Hey, look! It's the War Czar!

I wondered where he had gone. So he's popped up to say that staying in Iraq in permanent bases is sorta ok and the process will skip Senate ratification because it's not a treaty:

Spencer Ackerman of TPMmuckraker:

Could Congress stop a Bush administration-brokered deal to garrison U.S. troops in Iraq indefinitely? Not according to General Douglas Lute, the so-called "war czar." Here's Lute at today's gaggle:

Q General, will the White House seek any congressional input on this?

GENERAL LUTE: In the course of negotiations like this, it's not -- it is typical that there will be a dialogue between congressional leaders at the negotiating table, which will be run out of the Department of State. We don't anticipate now that these negotiations will lead to the status of a formal treaty which would then bring us to formal negotiations or formal inputs from the Congress.

Q Is the purpose of avoiding the treaty avoiding congressional input?

GENERAL LUTE: No, as I said, we have about a hundred agreements similar to the one envisioned for the U.S. and Iraq already in place, and the vast majority of those are below the level of a treaty.

Lute said the White House intends to conclude negotiations on an enduring security guarantee with the Maliki government in July. Permanent military bases and residual troop levels will be specified in the final accord, he said.

Interesting how Georgie is really trying to sink our feet into cement shoes in Iraq. Kinda like making sure the inevitable mess and retreat will be blamed on someone years down the line...

Look what was hidden in the Iraq War Bill the Congress caved on

How many more of these zingers are hidden in there? Via Cliff Schecter, Bill Scher of Liberal Oasis:

Overlooked in the congressional cave-in to Dubya on a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq is that the final bill (H.R. 2206) kept in a flat ban on funding permanent bases:

SEC. 3301. None of the funds appropriated or otherwise made available by this or any other Act shall be obligated or expended by the United States Government for a purpose as follows:

(1) To establish any military installation or base for the purpose of providing for the permanent stationing of United States Armed Forces in Iraq.

(2) To exercise United States control over any oil resource of Iraq.

Yet it was only a day after Bush signed the bill into the law that the NY Times reported:

[Senior Bush administration officials] said the proposals being developed envision a far smaller but long-term American presence, centering on three or four large bases around Iraq. Mr. Bush has told recent visitors to the White House that he was seeking a model similar to the American presence in South Korea.

And when reporters asked WH Press Secretary Tony Snow if the "Korea" parallel means they're planning on staying for 50 years, he danced, saying that's "unanswerable" but "what I'm saying is you get to a point in the future where you want it to be a purely support role."

Scher notes in his next post:

From today's NY Times:

Administration officials and top military leaders declined to talk on the record about their long-term plans in Iraq. But when speaking on a not-for-attribution basis, they describe a fairly detailed concept. It calls for maintaining three or four major bases in the country, all well outside of the crowded urban areas where casualties have soared. They would include the base at Al Asad in Anbar Province, Balad Air Base about 50 miles north of Baghdad, and Tallil Air Base in the south.

Spending one single dollar on those bases is now against the law.

Congress, are you listening?

This isn't just any old embassy

This embassy is made to last ... permanently:

When the idea of building a new US embassy in Baghdad was first mooted by the American administration in the aftermath of the invasion of Iraq, there seemed to be a grandiose logic to it.

The compound, by the side of the Tigris, would be a statement of President Bush's intent to expand democracy through the Middle East. Yesterday, however, the entire project was under fresh scrutiny as new details emerged of its cost and scale.

Rising from the dust of the city's Green Zone it is destined, at $592m (£300m), to become the biggest and most expensive US embassy on earth when it opens in September.

It will cover 104 acres (42 hectares) of land, about the size of the Vatican. It will include 27 separate buildings and house about 615 people behind bomb-proof walls. Most of the embassy staff will live in simple, if not quite monastic, accommodation in one-bedroom apartments.

The US ambassador, however, will enjoy a little more elbow room in a high-security home on the compound reported to fill 16,000 square feet (1,500 sq metres). His deputy will have to make do with a more modest 9,500 sq ft.

They will have a pool, gym and communal living areas, and the embassy will have its own power and water supplies.

But commentators and Iraq experts believe the project was flawed from its inception, and have raised concerns it will become an enormous, heavily targeted white elephant that will be an even greater liability if and when the Americans scale back their presence in Iraq.

This article was written over a year ago:

Recently, Oliver Poole, a British reporter, visited another of the American "super-bases," the still-under-construction al-Asad Airbase ("Football and pizza point to US staying for long haul"). He observes, of "the biggest Marine camp in western Anbar province," that "this stretch of desert increasingly resembles a slice of U.S. suburbia." In addition to the requisite Subway and pizza outlets, there is a football field, a Hertz rent-a-car office, a swimming pool, and a movie theater showing the latest flicks. Al-Asad is so large -- such bases may cover 15 to 20 square miles -- that it has two bus routes and, if not traffic lights, at least red stop signs at all intersections.

There are at least four such "super-bases" in Iraq, none of which have anything to do with "withdrawal" from that country. Quite the contrary, these bases are being constructed as little American islands of eternal order in an anarchic sea. Whatever top administration officials and military commanders say -- and they always deny that we seek "permanent" bases in Iraq -- facts on the ground speak with another voice entirely. These bases practically scream "permanency."

We are planning to stay in Iraq until the last drop of oil is wrung out of the sand.

But what about the permanent bases?

I mean, the ones that the White House denies are going to be permanent but Cheney and the oil barons are counting on to hold onto the oil fields in Iraq while the rest of the country goes up in flames?

Georgie is counting on them to save the day.

Why it won't work by "ANKOSS:

1. US logistics in Iraq depend on the road network. The bulk of US supplies are trucked in over long roads from ports in Kuwait. Without active patrolling to secure the road network, the bases will be cut off from food, fuel, and ammunition. The US does not have enough tactical airlift capacity to supply a dozen large bases in Iraq in a hostile environment.

2. US bases in Iraq are big targets for mortars and rockets. As the insurgents improve their organization and training, their use of long-range weapons will grow more effective. If Iran or the Saudis supply insurgents with modern multiple-launch rockets, insurgents will be able to mount devastating strikes against US bases. Even inaccurate bombardment of US bases will impose a heavy psychological burden on US troops serving there.

3. The oil infrastructure of Iraq cannot be protected by US troops hunkered down in heavily defended bases. Oil facilities are fragile and easily damaged by hit-and-run attacks. Without active patrolling of hundreds of miles of pipelines and thousands of key oil facilities, the US forces will be helpless to perform their key mission: guarding "our" oil.

4. US bases cannot be concealed from the Iraqis. No matter how much the US forces isolate themselves from Iraqi society, the people of Iraq will view the presence of US troops as a direct challenge to their sovereignty. No Iraqi politician will be able to support the long-term presence of US forces in Iraq.

These significant obstacles to maintaining permanent US bases in Iraq, which even a school child could grasp, seem to evade the understanding of our incompetent President. Let us hope that the new Congress can compel him to end the Iraq debacle before many more young Americans die for nothing in Iraq."