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When Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld told reporters last December that he
expected U.S. troops to remain in Iraq for another four years, he was merely confirming
what any visitor to the country could have surmised. The omnipresence of the giant
defense contractor KBR (formerly Kellogg, Brown & Root), the shipments of
concrete and other construction materials, and the transformation of decrepit
Iraqi military bases into fortified American enclaves—complete with Pizza
Huts and DVD stores—are just the most obvious signs that the United States
has been digging in for the long haul. It's a far cry from administration assurances
after the invasion that the troops could start withdrawing from Iraq as early
as the fall of 2003. And it is hardly consistent with a prediction by Richard
Perle, the former chairman of the Defense Policy Board, that the troops would
be out of Iraq within months, or with Iraqi National Congress leader Ahmed Chalabi's
guess that the U.S. occupation would last two years. Take, for example, Camp Victory
North, a sprawling base near Baghdad International Airport, which the U.S. military
seized just before the ouster of Saddam Hussein in April 2003. Over the past year,
KBR contractors have built a small American city where about 14,000 troops are
living, many hunkered down inside sturdy, wooden, air-conditioned bungalows called
SEA (for Southeast Asia) huts, replicas of those used by troops in Vietnam. There's
a Burger King, a gym, the country's biggest PX—and, of course, a separate
compound for KBR workers, who handle both construction and logistical support.
Although Camp Victory North remains a work in progress today, when complete, the
complex will be twice the size of Camp Bondsteel in Kosovo—currently one
of the largest overseas posts built since the Vietnam War.
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.
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