'America will never leave Iraq', US soldier says
Date: Sunday, July 31 2005
Topic: Real Life articles

By Colm Kelpie United Kingdom

http://www.greatreporter.com/modules...rticle&sid=439

A US soldier holidaying in Ireland speaks candidly about the war in
Iraq and says bases his country are building there are permanent...

Patrick Lackatt, 20, sits on the bar stool, a glass of whisky in his
hand, his foot tapping to the beat of the band.

He is not what you would expect of an average soldier. He is thinly
built, small, even sickly-looking.

Wearing a worn black leather jacket, polo shirt and khakis, he looks
more like a struggling student than a United States Army Reserve
Medic.

He and his brother, Chris, 20, from St Louis, Missouri, are on holiday
here in Galway.

"I don't agree with Iraq," Patrick admits.

"I agreed with Afghanistan. We were fighting Al Qaeda there, but not in Iraq."

Patrick's opinions are an example of the new mentality among many
members of the US military towards the conflict in Iraq.

More and more soldiers, some once ardent supporters of the invasion,
duped by the false claims by the US Administration about weapons of
mass destruction and the links between Saddam's regime and Al Qaeda,
are now growing increasingly sceptical of American military presence
in the Gulf state.

"America is never going to leave Iraq," he claims. "We're building
permanent bases out there now."

Patrick joined the military when he was 17, straight out of high school.

Instead of joining up voluntarily like may of his peers, his father -
a long-serving commanding officer in the US Army - volunteered him.

Both out of a sense of patriotism, and of duty to his family where
there is a long tradition of military service, he decided to oblige,
although he really had little choice.

And so began a five-year service with the United States Army Reserve.

Patrick never expected to see war.

He has currently served a total of 13 months in Iraq, where he was
based 30 miles north of Baghdad.

With two years left of his five year required duty obligation, he
expects to have to return.

"In Iraq, it [the war] is all about money," he says.

"But I don't question it, because it's out of my hands. There's no
point. It's my job to fight and serve, and that's what I'll do."

Patrick appears uncomfortable, understandably perhaps, when speaking
about his experiences in the Middle East.

"When a guy gets his head blown off, it's his best friends' job to
carry him away," he says.

"You see things out there a lot of people can't handle," he adds,
although he seems reluctant to elaborate.

It's just over two years now since the invasion of Iraq. So, are the
inhabitants, once oppressed under the despotic regime of Saddam
Hussein, actually any better off?

Patrick seems unsure.

"The Iraqis don't want us there. They see us killing their brothers,
sons and children, and that makes them resent us," he says.

"Even though we brought them freedom from the Iraqi regime, they still hate us."

Prostitution, he tells me, once illegal before the American
occupation, is now rife in Iraq, and hundreds of girls throughout the
country are being sold into the seedy world of brothels and sex
slavery.

"For one dollar you can get a prostitute in Iraq for one hour," Patrick says.

"For $10 you can get a room, wash her up and do the business," he adds.

He grins and shrugs his shoulders when asked whether this constitutes
freedom, adding he has little time for the man who claims that from
time to time as the reason Americans are still being sent there.

"I don't like Bush. He has three things on his mind - oil, money and
daddy's war," he says. Patrick is equally damning about John Kerry.

"Kerry is a bad man. He was all for Iraq before it went sour. I voted
for him, but only because he wasn't George Bush. He was the best of a
bad lot."

For all his supposed anti-war views, there is an irrationality about
Patrick's beliefs.

In one instance, he believes America shouldn't be in Iraq, that the
information conjured up about Al Qaeda and terrorists were all lies.

But, he still believes it is America's role to free suffering people
from tyranny, and this, he feels, for better or worse, is what they
did in the Middle East.

"I don't like Middle Eastern people," he adds curtly, "but I believe
in their right to freedom."

Despite his anti-Bush sentiments, he is prone to using many of Bush's
catchphrases.

Throughout our conversation, Patrick frequently uses the word
'freedom' when talking about the war.

His dislike of people from the Middle East is another example of his
irrationality.

"In America they [Middle Eastern people] own gas stations and they
always refuse to take federal military ID," he says.

Patrick was due to return to Missouri the morning after we met.

He will divide his time at home between his job, at a clinic working
with mental health patients, and at community college, awaiting his
call to return to Iraq.

What will he do when his service obligation is fulfilled?

"I'm not sure yet," Patrick says. "I either want to continue doing
something in the medical world, or maybe get involved with
anti-terrorism work and go into the FBI or CIA."

Patrick Lackatt is a mass of contradictions. Against the war in the
Gulf, but all for the idea of invading a country to spread 'freedom':
anti-Bush, but prone to using much of the President's parlance.

As one Irish journalist noted about the United States: "Truly,
America's irrational streak runs deep."

