Iraqis Think U.S. in Their Nation to Stay
http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=1747437&CMP=OTC-RSSFeeds0312
* Elaborate Bases Raise Questions About How Long
the United Stats Intends to Keep Troops in Iraq
BALAD AIR BASE, Iraq Mar 20, 2006 (AP)— The concrete
goes on forever, vanishing into the noonday glare,
2 million cubic feet of it, a mile-long slab that's now the
home of up to 120 U.S. helicopters, a "heli-park"
as good as any back in the States.
At another giant base, al-Asad in Iraq's western desert,
the 17,000 troops and workers come and go in a kind of
bustling American town, with a Burger King, Pizza Hut
and a car dealership, stop signs, traffic regulations
and young bikers clogging the roads.
At a third hub down south, Tallil, they're planning a
new mess hall, one that will seat 6,000 hungry airmen
and soldiers for chow.
Are the Americans here to stay? Air Force mechanic Josh Remy
is sure of it as he looks around Balad.
"I think we'll be here forever," the 19-year-old airman
from Wilkes-Barre, Pa., told a visitor to his base.
The Iraqi people suspect the same. Strong majorities tell
pollsters they'd like to see a timetable for U.S. troops
to leave, but believe Washington plans to keep military bases
in their country.
The question of America's future in Iraq looms larger as
the U.S. military enters the fourth year of its war here,
waged first to oust President Saddam Hussein, and now to
crush an Iraqi insurgency.
Ibrahim al-Jaafari, interim prime minister, has said he opposes
permanent foreign bases. A wide range of American opinion is
against them as well. Such bases would be a "stupid" provocation,
says Gen. Anthony Zinni, former U.S. Mideast commander and a
critic of the original U.S. invasion.
But events, in explosive situations like Iraq's, can turn
"no" into "maybe" and even "yes."
The Shiite Muslims, ascendant in Baghdad, might decide
they need long-term U.S. protection against insurgent
Sunni Muslims. Washington might take the political risks
to gain a strategic edge in its confrontation with
next-door Iran, for example.
The U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, and other
U.S. officials disavow any desire for permanent bases.
But long-term access, as at other U.S. bases abroad,
is different from "permanent," and the official U.S.
position is carefully worded.
Lt. Cmdr. Joe Carpenter, a Pentagon spokesman on
international security, told The Associated Press it
would be "inappropriate" to discuss future basing until
a new Iraqi government is in place, expected in the coming weeks.
Less formally, U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld,
asked about "permanent duty stations" by a Marine during
an Iraq visit in December, allowed that it was
"an interesting question." He said it would have
to be raised by the incoming Baghdad government,
if "they have an interest in our assisting them for
some period over time."
In Washington, Iraq scholar Phebe Marr finds the language
intriguing. "If they aren't planning for bases, they ought
to say so," she said. "I would expect to hear 'No bases.'"
Right now what is heard is the pouring of concrete.
In 2005-06, Washington has authorized or proposed almost
$1 billion for U.S. military construction in Iraq,
as American forces consolidate at Balad, known as Anaconda,
and a handful of other installations, big bases under
the old regime.
They have already pulled out of 34 of the 110 bases
they were holding last March, said Maj. Lee English of
the U.S. command's Base Working Group, planning the consolidation.
"The coalition forces are moving outside the cities while
continuing to provide security support to the Iraqi
security forces," English said.
The move away from cities, perhaps eventually accompanied
by U.S. force reductions, will lower the profile of U.S. troops,
frequent targets of roadside bombs on city streets.
Officers at Al-Asad Air Base, 10 desert miles from
the nearest town, say it hasn't been hit by insurgent mortar
or rocket fire since October.
Al-Asad will become even more isolated. The proposed
2006 supplemental budget for Iraq operations would
provide $7.4 million to extend the no-man's-land and
build new security fencing around the base, which at
19 square miles is so large that many assigned there take the
Yellow or Blue bus routes to get around the base,
or buy bicycles at a PX jammed with customers.
The latest budget also allots $39 million for new airfield
lighting, air traffic control systems and upgrades allowing
al-Asad to plug into the Iraqi electricity grid a typical
sign of a long-term base.
At Tallil, besides the new $14 million dining facility,
Ali Air Base is to get, for $22 million, a double
perimeter security fence with high-tech gate controls,
guard towers and a moat in military parlance, a
"vehicle entrapment ditch with berm."
