I was reviewing the spotty coverage of Turkey's excursion into Northern Iraq and something caught my eye. These events, of course, follow the formal hand over of sovereignty, oops, I mean security operations in the North of the country to the Kurdish Regional Government. But as I was reviewing the reports of the hand-over this quote from U.S. Air Force Maj. Gen. Kurt A. Cichowski jumped out at me:
“It is important to understand that Coalition forces will always be here to support the Government of Iraq,”
Excuse me? Did he really just say "Coalition forces will always be here"? ALWAYS as in forever and ever?
Sure it's possible that the U.S. Air Force Maj. Gen., deputy chief of staff, strategy, plans and assessment for MNF-I simply misspoke. That sounds like a position held by people that fly off and say crazy, unsupported things.
Or did he actually just speak plainly about the Bush administration's plans to put permanent bases in Iraq and staff them with 100K for the foreseeable future as has been reported? Do the references the administration has been floating about South Korea seem obvious now? The permanent military presence in Iraq has always been the long term goal - or at least one of the long term goals - of the invasion. Bush's dogged pursuit of "the course" in Iraq actually makes some sense if you see it as the first step in a large plan of a permanent Middle East military force. Sure Step 1 has taken longer then first thought but Step 2 - Iran is right around the corner.
But, in reality I'm sure Maj. Gen. Kurt A. Cichowski was exaggerating. When he said "always be here" he really meant "until the oil runs out" and that's hardly forever, right?
=Hiredman
The complete article about the hand over is here:
http://www.mnf-iraq.com/...