Even the author of the piece says the guy is irrational.

Do you really take this guy's opinion as evidence of the Pentagon's plans for the area? Do you really think this guy -- a corporal or specialist maybe -- has access to planning at Central Command?

What bothered me most was the new found freedom of sexual slavery. Sex slavery is rampant in Europe... so nice to see America spreading that value further east.

I don't doubt that prostitution is still illegal, and I don't doubt that there were prostitutes in Iraq before the war.

Are you just opening up the debate, or are you really that naive about our Administration and this war?

Obviously this guy is not deaf or blind. U.S. soldiers in Iraq don't need a memo from the Pentagon to tell them what's going on; they are in the midst of it.

It shouldn't be a surprise that the U.S. presumably plans to keep a long-term/permanent military presence in Iraq, when American corporations are in the process of establishing a foothold in their economy. Sure, the Iraqis are strengthening their armies to protect themselves, but guess who is going to protect OUR interests?

__________________
Freixenet, Moët. Doesn’t really matter, as long as it’s not Great Western. -- Henri David

Nice....now instead of just Russian strippers in Vegas we'll have some hot Iraqi girls next time I go...

America....were gonna make you like Walmart or else!

In what way am I naive? Because it was all about the oil and nothing else? If that's true, why didn't Bush just cut a deal with Saddam to lift the sanctions in exchange for some preferential treatment for U.S. oil companies?

If it's just about the oil, how do you explain what happened in Uzbekistan?



The quote about the headline, "America will never leave Iraq," doesn't even occur in the story. The story doesn't say whether the soldier is infantry or even whether he's directly experienced the situation he described.

The soldier's only acknowledged expertise is on the ins and outs of Iraqi prostitution.

I don't consider a poorly written article about a somewhat muddle-headed soldier a good source of information about anything.

Interesting article. Of course we will never "leave" Iraq - at least in the sense that soldier in the story means it - US bases now being set-up are by design intended to be permanant fixtures. That was the whole point of the war.

Al Queda's original intent, you may recall, was to drive the US miliatary from Saudi Arabia, where they felt our troops were a desecration to the land of Mecca. The war in Iraq, Palestinians - they are johnny come latelys to these causes and only take them up in a bid for wider popularity in the streets on the Muslim world. in this regard, actually, Al Queda can sort of claim to be "winning" the "War on Terror" - we have permanantly and decisively decamped from Saudi Arabia. A major component of the idea of invading Iraq strategically was to esatablish a new location for permanant strategic bases in Persian Gulf. The neo-cons who were the wars strongest advocates said this from the get-go. Freedom, shmeedom - we toppled Saddam to establish a permanant strategic pressence near their oil fields. No ifs, no buts, no maybes.

One of the most interesting questions about Iraq long-term is the degree to which our paying lip-service to "democracy" in Iraq is going to come into direct confrontation between the US's strategic aims in invading and the desire of the Shia majority to allign their newly democratic state with Iran - the country they are most likely to be alligned with culturally, ethnically, and spiritually. They haven't finished the constitution and already this rift is the elephant in the corner, ripping at the seams of the document they are trying to stitch together.

Make no mistake, the Bush administration does want to set up a miliatary-advisor client state along the lines of El Salvador in the '80s ASAP in order to draw down the political vulnerability of so many American soldiers dying on the front lines. One of the Bush administrations biggest problems so far has been the degree to which they bought into their own "liberation" propaganda, causing them to severely underestimate the degree to which the insurgency is likely to remain a part of the daily reality of life Iraq for the next 30 years (at the very least). But nonetheless, airbases, highly mobilized US strike forces and lots and lots of miliatary advisors or going to be in Iraq for the rest of our lifetimes. The point is that they will try to reduce the visibility of our soldiers on the street as soon as they think they can without the whole place falling to pieces - not that the US miliatary is ever going to "leave" Iraq - a permanant pressence was the guiding idea of the invasion from Day 1.

Re: prostitution Does this surprise anyone? On nearly a daily basis an Iraqui police or army recruiting station is bombed killing 30, 40, 60 Iraqui's at a go. Family members of these recruits are frequently targeted by the insurgents. Yet Iraqui's still flock to these recruiting centers as soon as the drag away the hull of the car bomb and hose the blood off the street. Why? Because their economy is in shambles. Joining the miliatary or the police is the only game in town. With the police or the miliatary you get a good salary and sometimes the chance to enrich yourself considerably with "freelance" security activities and graft.

Prostitution is the very predictable flipside of the rampant unemployment and instability of the insurgency. I heard a story the other day on the World about politicians in Syria and Jordan making insincere noise about shutting the border to Iraqui refugees in a shallow ploy at "moral indignation" about the flood of Iraqui prostitutes in their country's nightclubs and discoteques. Albanians or former Soviet Republicers may be the bulk of the trade in human exploitation in Western Europe but it should not surprise anyone that Irqui's are the prime nationality in that biz these days from Damascus to Instanbul.

