Mixed messages in Iraq: Nick Turse on the drawdown

This week for Tomdispatch Nick Turse, author of The Case for Withdrawal From Afghanistan, reveals a disturbing trend in Iraq that counters Obama's August 31st announcement of the "end of our combat mission in Iraq," showing it as another potential "mission accomplished" moment:

The construction projects are sprouting like mushrooms: walled complexes, high-strength weapons vaults, and underground bunkers with command and control capacities—and they're being planned and funded by a military force intent on embedding itself ever more deeply in the Middle East.

If Iran were building these facilities, it would be front-page news and American hawks would be talking war, but that country's Revolutionary Guards aren't behind this building boom, nor are the Syrians, Lebanon's Hezbollah, or some set of al-Qaeda affiliates. It's the U.S. military that's digging in, hardening, improving, and expanding its garrisons in and around the Persian Gulf at the very moment when it is officially in a draw-down phase in Iraq.

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