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Requests to Build Big U.S. Bases in Iraq Raise Concern Peter Spiegel, LA Times Staff Writer

by Open-Publishing - Friday 24 March 2006
6 comments

Wars and conflicts International USA

March 23, 2006

WASHINGTON - Even as military planners look to withdraw significant numbers of American troops from Iraq in the coming year, the Bush administration continues to request hundreds of millions of dollars for large bases there, raising concerns over whether they are intended as permanent homes for U.S. forces.

Questions on Capitol Hill about the future of the bases have been prompted by the new emergency spending bill for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, which overwhelmingly passed the House of Representatives last week with $67.6 billion in funding for the war effort, including the base money.

Although the House approved the measure, lawmakers are demanding the Pentagon explain its base plans and have unanimously passed a provision blocking the use of funds for basing agreements with the Iraqi government.

"It’s the kind of thing that incites terrorism," said Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, of long-term or permanent U.S. bases in countries such as Iraq.

Paul, a critic of the war, is co-sponsoring a bipartisan bill that would make it official U.S. policy not to maintain such bases in Iraq. He noted that al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden cited U.S. military bases in Saudi Arabia as grounds for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

The debate in Congress comes as concerns grow across the country over how long the U.S. intends to keep forces in Iraq, a worry amplified when President Bush earlier this week said that a complete withdrawal of troops from Iraq would not occur during his term.

The base intrigue also is problematic in the Middle East, where it lends credence to charges that the U.S. motive for the invasion was to seize Iraqi land and oil. It also feeds debate about the appropriate U.S. relationship with Iraq after the new government fully assumes control.

State Department and Pentagon officials have insisted the bases being constructed inside Iraq will eventually be handed over to the Iraqi government

Zalmay Khalilzad, the American ambassador to Baghdad, last week told Iraqi television that the U.S. has "no goal of establishing permanent bases in Iraq."

Lt. Col. Barry Venable, a Pentagon spokesman, added: "We’re building permanent bases in Iraq for Iraqis."

But the seemingly definitive administration statements mask a semantic distinction: while officials say they are not building permanent bases, they decline to say whether they will seek a deal with the new Iraqi government allowing long-term troop deployments.

Asked at a congressional hearing last week whether he could "make an unequivocal commitment" that the U.S. officials would not seek to establish permanent bases in Iraq, Army Gen. John Abizaid, the officer in charge of all U.S. forces in the Middle East and Central Asia replied: "The policy on long-term presence in Iraq hasn’t been formulated." Venable, the Pentagon spokesman, said it was "premature and speculative" to discuss a long-term basing agreement before the permanent Iraqi government has been put in place.

All told, the United States has set up 110 forward operating bases in Iraq, and the Pentagon says about 34 of them already have been turned over to the Iraqi government, part of an ongoing effort to gradually strengthen Iraqi security forces.

Bush is under political pressure to reduce the number of U.S. troops before the fall mid-term congressional elections, and the Pentagon is expected to decide soon whether the next major deployment will reflect a significant reduction.

But despite the potential force reductions and the base handovers, the spending has continued.

Dov Zakheim, who oversaw the Pentagon’s emergency spending requests as the department’s budget chief until 2004, said critics may be reading too much into the costly emergency spending, needed to protect U.S. forces form insurgent attacks or provide better conditions for deployed troops.

"That doesn’t necessarily connote permanence," Zakheim said. "God knows it’s a tough enough environment anyway."

The bulk of the Pentagon’s emergency military construction spending over the last three years inside Iraq has focused on three or four large-scale air and logistics bases that dot central Iraq.

The administration is seeking $348 million in base construction money as part of its 2006 emergency war funding bill. The Senate has not yet acted on the request.

By far the most funding has gone to a mammoth facility just north of Baghdad in Balad, which includes an air base and the Anaconda logistical center. The U.S. Central Command has said it intends to use the base as the military’s primary hub in the region as it gradually hands off Baghdad International Airport to civilian authorities.

Through the end last year, the Bush administration spent about $230 million in emergency funds on the Balad base, and its new request includes another $17.8 million for new roads to handle hulking military vehicles and a 12.4-mile, 13-foot high security fence.

The nonpartisan Congressional Research Service noted in a report last year that many of the funds already spent, including facilities at Balad, suggest a longer term U.S. presence.

Projects there include an $18 million aircraft parking ramp and $15 million airfield lighting system that has allowed commanders to make Balad a strategic air center for the region; a $2.9 million Special Operations compound, isolated from the rest of the base and complete with landing pads for helicopters and airplanes, where classified payloads can be delivered; and a $7 million mail distribution building.

Other bases also are being developed in ways that lend them to permanent use.

