What do we really want out of the Iraqi deal?

The bases, according to TomPaine.com's Dreyfus Report.

Does the United States want to have permanent military bases in Iraq? Does a camel sleep in the desert? Hardly mentioned in the hubbub about the June 30 handover date in Iraq, and the scramble to put together an Iraqi, umm, "government" by then, is this basic fact: more than anything else, the Pentagon wants to stay in Iraq for years, maybe forever—you can't have an empire without an imperial presence. But if and when Iraq gets sovereignty handed to it, whatever rump authority takes power on July 1 will own the country. Right now, Washington owns it. The question is: what will be the relationship between the U.S. occupation force—which, after all, isn't going to vanish on July 1—and the sovereign Iraqi authority? At the stroke of that midnight, the legal basis for the American occupation will go poof. So for the Pentagon, it's urgent to secure a so-called "status of forces" accord in Iraq. But the Pentagon's plans for that agreement, and its plans for military bases in Iraq, are still murky, and no one is quite sure who's working on them or how they will be imposed on—that is, negotiated with—the Iraqis. ..."The question is not democracy. The question is: how to develop a formally sovereign Iraq that signs a treaty with the United States, with permanent military bases for the U.S. All of Iraq's political actors are quite aware of the importance of this issue."

In a wayback post (12-12-03), I had quoted Josh Marshall:

The neo-con vision of a western Iraq reforming the Arab world is, with Baker’s appointment, pretty much finished. Perhaps the United States may end up with an airfield in one of the more deserted areas of the sad desert land of Iraq, but perhaps not; that’s negotiable.

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And then added: Well, there was some talk about military bases....
(Secret Washington plan to establish six permanent US, UK military bases in Iraq - Melbourne Indymedia 11-23-03)

Hadn't heard any more about it until now.