The war in Iraq was never about the short term control of oil (they could easily have struck a deal with Saddam). From the very beginning its been about two things

1. long term desire to have a permanant, strategic influence on the entire Persian Gulf region in an era when Saudi Arabia was becoming an increasingly unfriendly place for our soldiers to be deployed

2. profiteering - "pay-to-play" writ large. On the first war in Iraq Cheney personally (and I mean just him) made I beilieve ~ 3 million dollars in personal profit as a major stockholder in Haliburton. That is going to cloud your perspective about "spreading democracy" - I don't care what anybody says. If you are defense and security contractor on the hand and also the recipient of the "rebuilding the infrastructure" contracts on the other you get to make money hand over fist at both ends. They pay you no-bid contracts to blow the place up and to put it back together. The longer and moredestructive your job is in the first part, the more you serve to make in the second.

The US could easily get the oil with Saddam in power. Its only by taking him out do you get the chance to divy up the contracts of "putting the country back together again". You know "to the victors goes the spoils" only in this case the "victors" are Haliburton and Bechtel, not the citizens of the United States.

Sean,

Please explain recent U.S. actions regarding Karshi-Khanabad in the context of your claim that the war has been about bases and oil profit.

Sure.

For several years, we eagerly turned a blind eye to one of the most insanely self-obsessed cult-of-personality despots this side North Korea, Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan, as an aid to invading Afghanistan. The airbase named Karshi-Khanabad was not only insturmental in delivering aid to the Northern Aliance in driving out the Taliban, but for several years gave us an incredibly strategic airbase for refueling, vis-a-vis, China and Iran as well. We paid handsome rent for the use of the base in a former Soviet Republic both monetarily and in terms of our willingness to look the other way at the abuses of one the world's top 10 worst regimes.

Karmov's regime recently unleashed perhaps the single bloodiest anti-democracy crackdown on protestesters so far in the early 21st century in the Uzbek city of Anidjan. Here's an article from the BBC ->
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4544599.stm

It is important to remember that Karimov's actions were not surprising in anyway but more indicative of his regime from the very beginning of US involvement in Uzbekistan and that it never caused us hesitate one bit from our "friendly relatonship" with him, despite nearly universal human rights condemnation.

Here's a hardly neutral set of quotes but the contrast between the quotes from such a range of sources about Karmov's regimes and the many, many photos of members of the Bush administration warmly greeting the man kind make a point about how far from consistant our support for "democracy" in Central Asia has been so far.
http://www.thememoryhole.org/pol/us-and-uz.htm

Anyway after the incident in the BBC article above, in coordination with the UN, the US facilitated the airlift of ~500 refugees from the crackdown in Andijan. In retaliation, Karimov has demanded we give our Uzbek air base, named Karshi-Khanabad. To put it in so many words in the face of mass executions of largely civilian protesters, including women and children, the US did the right thing and helped airlift out political refugees who faced almost certain death at the hands of the Uzbek and for finally doing the right thing, the US faces losing an extremely strategic airbase.

I'm not sure how this exactly relates to Iraq, Ill, and it definitely underlines the fact that US policy, esp. in the Maulim world, often places strategic convenience over a consistant support for democracy and human rights. So i admit, finally, in the most recent, greivous abuses by the the Uzbek regime, we opted to do the right thing even at the risk of losing the base. The base it should be noted is slightly less important now as Afghanistan bumps along the path towards stability and thereby replaces Uzbekistan our prime ally and strategic base in the region.

2 things.
1. Although I think some intentional mistruths and very serious miliatary oversights led us into a largely misguidead and poorly planned confilct in Iraq, I absolutely do not think the US does the wrong thing all the time, every time. don't put me in that box, thank you very much. I will and do give our credit to our nation for the right things it does on the international stage as well as the morally questionable though politically expedient things it does as well.

2. I think I was extremely explicit in my statement that i do not think we invaded Iraq "for the oil" but for A. strategic purposes and B. because the post-9/11 political climate made it an easier sell - and naumber of prominant members of the administration had highly conflicted monetary interests in pushing for the war. I quite clearly said we did not go to Iraq for the oil.

Ill, reread my post. My strategic analysis of "why invade Iraq" and that of the NeoCon advocates for this war is more or less the same. We just put a different ethical spin on our view of the how well the US actually does inthe execution the "how" on the war in Iraq. However on the "why", we are pretty much in total agreement - they just think the war is a good thing and that the built-in economic incentive for war for certain political prominant contractors is to them a happy incidence of "synergy".