US bases in Iraq: a costly legacy

That concern may be why military officials dodge the issue of permanent American bases in Iraq.

In any case, some US bases are huge. Camp Anaconda, near Balad (north of Baghdad), occupies 15 square miles, boasts two swimming pools, a gym, a miniature-golf course, and a first-run movie theater, says Mr. Jamail. Of the airbase's 20,000 occupants, fewer than 1,000 ever leave it and thereby take extra risk of attack.

Experts and academics offer various strategic reasons for the bases. Zoltan Grossman, a geographer at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wash., notes that since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 the US has established a string of 35 new bases between Poland and Pakistan, not including the Iraqi bases. He maintains the US is establishing a "sphere of influence" in that region.

"It's very dangerous," he argues. It invites attacks on the bases and risks pulling the US into the ethnic and religious conflicts of the area. It also could result in "blow back" to the US, just as American bases in Saudi Arabia motivated in part the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Another theory, put forward by Joseph Gerson, author of a book on US bases worldwide and director of an American Friends Service Committee program on peace, is that the war and bases aim at maintaining US control over the Middle East with its massive oil resources.

The US has placed 400,000 personnel in bases around the world, he says.

Stationing military forces abroad can be more expensive than keeping them at home. The cost to keep bases in Iraq open would be "a few billions" a year, suggests Mr. Pike.

The extra costs could include rotating forces home, combat pay, and separation allowances for military families, as well as fuel for planes, tanks, etc.

So far, the Iraq war has cost the US $280 billion.

Pike suspects the US will find "all kinds of reasons" for not leaving Iraq. For instance, the US has been training Iraqi combat units, but not support units. The Iraqis rely on being resupplied by the US and its allies. The Iraqi military has no combat planes and only a couple of dozen tanks. Iraq, says Pike, is a US "protectorate." It hasn't yet built "a real army."

Or the US could argue that, as an occupying power, it has an obligation to see it leaves behind a stable government. That could take years. Or the US could say that its troops must stay to prevent a bloody civil war.

Besides, today's US peace movement is "completely pathetic," Pike says, and thus unlikely to compel a quick exodus.

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