The Permanent Bases Question

I highly recommend the latest issue of the American Prospect for its excellent investigative article by Spencer Ackerman exposing the U.S. military's plans -- or non-planned plans as it turns out -- to build permanent bases in Iraq.

In the 2004 presidential debate, Democratic candidate John Kerry pressed President Bush to disavow the notion the government had plans to build permanent bases. The president never responded directly, and the press never followed up. (I'm proud of the fact that I saw this as the major news event coming out of that debate, which no one in the press reported the next day.)

Ackerman interviewed former State Department aide Larry Diamond, who is a card-carrying member of the conservative Hoover Institution and a former Stanford colleague of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. She brought him into the administration as an adviser to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad, yet ignored his memos "implor(ing) the administration to renounce any long-term presence in Iraq."

In Ackerman's story, Diamond wondered:

It baffles me. Why is the White House press corps not confronting the president, saying, 'Mr. President, are we seeking permanent military bases in Iraq or not, and if not, why not take the issue off the table?' It's appalling. It's no less a scandal that the press has failed to pin the administration down on this, and the administration has failed to come clean to the American people as we bleed and die there."

Given that the permanent presence of foreign troops on Arab soil is one of the main issues goading terrorists into action, you'd think the press would demand that the administration provide an answer. You'd think Congress would hold hearings. You'd think the military brass would raise questions. But none has, and the military has simply stumbled along, building the permanent bases without, if we're to believe Ackerman's reporting, specific authorization from the White House or the Pentagon. They're still in what President Nixon's men used to call "plausible deniability" mode.

It has often been said that the genius of the American political system can be found in the system of checks and balances created by the nation's founders. Alas, when no one checks, there is no balance and the nation teeters perilously off course.