The Long War

Airman in MSNBC story: ``I think we’ll be here forever''


Balad air base, 44 miles north of Baghdad, Iraq: 2 million cubic feet of concrete in ``a mile-long slab that’s now the home of up to 120 U.S. helicopters''.

Now the president confirms at the Tuesday press conference:

REPORTER: Will there come a day, and I’m not asking you when — I’m not asking for a timetable — will there come a day when there will be no more American forces in Iraq?

BUSH: That, of course, is an objective, and that will be decided by future presidents and future governments of Iraq.

According to the cited story, the US base-building budget for Iraq is $1 billion. At Balad, the two 12,000-ft runways already installed have become ``the logistics hub for all U.S. military operations in Iraq, and major upgrades began last year.''

Strange, the frenetic base-building in which the US is engaged is not given by the president as ``a concrete example of progress in Iraq.''