Permanent bases?
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There’s an article in Salon today about the big permanent bases in Iraq and how this story is pretty much being ignored. But they made a big deal about how big these bases are, so I thought that maybe I could find them on Google Maps. And it wasn’t all that hard. Here’s Balad Air Base:
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=baghdad,+iraq&ll=33.940939,44.369659&spn=0.086587,0.172005&t=h
Here’s the article where a reporter visited the base:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/03/AR2006020302994_pf.html
And here’s a bit of background about it. Apparently it used to be an Iraqi Air Force base. You can still see the airplane shelters mentioned near the ends of the long runway.
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/iraq/balad-ab.htm
