A few notes... just.. you know...

[lithera]

I am so tired. I need to wake up. Coffee is only minimally helping.

I have a few images in my head from Pirates of the Caribbean that just won't leave my brain. Hee hee hee.

Saw a headline on the news paper this morning that made me laugh: Early Exit from Iraq Unlikely. Isn't it already far, far too late for an /early/ exit? Wouldn't early have been in March or April?

Bleh. Essay writing for work comes later. Not thinking well enough now.

Comments

The Osan of the 21rst Century

[sordidatus.livejournal.com]

We are never leaving Iraq. Just like we are never leaving Korea. Everyone expected to leave Iraq this year or early next year. That will never happen as long as the current world situation exists.Let's look at this from a real politik perspective.

As long as the Western economy is addicted to petrolium products we are never leaving Iraq. I think that Gulf War 2 was fought for three reasons.

1: Remove Saddam Hussien for personal revenge reasons. The man was not a serious threat to US intrest. Saddam knew better than to set up terroist training camps like we saw in Afgahnistan. Such camps would be an open invitatin for the US to start Operation: Enduring Freedom II. The Iraqi military was in broken shatters after the intence action of Gulf War I and ten years of high tempo daily air combat from Operation Northern and Southern Watch. The broken Iraqi military no longer posed a viable invasion threat to any of its nieghbors. Saddam and Osama Bin Ladin wanted nothing to do wiht each other. Saddam because he knew that supporting Bin Ladin would invite an imediate US attack, just like the Taliban. Bin Ladin because he did not trust the seculer godfather Saddam. Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (WMD) was an inflated issue. Where the Clinton administration lied about sex in the Oval Office the Bush administration lied to convince the American people to send their children to die in a personal vendetta. The UN inspectors have been saying for years that Saddam does not have any effictive amounts of WMD. An excellent article in the Cristian Science Monitor proposed that Saddams cotrie funneled money away from WMD and put it presidential palaces. There is more evidence to support Creationist Theory than there is for Iraqi WMD. The Second Gulf War was kanley pure and simple.

2: Secure military bases in a vital area that had a baseing vaccum. The US military has always had trouble getting and using bases in the Persian Gulf region. US military bases have strained diplomatic relations with the Saudi Arabi and the Gulf Monarchies and were a main contributing factor to the formation of Al Qada. Persian Gulf bases have been frequently denied to the US miltary for political reasons by the Saudi Royal Famely and the Gulf Monarchies. In order to sucure a relable supply of petrolium the US had to have bases that it could use without consultation. By turning Iraq into a client state the US military now has all the bases in the Persian Gulf region that it needs. All of these bases are in excellent central locations. The main operational problems with Northern and Southern Watch was getting aircraft from peripheral bases into Central Iraq. Now with bases in Iraq, Deigo Garcia, and Turkey US aircraft can reach almost all of the Persian Gulf region quickly and easily.

3: Break OPEC as a controler of petrolium prices. OPEC has not really functioned well in the last 20 years. But, the potential to have another 70's style energy crises was always there. Now that Iraq is, and will be, a client state then the US has a "voteing membership" in OPEC.

Simplely put Gulf War II was an unjustified war for coperate profits, military logistics and personal vendetta.

As long as we have short sighted leadership that refuses to learn from Vietnam and Korea we are going to have to have weapons parked in Iraq indefinatly. People in the US military are going to be doing one year remote assignments to Iraq starting in the next couple of years or so and going on at least for the next fifty years. The situation in Iraq shares much with the situation in Korea fifty, sixty years ago. The stratigic neccessity for haveing weapons and people there has not changed and shows no signs of changing. As long as we demand cheap oil we will have to have a Fortress Iraq to secure the supply.