Bush cuts a deal that will likely retain about 50,000 troops in Iraq over the long term.
Monday's "declaration of principles" between President Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki indicates the US will maintain a "long-term" presence in Iraq and involve itself closely in the Iraqi oil trade, backsliding on rules made in this year's two largest defense laws. The 2008 Defense Appropriations Act, which Bush signed into law in mid-November, bars the United States from establishing permanent bases in Iraq and from exerting control over Iraqi oil. The 2008 Defense Authorization Act, which has passed the House and Senate and is expected to be sent to the president sometime in the next few weeks, contains similar language. Under both acts, the US is forbidden "to establish any military installation or base for the purpose of providing for the permanent stationing of United States Armed Forces in Iraq." Although when Bush approved the Appropriations Act, he released a signing statement exempting himself from several of the law's provisions, the proscription against permanent bases was not one of them. Considering the terms of Monday's agreement, the US will likely retain about 50,000 troops in Iraq over the long term, according to Iraqi government officials. Joseph Gerson, author of "The Sun Never Sets: Confronting the Network of Foreign Military Bases," said that the rule preventing permanent bases in Iraq can be easily dodged. It's a question of language manipulation, according to Gerson. "The question is, what is permanent?" he said. "Does it have to be for all eternity? Our bases in Korea have been there for 60 years. Are they 'permanent'? We're living in an Orwellian era." The phrasing of the Bush-Maliki agreement, which paints the US-Iraq relationship as a cooperative effort between "two fully sovereign and independent states with common interests," provides another defense against the ban on permanent US bases, according to Gerson. "The trick is to build a military base with a host nation," Gerson said. "Then the base is ostensibly given to the host nation while the US military stays there." http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/69351/
