IRAQ WAR - LOOKING GLASS NEWS | |
If the U.S. government doesn't plan to occupy Iraq for any longer than necessary, why is it spending billions of dollars to build |
|
by Joshua Hammer Mother Jones Entered into the database on Wednesday, March 16th, 2005 @ 23:34:37 MST |
|
Such a heavy footprint seems counterproductive, given the growing antipathy
felt by most Iraqis toward the U.S. military occupation. Yet Camp Victory North
appears to be a harbinger of America's future in Iraq. Over the past year, the
Pentagon has reportedly been building up to 14 "enduring" bases across
the country—long-term encampments that could house as many as 100,000
troops indefinitely. John Pike, a military analyst who runs the research group
GlobalSecurity.org, has identified a dozen of these bases, including three large
facilities in and around Baghdad: the Green Zone, Camp Victory North, and Camp
al-Rasheed, the site of Iraq’s former military airport. Also listed are
Camp Cook, just north of Baghdad, a former Republican Guard "military city"
that has been converted into a giant U.S. camp; Balad Airbase, north of Baghdad;
Camp Anaconda, a 15-square-mile facility near Balad that housed 17,000 soldiers
as of May 2004 and was being expanded for an additional 3,000; and Camp Marez,
next to Mosul Airport, where, in December, a suicide bomber blew himself up
in the base's dining tent, killing 13 U.S. troops and four KBR contractors eating
lunch alongside the soldiers. At these bases, KBR, a Halliburton subsidiary that works in cooperation with
the Army Corps of Engineers, has been extending runways, improving security
perimeters, and installing a variety of structures ranging from rigid-wall huts
to aircraft hangars. Although the Pentagon considers most of the construction
to be "temporary"—designed to last up to three years—similar
facilities have remained in place for much longer at other "enduring"
American bases, including Kosovo's Camp Bondsteel, which opened in 1999, and
Eagle Base in Tuzla, Bosnia, in place since the mid-1990s. |