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Pentagon Making Preparations
To Keep Tens Of Thousands Of Troops In Iraq For ‘Decades’
Think Progress |
May 22, 2007
Tens Of Thousands
Of Troops In Iraq For ‘Decades’ In testimony before the Senate
Appropriations Committee this month, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman
Peter Pace uttered a
“carefully
worded” statement revealing that the Pentagon had no
plans to fully withdraw U.S. forces from Iraq if legislation passes
Congress mandating troop redeployment:
PACE: Sir,
we have published no orders directing the planning for
the overall withdrawal of forces. We do have ongoing
replacements of forces, and we do change the size of the force
over time so that that system is available to either plus-up or
draw down, but we have published no orders saying come
up with a complete plan for total drawdown.
NPR investigated
Pace’s statements and found one scenario being considered within the
Pentagon would maintain a strong U.S. military presence in Iraq
for several decades into the future.
This so-called “lily pad” strategy entails keeping a “series of
military installations around Iraq,” with tens of thousands of U.S.
troops remaining in the country for as long as a few decades:
[W]hat
it essentially envisions is a series of military installations
around Iraq, maybe five or six of them, a total of maybe 30-40
thousand U.S. troops in Iraq for a long period of time,
lasting, maybe a few decades. And the idea is
that these bases will be somewhat hermetically sealed, that U.S.
military forces won’t be leaving them, they won’t be conducting
presence patrols and the patrols they conduct now. Ground
convoys won’t be driving into them.
Airplanes will be essentially landing in to deliver supplies and
these sort of lily pads will be in various strategic
areas in Iraq … And that will enable the U.S. military to
maintain a presence in the country, perhaps…for a few decades.
The Pentagon’s
goal with the lily pads is to preserve U.S. interests in Iraq for
years to come “in the event that Congress or the administration
pushes this [withdrawal plan] forward.” As NPR details, those
interests are at least
three-fold: 1) Training Iraq
forces, 2) Preserving economic interests, as “Iraq obviously [sits]
on the second largest reserve of oil in the world,” and 3) Providing
a U.S. military “presence” to deter Iran and Turkey from “getting
involved” after withdrawal.
While
60 percent of Americans are
calling for a withdrawal of the U.S. from Iraq, the Pentagon is
instead making preparations for an unending occupying presence.
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