Planet Pentagon

[babylonsister]

Planet Pentagon
Submitted by davidswanson on Mon, 2007-08-13 16:39. Media

By Nick Turse

Recently, The Wall Street Journal reported on a proposal, championed by
defence secretary Robert Gates, to reduce the number of United States
troops in Iraq in exchange for bipartisan Congressional support for the
long term (read, more or less permanent) garrisoning of that country. The
troops are to be tucked away on "large bases far from Iraq's major
cities." This plan sounded suspiciously similar to one revealed by Thom
Shanker and Eric Schmitt in The New York Times on 19 April 2003, just as
US troops were preparing to enter Baghdad.

Headlined "Pentagon Expects Long-Term Access to Four Key Bases in Iraq",
it laid out a US plan for "a long-term military relationship with the
emerging government of Iraq, one that would grant the Pentagon access to...
perhaps four bases in Iraq that could be used in the future: one at the
international airport just outside Baghdad; another at Tallil, near
Nasiriya in the south; the third at an isolated airstrip called H-1 in the
western desert, along the old oil pipeline that runs to Jordan; and the
last at the Bashur air field in the Kurdish north."

Shortly thereafter Donald Rumsfeld, then defence secretary, denied any
such plans: "I have never, that I can recall, heard the subject of a
permanent base in Iraq discussed in any meeting..." -- and, while the bases
were being built, the story largely disappeared from the mainstream media.

But even with the multi-square mile, multi-billion dollar, state-of-
the-art Balad Air Base and Camp Victory thrown in, the bases in Gates' new
plan will be but a drop in the bucket for an organisation that may well be
the world's largest landlord. For many years the US military has been
gobbling up large swathes of the planet and huge amounts of just about
everything on (or in) it.

In 2003 Forbes magazine revealed that media mogul Ted Turner was America's
top land baron -- with a total of 1.8m acres across the United States. The
nation's 10 largest landowners, Forbes reported, "own 10.6m acres, or one
out of every 217 acres in the country." Impressive as this total was, the
Pentagon puts Turner and the entire pack of mega-landlords to shame with
over 29m acres in US landholdings. Abroad, the Pentagon's footprint is
also that of a giant. For example, the defence department controls 20% of
the Japanese island of Okinawa and, according to Stars and Stripes, "owns
about 25% of Guam". Mere land ownership, however, is just the tip of the
iceberg.

Global footprint In his 2004 book, The Sorrows of Empire, Chalmers Johnson
opened the world's eyes to the size of the Pentagon's global footprint,
noting that the Department of Defence (DoD) was deploying nearly 255,000
military personnel at 725 bases in 38 countries. Since then, the total
number of overseas bases has increased to at least 766 and, according to a
report by the Congressional Research Service, may actually be as high as
850.

more...

http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/25754

[HereSince1628]

1. These bases are seen as a necessity for Cold War II

American Cold Warriors of all persuasion are very keen on them as The Great Hegemonic Quest has stalled.