US has no intention of leaving Iraq

The new ‘Wartime National Security Strategy’ - an Orwellian document if I’ve ever seen one. First four words - ‘America is at war.’

http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nss/2006/nss2006.pdf

First glance outlines meeting challenges to spread democracy in Middle East etc - on further inspection, they make pretty clear there is no intention to leave Iraq for some time as it is “in the heart of a geopolitically vital region” and they can’t have pesky ‘terrorists’ running around there.

Serious ‘challenges’ are listed as Iran, North Korea and of course ‘Al Qaida’.

On Iran page 20 -
“The nuclear issue and our other concerns can ultimately be resolved only if

the Iranian regime makes the strategic decision to change these policies, open up its

political system, and afford freedom to its people. This is the ultimate goal of U.S.

policy.”

On Iraq page 23 - Pre war estimates of WMD were wrong.

Hmm - load of stuff about further integration of international financial systems - I wonder why !

More centralising of intel agencies in US - no surprise there then.

Page 41 -42 LOL - the hypocrisy of the three things they don’t want China to do:

• Continuing China’s military expansion in a non-transparent way;

• Expanding trade, but acting as if they can somehow “lock up” energy supplies around

the world or seek to direct markets rather than opening them up – as if they can

follow a mercantilism borrowed from a discredited era; and

• Supporting resource-rich countries without regard to the misrule at home or

misbehavior abroad of those regimes.

Build up the UN and use it more is definitely a theme.

Page 49 - “America cannot know peace, security, and prosperity by retreating from the world.”

Pretty much the whole things written in doublespeak. Of course no one ever defines what this great ‘democracy’ they are hell bent on spreading actually consists of - but I think we’ve got the picture.

Adrian