Ex-president doubts U-S military will ever leave Iraq (Jimmy Carter)

Someone should look into what Carlyle's buying up offshore.

And from the looks of things, they've even managed to fuck THAT little thing up (RE: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x1971397 )

Yep, they're gonna be stumbling around the desert for years.

They are waiting for elections so we can retreat just enough to placate the folks back home, but still enough of a presence to insure that our "boy" will be there to turn the spigots on.

Excellent piece on NPR last night, former ambassador Galbraith (sp?) stating that Iraq is moving to the type of splintering that Yugoslavia experienced. It is a manufactured country with no unity other than that created by a brutal dictator. Absent that, sectarian and regional differences will keep "unity" from ever being achieved. The Kurds, Sunnis and Shiites have nothing in common to bring them together to form a lasting stable central government of any consequence.

The robber barons are making too much money from the Iraq war. That's why they invaded Iraq - war profiteering. They won't give up their ill-gotten prize easily. It's like a goose that lays golden eggs for Halliburton, KBR, etc.

We will have to pry the Iraq war from the robber barons' cold dead hands.

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and they were supposed to stay there for six weeks.

Roughly half that number are there today.

I'd say he's pretty safe w/ that prediction.

Gyre

we'll get our asses out of there at some point. I know what Carter is trying to say, here. Meaning = don't believe the vultures in the white House. They don't want to leave.

But they didn't want to leave VietNam, either. Lots of generals thought that war could be won, "If we would just hang in there a little bit longer. The key word there is 'hang'.

We will eventually leave Iraq. Not next year, though, like the Liars are promising. I would say about 5 years from now, if we're not completely a 3rd world country by then.

The Iraqis are willing to die for us to get out. Our country is going broke. None of the money spent has been from current funds. It's all borrowed from the future. It was lent by foreign countries.

The Bush administration has not been able to accomplish what it set out to do. I'm not sure if the 14 bases have been completed, but what about guarding them?

:bounce:

The war is not meant to be won. The war is meant to be continuous.

You can be sure that it will be "just over the horizon" & "on station, just off shore" for decades to come. How else can a "client state" be kept from straying too far.

and always was.

Former President Jimmy Carter said he doubts whether the U.S. military will ever completely pull out of Iraq.

Carter's comments came Tuesday during a brief visit at the U.S. Military Academy where he signed copies of his newest book for West Point cadets. The former president said he believes America will have a major military presence in Iraq for decades to come.

"There has never been a single declaration among the higher levels of government now that we ever intend to withdraw completely our military forces from Iraq," Carter told reporters, according to The Times Herald-Record.

"My belief, and it may be erroneous ... is that the top leadership in this country intends 20 years from now, 50 years from now, we'll still have a major military presence in Iraq."



http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/N/NA_GEN_US_IRAQ_CARTER_GAOL-?SITE=VARIT&SECTION=US&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2005-12-07-12-40-09

But I agree with him that the US has no *intention* of leaving right now.

brutality and murder, but they will be there. The good ol' usa. and the western civilization in general has quite a history of this sort of thing, particularly when something like oil is involved.

Fifty years at least!

Jimmy Carter studied the area long and hard, and eventually lost the 1980 election because of back-room deals between Reagan and the Ayatollah Khomeini.

A major Iranian incursion into Iraq before the end of Bush's failed presidency will lead to an increase, not a decrease, in the American military presence there. At that point, we will be far more compelled to stay, since if Iraq becomes an Iranian satellite, it will become a major economic and humanitarian disaster -- bodies piled in heaps on streetcorners, huge financial boons for terror organizations, and worst of all for the Bushistas, no oil from that area.

Then, shortly thereafter, revolutions in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and several of the other "Stans" ("stan" as a suffix comes from a word meaning "home" or "nest") will lead toward a consolidated militant "Islamoid" doppelganger of the USA with a population of potentially 1.5 billion by 2015.

I think that's why the Bushistas are so intent on Iraq. The problem is that they've screwed the pooch, screwed each of the countries (the USA and Iraq), and have probably screwed the world for the next 50 years.

Of course, I could be wrong about all this. Ideas?

--p!

In so many ways.

See my rueful epigram on "screwing" toward the end of the post. It's not just a clever turn of phrase, I fear.

Iraq may be the pit which fells the American Empire in it's heedless run. And how we became an empire, anyway, is a travesty in itself.

--p!

Few people ever ascend to the heights of power with the decency that this man has.

He was an accident of history, but one of the greatests boons to humanity ever. His exemplary life and service is one of the few glimmers of hope in the last few decades.

We're there for oil, sustaining Israel and hegemony.

Idiotic non-Republicans may hope for or predict some kind of "exit strategy", but the very concept is silly.

We're not leaving. PR stunts may make it seem so, but we're not. We're just not.

If things remain basically the same then it would seem likely we will maintain military presence in order to secure our corporate interests and profit on the natural resources of the area we occupy...
BUT--
This is an age of unpredictable catastrophic events--anything from 911 to Katrina -
we can't even take care of our own much less maintain an occupation...
Stretching thinner and thinner and thinner--just a few more straws and break the camel's back.

And God forbid this current administration tries invading the second oil territory known as IRAN--We will be history.