Pat Dollard | Young Americans

The Swamp:

Amb. Ryan Crocker, the U.S. envoy to Iraq, denied a report in the Independent, a British newspaper, that the U.S. was conducting secret negotiations with Iraq for permanent American military bases in Iraq.

Crocker is state side this week to hold meetings with other U.S. officials. Here’s his exchange with reporters at the State Department this morning on the Independent’s report:

REPORTER: The London Independent reports today that there’s sort of a secret plan in the works in terms of this agreement and that you want to have 50 permanent military bases, control of Iraqi airspace, and legal immunity for all American soldiers and contractors. Is this what you’re looking for?

AMB. CROCKER: Well, as a matter of fact, it is not. (Laughter.)

There are just a couple of things that aren’t quite right about that story. First, there aren’t going to be secret provisions, attachments, protocols or whatever. This will be a transparent process. The Iraqi system requires that the agreement go before their Council of Representatives. It will have a full debate. It will all be out there in the open.
Again, it’s a negotiation in progress, so I can’t tell you what it’s going to look like at the end, but I can tell you that we are not seeking permanent military bases in Iraq. That is just flatly untrue.

Nor are we seeking to control Iraqi airspace. That is another kind of injuring myth. Iraq is working hard at developing its air traffic control capacities, and as it does, we’re handing over increasing responsibility to them.

With respect to the other issues, again, we’ve got something like 80 status of forces agreements around the world. They deal with issues like jurisdiction. We expect to approach the jurisdiction issue here just as we have in those other cases.

REPORTER: What about the issue of immunity, though, for contractors? I mean, this has been a big issue, especially with Blackwater and other issues that have emerged.

AMB. CROCKER: Again, this will all be part of the negotiation. That’s in train, and you know, I can’t really give you a SITREP as we go through it.
REPORTER: But is that what you’d like, though? Immunity for contractors?

AMB. CROCKER: Well, again, the question of jurisdiction and immunity is part of any negotiation like this, in 78 other countries and in Iraq.

REPORTER: Can you tell us —

AMB. CROCKER: Sorry. Let me get off the front row here. Yes? (That was Crocker moving on to another questioner.)

That was a very straightforward denial by Crocker. No permanent bases. Hard to be any clearer than that.

Knowing the Bush Administration’s penchant for pre-emptive action, Democrats have suspected that the Bush Administration wanted to pre-empt a new presidential administration, especially if it’s a Democratic one, by forging an agreement that would lock the U.S. into a long-term military agreement with the Iraqi government.

Democrats have insisted that the administration get Congress’s approval for any such agreement. Sen. Hillary Clinton introduced legislation to that effect.

The administration, for its part, has asserted that Congress’s blessing isn’t necessary for what those in the know call a SOFA, a status of forces agreement.

The Independent story, if true, would be explosive politically. But Crocker says it isn’t true. Not that skeptics of the administration will necessarily take his word for it.