WASHINGTON - Instead of moving toward accommodating the demand of Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki for a timetable for United States military withdrawal, the George W Bush administration and the US military leadership are continuing to pressure their erstwhile client regime to bow to the US demand for a long-term military presence in the country.

The emergence of this defiant US posture toward the Iraqi withdrawal demand underlines just how important long-term access to military bases in Iraq has become to the US military and national security bureaucracy in general. [...]

That point was made initially by State Department spokesman Gonzalo Gallegos, who stated flatly on July 9 that any US decision on withdrawal "will be conditions-based".

In a sign that the US military is also mounting pressure on the Iraqi government to abandon its withdrawal demand, [former CENTCOM Commander Admiral] Fallon wrote an op-ed piece published in the New York Times on July 20 that called on Iraqi leaders to accept the US demand for long-term access to military bases. [...]

As CENTCOM chief, Fallon had been planning on the assumption that the US military would continue to have access to military bases in both Iraq and Afghanistan for many years to come. A July 14 story by Washington Post national security and intelligence reporter Walter Pincus said that the army had requested ... $184 million to build power plants at its five main bases in Iraq.

The five bases, Pincus reported, are among the "final bases and support locations where troops, aircraft and equipment will be consolidated as the US military presence is reduced".

Yes, those "permanent bases" or "enduring bases" that no one but the liberal blogosphere and a few journalists were shouting about as far back as 2004, are the reason why Bush and his Generals want to continue this costly and illegal occupation in Iraq. Like the Roman Empire's military camps in Germany under the early Caesars, they believe we must have a significant military Force deep in the heartland of the Middle East to preserve our Big Oil's "entitlement" to all that "bubblin' crude."

Strangely enough, our hand picked puppet, Mr. Maliki, has now turned to bite the neoconservative hand that fed him. Perhaps because the "surge" enabled him and his Iraqi Army to ethnically cleanse Baghdad of much of it's former Sunni inhabitants, or perhaps because he feels himself militarily and politically stronger than his rival, Muqtada al-Sadr, he now is willing to tell the Americans to shove their occupation and just go home. After all, the Sunni Triangle is relatively quiet thanks to the Sunni Awakening, the Kurds have concerns of their own with Turkey at the moment, and he has solidified his relationship with Iran. Or maybe he's just sick and tired of having his own friends and relatives killed by American forces.

Whatever his reasons, he apparently now feels more comfortable challenging a lame duck Bush administration, even to the extent of giving them a big black eye over his effective endorsement of Obama's withdrawal plan. Obviously, he is watching the American political campaign for President closely. If he really thought McCain was in the driver's seat, I doubt he would have said anything publicly, regardless of his own personal feelings about the matter, or the political pressures from his own coalition's partners and political adversaries.

Which doesn't bode well for President Bush's legacy. He hoped to create a permanent presence in Iraq, much like the ones we have in Germany and South Korea. The closer Obama comes to winning the election and becoming our next President, the more his dreams of a submissive client state in the center of the Middle East from which our military could project power and secure Iraq's precious geological fluids to intimidate our geopolitical rivals, Russia and China, and reward his friends in the oil industry appear to be dissipating. No wonder he's attempting to turn the screws to Mr. Maliki and the other significant political factions in Iraq to accept the long term presence of an American occupation force.

The only question that remains, is how far will he go to tie the hands of the next administration to insure that US forces are bogged down permitted to stay in Iraq for as long as the neocons want them there? So far his efforts have been insufficient to achieve that objective:

The plan to keep several major bases in Iraq is just part of a larger plan, on which Fallon himself was working, for permanent US land bases in the Middle East and Central Asia.

Fallon revealed in congressional testimony last year that Bagram air base in Afghanistan is regarded as "the centerpiece for the CENTCOM master plan for future access to and operations in Central Asia".

As Fallon was writing his op-ed, the Bush administration was planning for a video conference between Bush and Maliki, evidently hoping to move the obstreperous Maliki away from his position on withdrawal. Afterward, however, the White House found it necessary to cover up the fact that Maliki had refused to back down in the face of Bush's pressure. [...]

Both the Bush administration and the US military appear to harbor the illusion that the US troop presence in Iraq still confers effective political control over its clients in Baghdad.

However, the change in the Maliki regime's behavior over the past six months, starting with the prime minister's abrupt refusal to go along with General David Petraeus' plan for a joint operation in the southern city of Basra in mid-March, strongly suggests that the era of Iraqi dependence on the US has ended.

Given the strong consensus on the issue among Shi'ite political forces of all stripes, as well as Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the Shi'ite spiritual leader, the Maliki administration could not back down to US pressure without igniting a political crisis.

So what will Bush do? His political influence over the Iraqis is literally evaporating with each day that passes. Yet, our past experience with Bush tells us he's not a man to meekly accept defeat. Like a child who's never been deprived of anything he wants, he soesn't accept no for an answer very well.

Unfortunately, there is only one thing which could possibly preserve a large and significant continuing presence of US forces in Iraq after 2008, absent a McCain victory in November (which appears less and less likely). That would be war with Iran. Most analysts seem to believe that the time for that "option" has passed, but I'm not so sure. Because when it comes to Mr. Bush's megalomania and his predilection for using military power to solve his political problems, both at home and abroad, I've come to the conclusion that one should never reject out of hand any possibility, particularly the use of our military forces to instigate further conflicts, no matter how stupid, deranged or insane it might appear to more reasonable people.