This year’s request also includes $110 million for Tallil Air Base outside the southeastern city of Nasiriya, a sprawling facility in the shadow of the ruins of the biblical city of Ur. Only $11 million has been spent so far, but the administration’s new request appears to envision Tallil emerging as another major transport hub, with new roads, a new dining hall for 6,000 troops — about two Army brigades — and a new center to organize and support large supply convoys.

The administration also has spent $50 million for Camp Taji, an army base north of Baghdad, and $46.3 million on Al Asad Air Base, an airfield in the western desert.

These large bases are being built at the same time hundreds of millions of dollars are being spent on separate bases for the growing Iraqi military. According to the U.S. Central Command and data obtained from the Army Corps of Engineers, for example, about $165 million has been spent to build an Iraqi base near the southern town of Numaniya and more than $150 million for a northern base at the old Iraqi army’s Al Kasik facility.

The big numbers have begun to cause consternation in congressional appropriations committees, which are demanding more accountability from Pentagon officials on military construction in the region.

The House Appropriations Committee approved the president’s newest funding bill earlier this month with a strongly-worded warning. In a report accompanying the legislation, the committee noted it has already approved about $1.3 billion in emergency spending for war-related construction, but that the recently declared "long war" on terrorism should allow more oversight of basing plans in the region.

"(I)t has become clear in recent years that these expeditionary operations can result in substantial military construction expenditures of a magnitude normally associated with permanent bases," the committee reported.

Rep. James Walsh, R-N.Y., chairman of the House subcommittee that oversees military construction, said his panel is concerned that money the Pentagon is seeking ostensibly for short-term, emergency needs actually are going to projects that are not urgent but instead are more long-term in nature.

Walsh pointed to a $167 million request to build a series of roads in Iraq that bypass major cities, a proposal the administration said is needed to decrease convoys’ exposure to roadside bombs, known as improvised explosive devices, or IEDs. Walsh’s subcommittee cut the budget for the project to $60 million. He said the project sounded more like "more like road construction" than it did a strategy to protect troops from IEDs.

The Appropriations Committee also inserted a ban on spending any of the new money on facilities in Iraq until the U.S. Central Command submitted a "master plan" for bases in the region. Abizaid, in his congressional testimony last week, said such a plan was in the process of getting final Pentagon approval for release to the committee. But he noted: "The master plan is fairly clear on everything except for Iraq and Afghanistan, which I don’t have policy guidance for long-term."

Without such detail, it may prove impossible for congressional appropriators to get a firm idea on how the Bush administration views the future of the U.S. presence on big Iraqi bases.

In any event, said Zakheim, the former Pentagon budget officer, projects that expand bases’ ability to handle American cargo and warplanes will eventually be of use to the Iraqi government.

"Just because the Iraqis don’t have an air force now doesn’t mean they won’t have it several years down the road," Zackheim said.

But critics said it is all the more reason for the administration to stop being vague about the future.

"The Iraqis believe we came for their oil and we’re going to put bases on top of their oil," said Rep. Thomas Allen, D-Maine, a critic of the administration’s approach. "As long as the vast majority of Iraqis believe we want to be there indefinitely, those who are opposed to us are going to fight harder and those who are with us are going to be less enthusiastic."

Times staff writer Doug Smith contributed to this report.

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Forum posts

  • Eyewash from republicans and democrats. The 67 billion that passed without dissent proves that no matter what the congresspeople now say, they will allow bases in Iraq. OIL. OIL.. That is why Bush went there and why the bases are being built. Six billion dollars a month is being spent now to assure that the oil supply is kept for the United States. Bush has both signed off and signed on Iraq until his term ends. He has already admitted that as Rove has instucted him to do. Will Americans support this so-called new idea? They have supported a war for three years, and unless they are all willing to give up their Hummers and SUVs and driving habits they will continue to support anything that does not hamper their entitlements. Americans care only about themselves. However, what goes around, comes around, remember the Bastille and watch France now as they react to the PM.. America’s day is coming sooner than they all expect.

    • In the name of God the Most Beneficent the Most Merciful

      The Arab Baath Socialist Party

      One Arab Nation, with an eternal mission

      Unity, Freedom, Socialism

      A statement issued by the Arab Baath Socialist Party - the Iraq Leadership- on the occasion of the third anniversary of the Occupation of Iraq.

      Masses of our Great People and our Glorious Nation!

      Militant Mujahidins on the soil of Iraq!

      Freedom loving men and women of the world!

