The US takes to the Shadows in Iraq

Asia Times ^ | July 11, 2009 | Michael Schwartz

[nickcarraway]

Here's how reporters Steven Lee Myers and Marc Santora of the New York Times described the highly touted American withdrawal from Iraq's cities last week:

Much of the complicated work of dismantling and removing millions of dollars of equipment from the combat outposts in the city has been done during the dark of night. General Ray Odierno, the overall American commander in Iraq, has ordered that an increasing number of basic operations - transport and re-supply convoys, for example - take place at night, when fewer Iraqis are likely to see that the American withdrawal is not total. Acting in the dark of night, in fact, seems to catch the nature of

American plans for Iraq in a particularly striking way. Last week, despite the death of Michael Jackson, Iraq made it back into the TV news as Iraqis celebrated a highly publicized American military withdrawal from their cities. Fireworks went off; some Iraqis gathered to dance and cheer; the first military parade since Saddam Hussein's day took place (in the fortified Green Zone, the country's ordinary streets still being too dangerous for such things); the US handed back many small bases and outposts; and Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki proclaimed a national holiday - "sovereignty day", he called it.

All of this fit with a script promisingly laid out by President Barack Obama in his 2008 presidential campaign. More recently, in his much-praised speech to the students of Egypt's Cairo University, he promised that the US would keep no bases in Iraq, and would indeed withdraw its military forces from the country by the end of 2011.

[Yossarian]

From the end of this article ("about the author"):

A professor of sociology at Stony Brook State University, Michael Schwartz is the author of War Without End: The Iraq War in Context (Haymarket Books), which explains how the militarized geopolitics of oil led the US to dismantle the Iraqi state and economy while fueling a sectarian civil war. Schwartz's work on Iraq has appeared in numerous academic and popular outlets. He is a regular at TomDispatch.com. An audio interview with him on the situation in Iraq is available by clicking here.) His email address is ms42@optonline.net.

While I don't deny that we're still operating in Iraq, under a different public posture, let's not ignore the fact that this author is hardly unbiased. Particularly when he calls us a colonial power out to take advantage of Iraqis.

[DGHoodini]

The lying liberal ass bag doesn’t mention that the daytime tempuratures are in the hundreds, and that much of Iraqi social and business life happens during the night time hours, so why wouldn’t US use the cooler temps to move their equipment? NOOOO! This lying assbag pervert traitor had to describe it like we are “slinking out while the Iraqis sleep! HAH! What a lying little LefTard ass rat this propagandist is with his worthless lies.

[married21]

My brother is back in Iraq after a brief vacation which started before the withdrawal date. (He is a consultant for engineering and business development for the State Department.) He happened to mention that he is glad to see the end of the convoys, because local traffic remains tied up for an hour after they have gone by. If they are now doing convoys at night, perhaps it is also helping daytime traffic flow.

BTW, he has had good relations with Iraqi business and government people and is confident that investment money will come, business is re-starting, and the country can get back on its feet, and prosper, in the long run.