Total Withdrawal? Who are you kidding?

From the very start, the debate over Iraq has been obscured by a miasma of bogus statistics and facts: Congress is now supposedly discussing the eventual withdrawal of all American troops from Iraq. Even the Bush administration, though it refuses to set any deadline, seems to be promising a total pullout.

But who are they kidding? First of all, even those Iraqi units already up and running rely on the U.S. for much of their logistics and certainly almost all of their air support. Self-sufficiency is years away.

Secondly—and very much related: If U.S. troops are really to withdraw completely from Iraq what’s the point of America’s having built four huge “super bases” in that country—each one housing tens of thousands of US soldiers?

The most mammoth is the sprawling air base and logistics centre at Balad, north of Baghdad. As of last year, the U.S. had already poured close to a quarter of a billion dollars into that facility, and was planning tens of millions more, including a major road system and a 13-foot-high security fence that would stretch for 12.4 miles. In fact, thousands of troops stationed at Balad already spend their entire tour of duty within the base’s huge confines.

Balad was billed as Americas’ strategic air center for the entire region. Indeed, one original but unstated objective of the 2003 invasion was to make Iraq the U.S.’s new military platform in that part of the world. The huge U.S. troop presence in Saudi Arabia was becoming much too politically sensitive.

Another facility is the massive marine base of Al-Asad in Anbar province, where a visiting reporter was recently assured by U.S. soldiers that American troops would be rotating though for at least the next decade.

In other words, while American troop levels may be reduced at some point, tens of thousands American troops will almost certainly be remaining behind for years, hunkered down in their rambling new bases.

Though U.S. legislators voted against appropriating funds for permanent bases in Iraq, the White House and Pentagon have ignored that prohibition by portraying the huge construction projects to be for temporary facilities tied to the on-going conflict.

[Excerpt of an article by Barry Lando, a former producer with 60 Minutes]