      You all know that the US, pushed by International Zionism has committed the greatest crime of the century through invading Iraq three years ago for the only reason because Iraq represented an Arab and human radiance Center and because this land of Civilization heritage and historical influence during centuries, recognized and admitted by all the nations when looking into its eight thousands years old’ history. For everyone understood that the Lord, praised be His name, granted Iraq with the greatest leaders, who were able to seize the opportunity to climb up to the heights many, many a time! This is how the first civilization ever saw the light in the world, and was the Civilization of the Valley of the Two Rivers, Mesopotamia, where the people of Iraq continued to generously enrich humanity and all through the Islamic Message changing Baghdad into the Center of the Islamic Caliphate, thereafter came the Baath in its glorious Tammuz -July - revolution 1968 to make rise Iraq again and to build the greatest modern national Renaissance experience which made Iraq the focal point for Arabs and humanity. No wonder why all the evil forces ganged attempting to kill this radiance (civilization) before spreading its wings everywhere, trying to turn it into a black satanic darkness through invading Iraq, fancying being able to hide the God’s light on earth but rather they tried to forget that God will continue granting His light in spite the infidels bad will.

      Militants!

      The invaders thought that their forces equipped with the most advanced military technology in the world and with their big materialistic powers were capable to make the dignified People of Iraq kneel! They failed and they were stained with bad luck on their forehead. Immediately when started the battle that God almighty, praised be His name, wanted to have the People of Iraq and its militants and faithful vanguard bear its responsibility, the believers Victory good tidings started to loom on the horizon. Moreover the victory on the Battle fields is not decided by the invaders force in spite of all its materially superior components, but rather by the will of the People through Resistance and through strengthening the victory spirit breathed from the Nation historical and living roots. The invaders got themselves trapped in the death quagmire when Satan and his followers from the traitors of Ibn al A’lqamy brood, lured them about their campaign success. Thus the Trinity of the US, the Zionist and the Iranian’ Evil, was able to gang on the Land of the Two Rivers to sow desolation and plunder, where the noble sons and daughters of Iraq were waiting for them, hitting the enemy in Jihadi strikes, the bloodthirsty invaders didn’t expect and didn’t experience in any of their previous aggressive wars, forcing them, due to their terrible desperation and their utter conviction that they were routed and defeated and there is not a single hope for them to achieve whatever victory, to attempt an exit from their mess either by yelling help from the United Nations, or from the European countries or either from the regional powers.. These same parties they despised before and in the beginning of the invasion of Iraq. But curse after curse pursued them.. And by God almighty, Iraqi blood will never be shed for nothing, and the Occupier will not escape from the consequences he undertook through destroying Iraq, plundering its riches, murdering its people and raping its sacrosanct values.

      While you, brood of Ibn A’lqamy, your death hour has come, where there will be no mercy for you. This time there will be no room for you on this planet over, as there was no room for your likes from Algeria, Southern Vietnam Korea and Cambodia.. Do you still remember what happened to you in August 1996 where none of your yelling and barking and laments rescued you? The Curse of the History will pursue you and your descendants and your brood and no one of you will escape the punishment of God, the Homeland and the People... There at that very time, even your suckling toddlers will be ashamed of you and will disinherit you for you stained them with shame from the very beginning... and while you endure shame and dishonor on this life you will get in the coming one the Gehenna fire for ever and ever... and this is looming, with the grace of the Lord.

      You honorable!

      You did witness the lion leader Saddam Hussein roar in his den to tell the Occupiers, invaders and their servants, get out, humiliated, from our Homeland! Today here is the great Baath announcing to the world over, how proud it is with the revolutionary Combatants who are blowing life into their Nation glories in their Homeland Iraq: Yes! Indeed! The people of Iraq triumphed! Yes! Indeed the US has been defeated and the foreigner Occupier has been humiliated, and routed were its evil plans on the soil of Iraq, where the US-Zionist-Iranian alliance nudity they were hiding were exposed and seen by every one... And here are the Invaders harvesting failures after failures and reaping the evil and the aggression they have sowed.

      The growing and Jihadi operations of the Baath Mujahidins and the national and Islamic factions belonging to every scope of our dignified People, and the continuation of these operations are necessary to rout the Occupier and to liberate Iraq... They are the guarantee to build Iraq and to bring it back to its Nation’ bosom, stronger than before. The US and its allied are routed in Iraq... They are agonizing... Yes! Indeed! The US and those who got allied with are defeated as the Iraqis taught them the cruel lessons they ought to learn! Bush and his clique should right now admit that the invasion of Iraq humiliated the US and that he should know, now, right this moment and not to wait until tomorrow, that the world from now on will never again respect the US after it was defeated in the arenas of the most ferocious, the most honorable Jihadi Battle endured by the Intrepid Mujahidins in spite of the US absolute supremacy in equipment and materialistic possibilities.

      Sons and daughters of our great People!

