Given the now understood reason for to war was to start the neo-con takeover of the Middle East using Iraq as the base of operations, this pronouncement should be no surprise.

Bush envisions U.S. presence in Iraq like S.Korea

President George W. Bush would like to see a lengthy U.S. troop presence in Iraq like the one in South Korea to provide stability but not in a frontline combat role, the White House said on Wednesday.

The United States has had thousands of U.S. troops in South Korea to guard against a North Korean invasion for 50 years.

At the same time there’s this:

Lieberman talks to troops in Baghdad

Spc. David Williams, 22, of Boston, Mass., had two note cards in his pocket Wednesday afternoon as he waited for Sen. Joseph Lieberman. Williams serves in the 82nd Airborne Division from Fort Bragg, N.C., the first of the five “surge” brigades to arrive in Iraq, and he was chosen to join the Independent from Connecticut for lunch at a U.S. field base in Baghdad.

[...] At the top of his note card was the question he got from nearly every one of his fellow soldiers:

“When are we going to get out of here?”

And this (actually, this is a good idea, but it’s also happening because of a shortage of troops):

Amputee Soldiers Return to Active Duty

In the blur of smoke and blood after a bomb blew up under his Humvee in Iraq, Sgt. Tawan Williamson looked down at his shredded leg and knew it couldn’t be saved. His military career, though, pulled through. Less than a year after the attack, Williamson is running again with a high-tech prosthetic leg and plans to take up a new assignment, probably by the fall, as an Army job counselor and affirmative action officer in Okinawa, Japan.

In an about-face by the Pentagon, the military is putting many more amputees back on active duty _ even back into combat, in some cases.