As the Chronicle reports, "The Bush administration is quietly on track to nearly double the number of combat troops in Iraq this year, an analysis of Pentagon deployment orders showed Monday. The little-noticed second surge, designed to reinforce U.S. troops in Iraq, is being executed by sending more combat brigades and extending tours of duty for troops already there. The actions could boost the number of combat soldiers from 52,500 in early January to as many as 98,000 by the end of this year if the Pentagon overlaps arriving and departing combat brigades.
Separately, when additional support troops are included in this second troop increase, the total number of U.S. troops in Iraq could increase from 162,000 now to more than 200,000 -- a record-high number -- by the end of the year."
I am disappointed yet not surprised that this story didn't make the front page of the New York Times or USA Today, nor is it on the cover of Newsweek or Time magazines. The spin out of the White House and pro-war Republican Congressmen's offices is that the surge merely represents a temporary bump in US troop presence in Iraq to allow for the speedy transfer of power and responsibility to the "democratically elected" new government there. No mention is made, for reasons that are by now patently obvious, of the permanent nature of the ongoing occupation of a country that holds rather significant geopolitical significance for the Neocons still ensconsed in Washington's power circles.
Update (6/10): Further supporting the by now widely accepted theory . . . or perhaps it ought to be simply referred to as "reality", of US military planners' long-term designs on Iraq is this dispatch from the Washington Post's Tom Ricks (author of the excellent book on the invasion and occupation of Iraq "Fiasco"). It is entitled "Military Envisions Longer Stay in Iraq" and it is overflowing with background information about the real nature of Washington's "Global War on Terror" and the need for the Bushies to justify preventive war on countries as a first step in occupying them for many years.
Reading between the lines in Rick's article, a careful layperson can discern the effective propaganda techniques being wielded by administration higher-ups, with the reasonable reader fully expected to draw the conclusion that anything other than a "long-term" occupation would be the height of irresponsibility, or, alternatively, it might be downright impossible!
One passage from the WaPo piece that stands out for me due to its black comedy quality is:
One of the guiding principles, according to two officials here, is that the United States should leave Iraq more intelligently than it entered. Military officials, many of whom would be interviewed only on the condition of anonymity, say they are now assessing conditions more realistically, rejecting the "steady progress" mantra of their predecessors and recognizing that short-term political reconciliation in Iraq is unlikely. A reduction of troops, some officials argue, would demonstrate to anti-American factions that the occupation will not last forever while reassuring Iraqi allies that the United States does not intend to abandon the country.
This is a noteworthy sleight-of-hand the anonymous military folks are trying to pull here. First, change history by making the US's illegal invasion of Iraq a "mistake" centered on the incompetence of the Pentagon in implementing its policies (i.e. due to human error) as opposed to, say, the real reasons it was a mistake (i.e. there were no WMD and Hussein didn't pose a threat to the US; planning for the war began in 1998 before Bush was even inaugerated by think tankers at the Project for a New American Century; the intelligence community was pressured by VP Dick Cheney's office to create a plausible-sounding but wholly fictitious case for war, etcetera . . .
One could just look at the declassified information, available for public consumption online, about the Pentagon's plans for 14 "enduring" military bases in Iraq*. This data in black and white tends to cause people who are actually paying attention to reassess what is really meant by Pentagon spokesmen when discussing the ins and outs of the competing troop withdrawal plans.
*For much, much more solidly-sourced information available online on the Pentagon's permanent military bases being planned for Iraq, see here.
Update #2: I have been remiss in neglecting to discuss the politics of this whole mess. So for more on how the results of the May Iraq War Spending Bill (and Bush's threatened presidential veto thereof) fits into the Neoconservative DC esstablishment's dream of permanent occupation of Iraq, see this article from Phyllis Bennis in Z Net here.
Update #3 (7/16): Stephen Lendman has a long post over at his blog on the subject of the Pentagon's planned "permanent military occupation" of Iraq here. While I don't necessarily count myself a fan of all of Stephen's writing, particularly those pertaining to the Israel-Palestine issue, this analysis truly is well-written and excellent overall. Go read the whole thing.
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