      Combat the enemy where ever you find him! Kill him while he is agonizing! Remember the words of the leader Saddam Hussein, may the Lord safeguard him, when he addressed you from his lion’s den saying: "I call upon all Iraqis, men and women to let aside wounding yourselves and stay in the right path against the murderers, thieves, foreigners and occupiers... and those who attacked both holy shrines are criminals and shameful whatever is their religion and I dare say without being radical, they have no religion whatsoever... You are great in your stand! Safeguard your qualities until the end of these difficult times... and before long the sun will rise again! What happened lately is a real bad thing for oneself and for our faith."

      You Iraqis who care most about your Iraq!

      We call upon you to rally forces in a way proportionate to the objective of hastening the decisive victory, to kill the Trinity of the Evil in Iraq composed of the US, Iran and the Zionist Entity, and against the pagan Persian fire worshippers treacherous Badr brigades, the Da’awa party gangs and against those who have no other worry but to drive a wedge into the Iraqi people’s unity and to divide Iraq under despised sectarian names and titles.

      Iraqis! Fight with all the colors of the prism of Iraq, Arabs, Kurds, and other minorities, to hasten the liberation of Iraq, to safeguard your homeland.. Don’t get lured by the foreigners’ claims and lies which were exposed to the world over. Don’t give any attention to the Safawi Satan! Expel them from your homeland! Expel every fornicator and every whore, for they have become known to you when they dropped their masks showing their real ugly horrible faces as treacherous stooges... Don’t allow them to set loggerheads and stir up ill feelings amongst you! Iraqis are one single people throughout times and they will be so in spite the Occupation and its thugs!

      Long live Iraq! Long live the Arab Nation!

      A resounding, a wiping out, and a tremendous defeat for the Occupation forces!

      Shame and dishonor to those who collaborated with the foreigners!

      Long live the Intrepid Iraqi Resistance!

      Long live the Arab Baath Socialist Party, the vanguard of the Nation and its leader!

      Long live the Leader Mujahid Comrade Saddam Hussein, may the Lord safeguard him and bless him!

      God is the Greatest... God is the Greatest!

      Debased be the abased.

      http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m21868

    • God is deaf to murders Arab, so you have no voice. Americans and others have no business in Iraq or the MIddle East. Arabs who claim that theyare subjects of God and murder and kill innocent children and women are the spawn of the devil. Even the Star of The Morning once stood in good stead with God as an angel. You who wrote this are worse than the fallen angel. God and Satan will judge you . You who roll in gold from your wealth of oil are even worse. However, I do not jusdge you, to do so would make put me on your imbecilic level. There is one God, not Allah, not your prophet, not a Christian, Jew or Hindu, one God. You all have stopped listening to that God and for that you will suffer the consequences. God would do him;herself a favor to destroy all humans on this planet.

  • The entire Bush cabinet has lied so often, so maliciously, and so deliberately, that we can give NO credit to any statement that is made by them. If you check their statements over the past 5 years you will find many discrepancies, contradictions, and outright falsehoods. We know that the neocons want to dominate the world, beginning with the Middle East. That means they MUST have large military bases, with huge airfields, in order to use preemptive murderous actions at any time the whim strikes Bush that he can divine Intentions. He is a failure as a strategist, as a military leader, and as a competent president. Everything he touches turns to crap for the average citizen, but to pure gold for his neocon corporate fundamentalist supporters. War is BIG business, wonderful profits to anyone who makes arms and munitions and equipment with which to kill other people. That is why Bush will not leave Iraq. He is a failure, had no viable strategy other than "stay the course", but the course is a failed course. It goes no place. It is like watching the same movie several times, expecting it to turn out differently each time to suit your taste. Bush and his people are vicious murderous corrupt scoundrels and the only Noble Purposes they have is to get power and wealth for themselves.

    • "He is a failure, had no viable strategy other than "stay the course", but the course is a failed course. It goes no place." - 151 49

      Although I see that you are someone with whom I can agree on a number of things, I have to object to your conclusion that Bush is a failure. How can he be a failure when, as you point out, his neocorp buddies are making oodles of cash off the Middle East adventure. To "non-entities" like us, the entire business in Afhganistan and Iraq looks like an utter failure, but to the companies fueling the enterprise with materiel, it’s a raving success.

    • To 24.145: According to his job description, the first priority of the President of the US is to defend the Constitution of the US. Considering his lawless actions throughout his term in office, Bush has done quite the opposite of this, he has openly attacked our Constitution with impunity. In that sense he is a horrific failure, that is if you are law abiding citizen. Mr. Bush was not elected to make ’oodles’ of cash for Halliburton or the Carlyle Group. He was elected to serve the best interests of the people of the US and in that sense, he is also a catastrophic failure.