The president says so many stupid things about Iraq that it’s sort of hard to know which ones to focus on. But in purely political terms if no others I would think the president’s critics would want to focus in on what the White House said about how long the president thinks US troops should stay in Iraq.
By saying that Korea is the model for the US military presence in Iraq, the president is saying that he envisions the US military presence in Iraq continuing for many decades into the future.
Or let’s put that in more stark terms, for most of you reading this post, the president envisions US troops remaining in Iraq long after you’re dead.
Talking about drawdowns in late 2007 or by the end of 2008 is basically a joke, in other words. Countries can really only think on forty or fifty year horizons. So what this means is that the US military presence in Iraq is permanent.
As TPM Reader DS made clear in the email we posted earlier, there’s only one goal that makes sense of that strategy. And that is to permanently dominate the cluster of oil fields in southern Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Iran. Nothing to do with democracy, as though that needed saying. But also nothing to do with terrorism. We’re permanently occupying Iraq to lock down the world oil supply.
But all that is commentary. The headline is clear enough to get the message out: the president wants US troops in Iraq for decades to come.
