Actually I was nice to you. I didn't call you a true believer but pointed out to you that were sounding like one, in case you wondered...you as in how most people don't have an outside view of themselves...now on to the issues:
(1) There is no indication that we would have turned over our "enduring" (boy that word sounds so sweet, no?) camps to Iraqis.
(2) The whole nature and construction of those camps suggests permanence.
(3) Despite many calls for clarity, the Bush administration has repeatedly refused to say if US troops will ever fully leave Iraq. It is really a simple matter for Bush to set out the conditions under which US troops (all of them) would leave Iraq.
(4) Neocons are on the record (here and outside) to say that one of the reasons for invasion of Iraq was to move US bases out of Saudi and into Iraq, thereby reducing some of the tensions with the public/Islamist-groups...this does not suggest the Iraqi bases were to be temporary.
(5) Another reason stated for the invasion of Iraq (of course not publicly by the admin, but by its supporters) was that from Iraq US could project power to Iran, Syria, and the whole of the middle East. Again the implication is that US troops would not be leaving Iraq any time soon (perhaps not even within the life of my kids). And again, the admin never refuted such comments or tried to calm fears by saying it wasn't so.
All in all, you no evidence to reasonably assure the public here or in Iraq that all US troops would leave that country alone if it was stable, hence my pointing out that you sounded like a true believer, i.e. a person who would close her eyes to evidence to the country and grab at supporting straws, no matter how weightless.
As to other US bases around the globe, US has over 700 of them. Even assuming Germans and Japanese wanted them in their countries (which is not true), how do you explain the rest of them? That the entire world is so pro-US they greet our military boots with flowers and sweets wherever we go? The Soviet Union collapsed nearly 15 years ago. I don't recall hearing the conservatives for reducing our military footprint. Quite to the contrary, they hated Clinton for wanting to do so.
And lest we forget, we live in a very dynamic world. The US government is fully capable of sowing chaos so as to justify its military bases in foreign lands...what is the justification that we are still in Saudi? How likely was Saddam to invade Saudi after 1991?
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