Kasz216 on 17 June 2008
| The Ghost of RubangB said: The PNAC plan that Wolfowitz and some others had established that America needed a military presence in Iraq as soon as possible, before 9/11 even happened or anybody cared about terrorism at all. The reason wasn't the oil, but the fact that it's the chunk of land that connects the entire eastern hemisphere, so it gives access to half the planet's trade routes. I just looked it up and... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pnac Oops, it was Project (not Plan) for a New American Century, and Rumfseld and Wolfowitz were both in it. They wrote a letter to Clinton urging him to get rid of Saddam in 1998. Then a couple years later Bush got in office and they got fancy new jobs and suddenly we decided to invade Iraq. I'm not saying 9/11 was an inside job or even allowed to happen (outside of ignorance and poor planning and horrible intelligence), but I do think it allowed some newly hired wackjobs to get the rest of the administration on board with an Iraq war which they'd been trying to start for years. And about staying there, I'm fine with a military base here and there, but if this entire war was to justify a military base, I can't support either the war or the base. I'm not Machiavellian enough to support senseless killing just to give America a strategically placed base. And if the rumors are true and it costs the alleged zillions of dollars to build and defend it, it could double the cost of the occupation for the next couple years, which our economy can't really handle. |
Hopefully the economy will handle it. As the permanent Military base is going to be their no matter which president gets into office as Obama and McCain both support a permanent presense in Iraq to serve American needs.
It will be fairly useful I'd guess since Turkey can be a bit annoying with letting us use their airspace... but if they end up fully in the EU i don't see why it'd be such a problem.
