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Topic: The 104-acre US embassy in Iraq
| Author | Message |
| UGoGirl | Posted – 5/20/2007 9:52:51 PM | show profile Jesus, no wonder the Iraqi's wonder when we're going to leave. ************* ..Rising from the dust of the city's Green Zone it is destined, at $592m (£300m), to become the biggest and most expensive US embassy on earth when it opens in September. It will cover 104 acres (42 hectares) of land, about the size of the Vatican. It will include 27 separate buildings and house about 615 people behind bomb-proof walls. ...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." ... the Bush administration says the embassy will open in September, and be fully staffed by the end of the year. ...Toby Dodge, an expert on Iraq at Queen Mary, University of London, has just come back from a month spent in Iraq, largely in the Green Zone. "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." There is one added irony - the embassy is one of the few major projects the administration has undertaken in Iraq that is on schedule and within budget. UK Guardian |
| A~ | Posted – 5/21/2007 11:12:58 AM | show profile Good read about how nice it is to live inside the Green Zone compared to where, you know, the Iraqis live: http://www.amazon.com/Imperial-Life-Emerald-City-Inside/dp/1400044871 |
| keltoi2 | Posted – 5/21/2007 1:49:17 PM | show profile AP ran a story on this this weekend which was fairly thorough excepting the absence of the screamingly obvious question as to why the hell the Bush goverment is building the world's largest embassy in a country with fewer people than the state of California and no exports of note other than....hmm....oil. Yet another topic of great importance feverishly ignored by our wonderful "I seeeeee nOOOOthhhhhhiiiiiiiiiing!" "liberal" US Nooz Media. |
| 9over14 | Posted – 5/21/2007 2:11:56 PM | show profile I bet it has a nice pool though... |
| UGoGirl | Posted – 5/21/2007 10:11:04 PM | show profile Oh yes, a pool, gym, and its own power and water supplies. Just in case things should get dicey. Keltoi, I'm reading a book that reminded me of you, called "It's the Crude, Dude: Greed, Gas, War, and the American Way" by Linda Mcquaig. Goofball title but pretty serious stuff. |
| Nikongirl | Posted – 5/21/2007 11:52:03 PM | show profile Looks like they are settling in for the long term. And let me guess, Haliburton got the contract. |
| UGoGirl | Posted – 5/22/2007 10:46:15 AM | show profile Even worse than Halliburton Looks like the firm building it is First Kuwaiti. Lovely... using slave labor to build the ghastly thing. **** A U.S. Fortress Rises in Baghdad: Asian Workers Trafficked to Build World's Largest Embassy by David Phinney, Special to CorpWatch October 17th, 2006 John Owen didn't realize how different his job would be from his last 27 years in construction until he signed on with First Kuwaiti Trading & Contracting in November 2005. Working as general foreman, he would be overseeing an army of workers building the largest, most expensive and heavily fortified US embassy in the world. Scheduled to open in 2007, the sprawling complex near the Tigris River will equal Vatican City in size. Then seven months into the job, he quit. Not one of the five different US embassy sites he had worked on around the world compared to the mess he describes. Armenia, Bulgaria, Angola, Cameroon and Cambodia all had their share of dictators, violence and economic disruption, but the companies building the embassies were always fair and professional, he says. The Kuwait-based company building the $592-million Baghdad project is the exception. Brutal and inhumane, he says "I've never seen a project more fucked up. Every US labor law was broken." In the resignation letter last June, Owen told First Kuwaiti and US State Department officials that his managers beat their construction workers, demonstrated little regard for worker safety, and routinely breached security. And it was all happening smack in the middle of the US-controlled Green Zone -- right under the nose of the State Department that had quietly awarded the controversial embassy contract in July 2005. He also complained of poor sanitation, squalid living conditions and medical malpractice in the labor camps where several thousand low-paid migrant workers lived. Those workers, recruited on the global labor market from the Philippines, India, Pakistan and other poor south Asian countries, earned as little as $10 to $30 a day. As with many US-funded contractors, First Kuwaiti prefers importing labor because it views Iraqi workers as a security headache not worth the trouble. ... http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=14173 |
| Nikongirl | Posted – 5/22/2007 12:02:37 PM | show profile No stoop is too low for this administration eh? |
| mailbag | Posted – 5/22/2007 12:28:00 PM | show profile | email poster new Saddam palace So, when Iraqis finally get together enough to declare war on the United States - which will happen one day for revenge - the first thing they'll do is invade this embassy and ransack it and take all the valuables for themselves. (Sound familiar?) How sick the USA has become beginning with the top dog, dictator George Bush. |
| UGoGirl | Posted – 5/22/2007 4:31:28 PM | show profile Before Bush our world standing and reputation was shaky, but Bush (and his gang) have managed to send us to unimaginable lows. |
| keltoi2 | Posted – 5/31/2007 5:56:54 PM | show profile Hey 9over, you're right--it does have a nice pool. Seems the embassy compound architects, Berger Devine Yaeger Inc, posted 10 computer projections of the future Club Baghdad. The Feds quickly told them that was a bad, bad, thing to do, and they yanked them. But nice pool was included. And Ugo, thanks for the book tip. Sounds interesting; I'll look into it. |
| keltoi2 | Posted – 7/5/2007 11:50:34 AM | show profile Seems Australian Defense Minister Brendan Neeson accidentally told the truth today to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation about Oz's presence in Iraq (this from AFP): "Energy security is extremely important to all nations throughout the world, and of course, in protecting and securing Australia's interests," he said. "Obviously the Middle East itself, not only Iraq, but the entire region is an important supplier of energy, oil in particular, to the rest of the world. "Australians and all of us need to think what would happen if there were a premature withdrawal from Iraq," Nelson said. Well, Ozzie PM John Howard (the Bush Down Under) and his crowd quickly did damage control, lying through his teeth that of COURSE it has NOTHING to do with oil! It was for....um...FREEDOM...yeah...and...and....DEMOCRACY...andum....FIGHTING....uh..TERRORISTS...yeah....that's the ticket.... |
