The Neocon Threat to American Freedom

Paul Craig Roberts
Counterpunch
Wednesday June 13, 2007

The Bush/Cheney White House, which told the American people in 2003 that the Iraqi invasion would be a three to six week affair, now tells us that the US occupation is permanent. Forever.

Attentive Americans of which, alas, there are so few, had already concluded that the occupation was permanent. Permanence is the obvious message from the massive and fortified US embassy under construction in Iraq and from the large permanent military bases that the Bush regime is building in Iraq.

Bush regime propagandists have created a false analogy with "the Korean model" in their effort to sell the permanent occupation of Iraq as necessary for Iraq's security. More than one half century after the close of the Korean war, US troops continue to be based in Korea, as they are in Germany more than six decades after the end of World War II.

The rationale for the US troops in S. Korea is to remind N. Korea that an attack on S. Korea is an attack on the US itself. The rationale for US troops in Germany disappeared when Reagan and Gorbachev brought the cold war to an end.