Bush's Word Games on Permanent Bases

WASHINGTON, Jun 12 -- Two key pledges made by the George W. Bush administration on military bases in its negotiations with the government of Iraq have now been revealed as carefully-worded ruses aimed at concealing U.S. negotiating aims from both U.S. citizens and Iraqis who would object to them if they were made clear.

Recent statements by Iraqis familiar with U.S. demands in negotiations on the U.S.-Iraq "strategic framework" agreement have highlighted the fact that administration promises that it would not seek "permanent bases" or the use of bases to attack Iran or any other neighboring countries were deliberately misleading. The wording used by the Bush administration appears to have been chosen to obscure its intention to have both long-term access to Iraqi bases and complete freedom to use them to launch operations against Iran and Syria.

When Defense Secretary Robert Gates first informed the public about U.S. aims in negotiating January 24, he renounced the aim of "permanent bases" in Iraq. Gates said the U.S.-Iraq agreement "would not involve -- we have no interest in permanent bases". The same day, State Department spokesman Tom Casey, asked if the agreement would include any reference to "permanent bases", replied, "We're not seeking permanent bases in Iraq. That's been a clear matter of policy for some time."

Casey went on to say, "No, the agreement is not a basing agreement."

In Congressional testimony April 8, Ambassador Ryan Crocker said the agreements "will not establish permanent bases in Iraq and we anticipate that it will expressly foreswear them."

These public reassurances, moreover, mirrored the actual language used in the U.S. draft of the agreement given to the Iraqi negotiators. A draft dated Mar. 8, which was leaked to The Guardian's Seumas Milne and reported April 8, includes the statement that the United States "does not desire permanent bases or a permanent military presence in Iraq".

That commitment, which seems definitive at first glance, actually incorporates deliberate ambiguity on at least two different levels. The term "permanent military base" appears to represent a substantive legal term, but in fact is a completely misleading term.

When Democratic Sen. James Webb asked the State Department's David Satterfield, "What is a permanent base?" Satterfield tried to avoid answering the question. But Assistant Defense Secretary Mary Beth Long was more responsive. She said, "I have looked into this. As far as the department is concerned, we don't have a worldwide or even a department-wide definition of permanent bases."

Webb then observed, "It doesn't really mean anything," to which Long replied, "Yes, senator, you're right. It doesn't." She added that "most lawyers… would say that the word 'permanent' probably refers more to the state of mind contemplated by the use of the term".

Iraqi officials quickly figured out that the real significance of the draft's wording on access to military bases was that it contained neither a time limit on access to Iraqi bases nor any restrictions on the U.S. to "conduct military operations in Iraq and to detain individuals when necessary for imperative reasons of security".

Authorization for such operations was called "temporary", but the absence of any time limit makes that seemingly reassuring term meaningless as well.

The Bush administration's renunciation of "permanent bases" was a ploy to lull the key committees of the U.S. Congress on an issue which had aroused many Democratic critics of the war, who had repeatedly used that term in demanding a legal commitment on the issue.

The administration also used such ambiguous language to help the Iraqi government sell the agreement to Iraqi nationalists who object to long-term U.S. bases in their country. Thus as early as last December, Iraqi National Security Adviser Mowaffaq al-Rubayi declared in a television interview, "The Iraqi people reject the presence of permanent bases in Iraq" and reassured Iraqis that the government would not accept such bases "in any form whatever and will not approve, and I believe the Council of Representatives will not approve it."