Here at Balad, the former Iraqi air force academy
40 miles north of Baghdad, the two 12,000-foot runways
have become the logistics hub for all U.S. military
operations in Iraq, and major upgrades began last year.
Army engineers say 31,000 truckloads of sand and gravel fed
nine concrete-mixing plants on Balad, as contractors laid a
$16 million ramp to park the Air Force's huge C-5 cargo
planes; an $18 million ramp for workhorse C-130 transports;
and the vast, $28 million main helicopter ramp, the length
of 13 football fields, filled with attack, transport and
reconnaissance helicopters.
Turkish builders are pouring tons more concrete for a fourth
ramp beside the runways, for medical-evacuation and other
aircraft on alert. And $25 million was approved for other
"pavement projects," from a special road for munitions trucks
to a compound for special forces.
The chief Air Force engineer here, Lt. Col. Scott Hoover,
is also overseeing two crucial projects to add to Balad's
longevity: equipping the two runways with new permanent
lighting, and replacing a weak 3,500-foot section of one runway.
Once that's fixed, "we're good for as long as we need to run it,"
Hoover said. Ten years? he was asked. "I'd say so."
Away from the flight lines, among traffic jams and freshly
planted palms, life improves on 14-square-mile Balad for its
estimated 25,000 personnel, including several thousand
American and other civilians.
They've inherited an Olympic-sized pool and a chandeliered
cinema from the Iraqis. They can order their favorite
Baskin-Robbins flavor at ice cream counters in five
dining halls, and cut-rate Fords, Chevys or Harley-Davidsons,
for delivery at home, at a PX-run "dealership." On one
recent evening, not far from a big 24-hour gym, airmen hustled
up and down two full-length, lighted outdoor basketball courts
as F-16 fighters thundered home overhead.
"Balad's a fantastic base," Brig. Gen. Frank Gorenc,
the Air Force's tactical commander in Iraq, said in
an interview at his headquarters here.
Could it host a long-term U.S. presence?
"Eventually it could," said Gorenc, commander of the 332nd
Air Expeditionary Wing. "But there's no commitment to any
of the bases we operate, until somebody tells me that."
In the counterinsurgency fight, Balad's central location
enables strike aircraft to reach targets in minutes.
And in the broader context of reinforcing the U.S. presence
in the oil-rich Mideast, Iraq bases are preferable to aircraft
carriers in the Persian Gulf, said a longtime defense analyst.
"Carriers don't have the punch," said Gordon Adams of
Washington's George Washington University. "There's a
huge advantage to land-based infrastructure. At the level
of strategy it makes total sense to have Iraq bases."
A U.S. congressional study cited another, less discussed
use for possible Iraq bases: to install anti-ballistic
defenses in case Iran fires missiles.
American bases next door could either deter or provoke Iran,
noted Paul D. Hughes, a key planner in the early U.S.
occupation of Iraq.
Overall, however, this retired Army colonel says American troops
are unwanted in the Middle East. With long-term bases in Iraq,
"We'd be inviting trouble," Hughes said.
"It's a stupid idea and clearly politically unacceptable,"
Zinni, a former Central Command chief, said in a Washington
interview. "It would damage our image in the region,
where people would decide that this" seizing bases
"was our original intent."
Among Iraqis, the subject is almost too sensitive to discuss.
"People don't like bases," veteran politician Adnan Pachachi,
a member of the new Parliament, told the AP. "If bases are
absolutely necessary, if there's a perceived threat …
but I don't think even Iran will be a threat."
If long-term basing is, indeed, on the horizon, "the politics
back here and the politics in the region say, 'Don't announce it,'"
Adams said in Washington. That's what's done elsewhere,
as with the quiet U.S. basing of spy planes and other
aircraft in the United Arab Emirates.
Army and Air Force engineers, with little notice,
have worked to give U.S. commanders solid installations
in Iraq, and to give policymakers options. From the start,
in 2003, the first Army engineers rolling into Balad took
the long view, laying out a 10-year plan envisioning a move
from tents to today's living quarters in air-conditioned
trailers, to concrete-and-brick barracks by 2008.
In early 2006, no one's confirming such next steps,
but a Balad "master plan," details undisclosed,
is nearing completion, a possible model for
al-Asad, Tallil and a fourth major base, al-Qayyarah
in Iraq's north.
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