|
The Greatest Story Never Told Finally, the U.S. Mega-Bases in Iraq Make the News By Tom Engelhardt TomDispatch June 15, 2008 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."http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/issues/iraq/bases/2008/0615nevertold.htm
Military
Iraq Facilitieshttp://www.globalsecurity.org/military/facility/iraq.htm They're Staying in Iraq by Kevin Zeese
The message is clear. Indeed, it's gigantic for all Iraqis, for the entire world to see. A 100 acre compound – ten times the size of the typical U.S. embassy, the size of 80 football fields, six times larger than the UN, the size of Vatican City. The US Embassy Compound, in the middle of Baghdad – the center for US domination of the Middle East and its resources.
 The compound towers above the Tigris River like a modern fortress. It will have its own sources of power and water and sit in the heart of Baghdad. If there is any thought that the US is planning on leaving Iraq, the new embassy should make it clear "We're staying!" http://www.antiwar.com/orig/zeese.php?articleid=8885 Jacob Silberberg / AP The swimming pool at Balad air base seen through the window of a Blackhawk helicopter in August. |
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
