The compound, by the side of the Tigris, is a statement of President Bush’s intent to expand “democracy” through the Middle East. Yesterday, however, the entire project was under fresh scrutiny as new details emerged of its cost and scale.
Rising from the dust of the city’s Green Zone it is destined, at $592 million, to become the biggest and most expensive US embassy on earth when it opens in September.
Joost Hildermann, an Iraq analyst with the International Crisis Group, said of the new embassy: “This sends a really poor signal to Iraqis that the Americans are building such a huge compound in Baghdad. It does very little to assuage Iraqis who are angry that America is running the country, and not very well at that.”
Toby Dodge, an expert on Iraq…has just come back from a month spent in Iraq, largely in the Green Zone. He thinks the Americans are unlikely to pull out of Iraq fully until the end of the next presidency at the earliest, and so the new embassy will serve its purpose for several years to come.
“A fortress-style embassy, with a huge staff, will remain in Baghdad until helicopters come to airlift the last man and woman from the roof,” he said, adding his own advice to the architects of the building: “Include a large roof.”
The embassy doesn’t represent American interests any more than Congress or the White House represents Americans.
It appears Democrats haven’t any more courage to confront backwards Republican policies than you would expect from just another subspecies of professional politicians.
Dodge has a valid point when he fears Americans will be in place – dying alongside the citizens of occupied Iraq – at least through the first term of any Dem who might replace Bush.
Chickenshit campaigners vs. corrupt and greedy liars. What a choice?
How do other countries react when the US build such armed fortresses? How about if China built a similar facility in Washington?
“This sends a really poor signal to Iraqis that the Americans are building such a huge compound in Baghdad.” – I’m sure the Kurds are alright with it.
#2 – “How about if China built a similar facility in Washington?”
I would be alright with the construction effort.
“Work for what is planned to be the largest, most fortified US embassy in the world was quietly awarded last summer to a controversial Kuwait-based construction firm accused of exploiting employees and coercing low-paid laborers to work in war-torn Iraq against their will.”
[Oh, joy, $592Bn in a war zone. Please make me ambassador.]
http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=13258
4,
SOP, standard operating procedure…For any USA based business.
Those on the bottom, that do the work, get 10%, and the ones on top get the OTHER 90%…
10% to those who do the work? What an optimist you are.
Hey, they need a lot of space to run the country. Relax.
#7. It evidently takes even more room to pretend you are running said country.
A giant fortress of an Embassy does not suggest that the US has reduced Iraq to colonial status – what it really shows that Iraq is so far out of US control that the Americans have to be walled in from the rest of the country for their own survival.
If the US was really running Iraq, our Embassy flunkies would be sitting in sidewalk cafes in their white suits and panama hats, sipping cool drinks, attended to by subservient locals.
try that in Iraq now and they will be scraping your guts out of the cracks in the nearest wall.
Didn’t Saddam call these things ‘palaces’?
#8 – What you’re really saying is that you see how Americans have found a way to run the Middle East, and you’re angry you didn’t come up with it first.
The fact Americans aren’t safe in that part of the world is meaningless.