Shooter242 claims the changing Bush position on permanent bases in Iraq is legitimate policy change.

BTW, folks, this is not unique to Bush.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/JF14Ak01.html

When Defense Secretary Robert Gates first informed the public about US aims in negotiating on January 24, he renounced the aim of "permanent bases" in Iraq. Gates said the US-Iraq agreement "would not involve - we have no interest in permanent bases". The same day, State Department spokesman Tom Casey, asked if the agreement would include any reference to "permanent bases", replied, "We're not seeking permanent bases in Iraq. That's been a clear matter of policy for some time."

Casey went on to say, "No, the agreement is not a basing agreement."

In congressional testimony on April 8, US ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker said the agreements "will not establish permanent bases in Iraq and we anticipate that it will expressly foreswear them".

These public reassurances, moreover, mirrored the actual language used in the US draft of the agreement given to the Iraqi negotiators. A draft dated March 8, which was leaked to The Guardian's Seumas Milne and reported on April 8, includes the statement that the US "does not desire permanent bases or a permanent military presence in Iraq".

That commitment, which seems definitive at first glance, actually incorporates deliberate ambiguity on at least two different levels. The term "permanent military base" appears to represent a substantive legal term, but it is in fact is a completely misleading term.

When Democratic Senator James Webb asked the State Department's David Satterfield, "What is a permanent base?" Satterfield tried to avoid answering the question. But assistant defense secretary Mary Beth Long was more responsive. She said, "I have looked into this. As far as the department is concerned, we don't have a worldwide or even a department-wide definition of permanent bases."

Webb then observed, "It doesn't really mean anything," to which Long replied, "Yes, senator, you're right. It doesn't." She added that "most lawyers ... would say that the word 'permanent' probably refers more to the state of mind contemplated by the use of the term".

Iraqi officials quickly figured out that the real significance of the draft's wording on access to military bases was that it contained neither a time limit on access to Iraqi bases nor any restrictions on the US to "conduct military operations in Iraq and to detain individuals when necessary for imperative reasons of security".

Authorization for such operations was called "temporary", but the absence of any time limit makes that seemingly reassuring term meaningless as well.

The Bush administration's renunciation of "permanent bases" was a ploy to lull the key committees of the US Congress on an issue that had aroused many Democratic critics of the war, who had repeatedly used that term in demanding a legal commitment on the issue.

The administration also used such ambiguous language to help the Iraqi government sell the agreement to Iraqi nationalists who object to long-term US bases in their country. Thus as early as last December, Iraqi National Security adviser Mowaffaq al-Rubayi declared in a television interview, "The Iraqi people reject the presence of permanent bases in Iraq" and reassured Iraqis that the government would not accept such bases "in any form whatever and will not approve, and I believe the Council of Representatives will not approve it".

As Iraqi sources have now revealed to Western reporters, however, the US has proposed access to dozens of military bases without a time limit that would be technically Iraqi bases but which would actually be fully under US control.

The ploy of turning over legal control of US bases to a client regime is one that US administrations have used on at least two previous occasions to get around legal and political problems associated with continuation of US base rights.

In the 1973 Paris peace agreement that ended the Vietnam War, the US pledged to dismantle all of its military bases in South Vietnam within 60 days. But it had already secretly transferred the deeds to the bases and equipment to the South Vietnamese government and then had them "loaned back" to the United States. US officials then claimed that there were no US bases to dismantle.

Because of nationalist opposition to US military bases in the Philippines, the US gave nominal "sovereignty" over the bases to the Philippines in 1978 and put a Philippine officer in nominal command of each base, while insisting on US "effective command and control" as well as "unhampered military operations".

http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5izKZq1GWbhgVxwahs2y-GF2atQKw

Bush pledges no permanent bases in Iraq

Feb 10, 2008

WASHINGTON (AFP) — President George W. Bush acknowledged the United States would seek a military presence in Iraq for "years" but pledged in an interview aired Sunday that he would not establish permanent bases.

Bush brushed aside concerns expressed by critics that a Status of Forces Agreement Washington is discussing with the Baghdad goverment would commit future US presidents to a long-term deployment in Iraq.

"We won't have permanent bases," Bush told Fox New television in the interview conducted at his retreat at Camp David, Maryland.

But he added, "I do believe it is in our interests and the interests of the Iraqi people that we do enter into an agreement on how we are going to conduct ourselves over the next years."

Gates:

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/06/10/iraq.next.president/index.html

And he reiterated what other officials have said: "We have no desire for permanent bases in Iraq."

Asked what would be considered a permanent base, Gates, speaking at Peterson Air Force Base, joked, "This is a permanent base."

Asked about U.S. installations in Korea and Germany, he said, "I think you would have to look at them as permanent bases. They've been there for 50 years; they are U.S. facilities in the sense that they are U.S. only in many instances. That's not what we have in mind" in Iraq.