{"id":199551,"date":"2007-07-16T21:22:00","date_gmt":"2007-07-17T02:22:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2007\/07\/16\/indications-of-a-permanent-presence-of-us-troops-in-iraq\/"},"modified":"2007-07-16T21:22:00","modified_gmt":"2007-07-17T02:22:00","slug":"indications-of-a-permanent-presence-of-us-troops-in-iraq","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2007\/07\/16\/indications-of-a-permanent-presence-of-us-troops-in-iraq\/","title":{"rendered":"Indications of a PERMANENT Presence of US Troops in Iraq"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This article makes it very clear that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.militarytimes.com\/news\/2007\/07\/ap_airforceiraq_070714\/\">the United States plans to <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\"><span style=\"font-variant: small-caps;\">never<\/span><\/span> leave Iraq<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The facilities involved are extensive, expensive, and permanent.<\/p>\n<blockquote style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 153);\"><p>Inside spacious, air-conditioned \u201cKingpin,\u201d a new air traffic control center at this huge Air Force hub 50 miles north of Baghdad&#8230;&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019re the busiest aerial port in DoD,\u201d&#8230;..<\/p>\n<p>Early this year, with little fanfare, the Air Force sent a squadron of A-10 \u201cWarthog\u201d attack planes \u2014 a dozen or more aircraft \u2014 to be based at Al-Asad Air Base in western Iraq. At the same time it added a squadron of F-16C Fighting Falcons here at Balad&#8230;&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Those big bombers were moved last year from distant Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean to an undisclosed base in the Persian Gulf&#8230;..<\/p>\n<p>The weaker of Balad\u2019s two 11,000-foot runways was reinforced \u2014 for five to seven years\u2019 more hard use. The engineers next will build concrete \u201coverruns\u201d at the runways\u2019 ends. Balad\u2019s strategic ramp, the concrete parking lot for its biggest planes, was expanded last fall. The air traffic control system is to be upgraded again with the latest technology.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>This folly is going to kill a lot of US troops.  It fuels the insurgency.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This article makes it very clear that the United States plans to never leave Iraq. The facilities involved are extensive, expensive, and permanent. Inside spacious, air-conditioned \u201cKingpin,\u201d a new air traffic control center at this huge Air Force hub 50 miles north of Baghdad&#8230;&#8230; \u201cWe\u2019re the busiest aerial port in DoD,\u201d&#8230;.. Early this year, with &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1007,1063,1006],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-199551","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aviation","category-iraq","category-military"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199551"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=199551"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199551\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=199551"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=199551"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=199551"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}