the land in Iraq, among 
other things, it ensured that all foreigners involved in the occupation 
project would be granted "freedom of movement without delay throughout 
Iraq," and neither their vessels, nor their vehicles, nor their aircraft 
would be "subject to registration, licensing or inspection by the [Iraqi] 
Government." Nor in traveling would foreign diplomats, soldiers, 
consultants, security guards, or any of their vehicles, vessels, or planes 
be subject to "dues, tolls, or charges, including landing and parking fees," 
and so on.

When it came to imports, including "controlled substances," there were to be 
no customs fees or inspections, taxes, or much of anything else; nor was 
there to be the slightest charge for the use of Iraqi "headquarters, camps, 
and other premises" occupied, nor for the use of electricity, water, or 
other utilities. And all private contractors were to have total immunity 
from prosecution anywhere in the country. This was, of course, freedom as 
theft. Order 17 would have seemed familiar to any nineteenth century 
European colonialist. It granted what used to be termed 
"extraterritoriality" to Americans. Think of it as a giant 
get-out-of-jail-free card for an occupying nation.

Now, imagine, that, even after years of disaster, even in a state of 
discontrol, with unsecured global oil supplies surging toward $140 a barrel, 
the Bush administration remained in the same Order 17 frame of mind. They 
began their negotiations with the Iraqis accordingly. Cockburn (and other 
journalists subsequently) would report that they were asking for Order 
17-style immunity for the U.S. military and all private contractors in the 
country, as well as the use of up to 58 bases, even though they evidently 
"only" had 30 major ones in the country. (A leading politician of the Badr 
Organization claimed that American negotiators were actually pushing for the 
use of a startling 200 facilities across the country.)

They also evidently insisted on control over Iraqi air space up to 29,000 
feet, the right to bring troops in and out of the country without informing 
the Iraqis, and the right to "conduct military operations in Iraq and to 
detain individuals when necessary for imperative reasons of security," again 
without notification to the Iraqis, no less approval of any sort. They may 
even have insisted on the freedom to strike other countries from their Iraqi 
bases, again without consultation or approval. In addition, reported 
Cockburn, they were attempting to force their Iraqi counterparts to agree to 
such a deal by threatening to deny them at least $20 billion in Iraqi oil 
funds on deposit in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

Gulf News reported as well that, under the American version of the 
agreement, "Iraqi security institutions such as Defense, Interior and 
National Security ministries, as well as armament contracts, will be under 
American supervision for ten years." This was partially confirmed by the 
Washington Post's Walter Pincus, who reported on a multi-year contract just 
awarded to a private contractor by the Pentagon to supply "mentors to 
officials with Iraq's Defense and Interior ministries. [ who] would 'advise, 
train [and] assist... particular Iraqi officials.'"

Had the Bush administration exhibited the slightest constraint, they might 
have constructed a far more cosmetic version of the permanent garrisoning of 
Iraq. They might have officially turned the mega-bases over to the Iraqis 
and leased them back for next to nothing. They could have let the stunning 
facts they had built on the ground speak for themselves. They could have 
offered "joint commands" and other palliative remedies (as they are now 
evidently considering doing) that would have made their long-term 
sovereignty grab look far less significant -- without necessarily being so. 
But their ability to strategize outside the (Bush) box has long been 
limited.

Think of them as "the me generation" on steroids, going global and imperial. 
Or give them credit for consistency. They're mad dreamers who still can't 
wake up, even when they find themselves in a roomful of smelling salts.

Instead, with their secret SOFA negotiations, they've attempted to fly under 
the radar screens of both the U.S. Congress and the Iraqi people. They 
wanted to embed permanent bases and a long-term policy of occupation in Iraq 
in perpetuity without letting the matter rise to the level of a treaty. 
(Hence, no advice and consent from the U.S. Senate.)

Not surprisingly, this episode, too, is threatening to end in debacle. The 
Iraqi leadership is in virtual revolt. Across the political spectrum, as 
Tony Karon of the Rootless Cosmopolitan blog has written, the negotiations 
have forced upon the Iraqis "a kind of snap survey or straw poll. on the 
long-term U.S. presence, and goals for Iraq" from which the Americans are 
likely to emerge the losers.

The idea of timetables for American departure is again being floated in 
Iraq. According to Reuters, "A majority of the Iraqi parliament has written 
to Congress rejecting a long-term security deal with Washington if it is not 
linked to a requirement that U.S. forces leave," and unnamed American 
officials are now beginning to mutter about no SOFA deal being achieved 
before the Bush administration leaves office.

The administration's man in Baghdad, Prime Minister Maliki, has declared the 
initial U.S. proposal at a "dead end" and has even begun threatening to ask 
American forces to leave when their UN mandate expires at year's end. 
(Though much of this may be bluff on his part, what choice does he have? 
Given Iraqi attitudes toward being garrisoned forever by the U.S. military, 
no Iraqi leader could remain in a position of even passing power and agree 
to such terms. It would be like stamping and sealing your own execution 
order.)

The Sadrists are in the streets protesting the American presence and their 
leader has just called for a "new militia offensive" against U.S. forces. 
The pro-Iranian, but American-backed, Badrists are outraged. ("Is there 
sovereignty for Iraq -- or isn't there? If it is left to [the Bush 
administration], they would ask for immunity even for the American dogs.") 
The Iranians are vehemently voting no. Opinion in the region, whether Shiite 
or Sunni, seems to be following suit. The U.S. Congress is up in arms, 
demanding more information and possibly heading for hearings on the SOFA 
agreement and the bases. Presidential candidate Barack Obama has insisted 
that any deal be submitted to Congress, the very thing the Bush 
administration has organized for more than a year to avoid.

And miracle of all miracles, the mainstream media is finally writing about 
the bases as if they mattered. Someday, before this is over, all of us may 
actually see what was built in our names with our dollars. That will be a 
shock, especially when you consider what the Bush administration has proved 
incapable of building, or rebuilding, in New Orleans and elsewhere in this 
country. In the meantime, the President appears headed for yet another 
self-inflicted defeat.

Tom Engelhardt, co-founder of the American Empire Project, runs the Nation 
Institute's TomDispatch.com. The World According to TomDispatch: America in 
the New Age of Empire (Verso, 2008), a collection of some of the best pieces 
from his site, has just been published. Focusing on what the mainstream 
media hasn't covered, it is an alternative history of the mad Bush years. A 
brief video in which Engelhardt discusses the American mega-bases in Iraq 
can be viewed by clicking here.

[Sources for this piece and further reading: In his recent articles, as in 
his past unembedded reporting, Patrick Cockburn has shown what a good 
journalist can still do for the rest of us. Special thanks go to Nick Turse 
for his superb and speedy research on this piece and to Christopher Holmes 
for superb proofreading on demand. In gathering material, I've also relied 
on a number of sites, including Juan Cole's invaluable Informed Comment blog 
(which I visit daily without fail), those splendid hunter-gatherers of the 
news at Antiwar.com and Cursor.org's daily Media Patrol, Dan Froomkin's 
superb White House Watch blog in the Washington Post, and sharp-eyed Paul 
Woodward at his War in Context blog. For those of you who want to get a 
little more sense of the endless base-building activities of the Bush 
administration, check out the chatty newsletter (PDF file) of the Redhorse 
Association, "a group of past and present members of the U.S. Air Force 
Prime Beef and Red Horse combat engineer units."]

Copyright 2008 Tom Engelhardt.

Tom Engelhardt, editor of Tomdispatch.com, is co-founder of the American 
Empire Project and author of The End of Victory Culture.
© 2008 Tomdispatch.com All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/88225/