For all the eternal optimists out there who think the Iraq War won't last much longer because the situation there has been getting some better since the last big troop deployment, please read this article and then ask yourself if it sounds like the U.S.has any intention of pulling out anytime soon,.....if ever!!!!
Maybe John McCain knows something we don't when he said he was willing to stay in Iraq for 100 years if necessary. From the sound of this ariticle his statement might not have been so far fetched. ---Mary (webmaster)
Building work at the 104-acre complex, known locally as 'George Bush's Palace',is supposed to be secret, but it is impossible to disguise the cranes dominating the Baghdad skyline. The new United States Embassy in Iraq was scheduled to cost 592 million dollars to build and will be the largest embassy on earth. However, due to delays for various reasons, mainly shoddy work by the mostly Asian workers that were imported to do the work at near slave wages, the cost has soared way beyond that figure. To mention just a few of the many problems that has slowed down constrution was a fire sprinkler system that didn't work, when it was turned on some of the joints broke, some of the wiring melted down, and the workers failed to build a blast proof wall. The estimated final construction cost is now over 700 million dollars. and will cost more than a billion dollars a year to maintain. It will essentially be a small city, with office buildings, a future school, six apartment buildings, and a recreation building with a gym, exercise room, the American Club, a commissary, food court, movie theater, tennis courts, barber and beauty shops.
Computerized image of one of the embassy's pools by the designer of the embassy project.
It will also have the largest swimming pool in Iraq as well as its own electrical power plants and water plants. There will be a 1,500 embassy staff including 1,000 Americans and 500 Iraqi foreign service nationals. The office buildings will be large enough to handle up to 8,000 workers.
Vatican City
The project is so huge that it will be equal in size to Vatican City.
U.S. Beijing Embassy
In contrast, the Beijing embassy that opened in 2008, had previously been described as the "largest single construction project undertaken by the Department of State on foreign soil". It is ten acres, compared to Iraq's 104 acres.
According to the U.K. Times, the Iraqi people call this "George W's Palace". In the Baghdad cafes, they "moan that the structure is bigger than anything Saddam Hussein ever built" and are "interested in knowing whether the US State Department paid for the prime real estate or simply took it. For the record the land was given to them by the Iraqi government.
One of Saddam Hussein's many presidential palaces
They are angry about the size of the embassy and that it will have its own power and water facilities, while they still wait for the day when they will reach pre-war levels of electricity and clean water.
Iraqis digging for water
Many Iraqis, like this woman, are still without electricity
After almost four years, the Americans still can't turn on the lights for the Iraqis, but that won't be a problem for the embassy staffers. The same with the toilets, they will always flush on command. All services for the biggest embassy in the world will operate independently from the rattletrap utilities of the Iraqi capital
Electric power plant
Imagine the message we are sending to the Iraqi people and how this embassy can be used as an Al Qaeda recruiting tool. Along with the military bases, this shows the United States intends to have a substantial long-term presence in Iraq. The International Crisis Group said the embassy's size "is seen by Iraqis as an indication of who actually exercises power in their country". "Infidels in the holy land" has always been a major problem for Islamic fundamentalists. How will they react to the United States essentially creating a small city on the banks of the Tigris River?
The Tigris River
Certainly this embassy could become a prime target for future terrorist attacks. This will put our employees in danger and create huge security costs. At home, we also have to ask what kind of message we are sending to American citizens.
FEMA has closed its office in New Orleans while much of the city is still in ruins and in need of massve re-construction. At a time when our country is running huge deficits and cutting programs for the poor, is it a good use of our resources to operate such a huge facility In Iraq?
This is one of Saddam Hussein's palaces and was used as the U.S American Embassy while the new one was being built . The embassy had 1,000 employees and the 2005 operating cost was about $1 billion, is this an indicator of how much this new embassy will cost in the future? How effective will our diplomacy be if we start out by angering the Iraqi people with the huge scale of this project?
And, as former Iraq ambassador Edward L. Peck observed, "the embassy is going to have people hunkered behind sandbags. I don't know how you can conduct diplomacy that way."
John Brown, former foreign service officer, said it best. "Why should the new embassy in Iraq be so large in the first place? Are thousands of Americans holed up in 'Emerald City' really a way to assist the 'new Iraq'? Couldn't a smaller, leaner, and better prepared embassy with a well defined mission do a more efficient job? And wouldn't a more modestly sized embassy communicate an important message that the Bush administration is supposedly trying to bring home to the new Iraqi government and the local population; that the fate of their country is in their hands, not in those of occupying forces."?
The U. S. State Department Building in Washington, D. C.
The State Department is in charge of diplomacy. They are charged with understanding the local culture and customs and to promote good will with the host country. With this embassy` we are getting off on the wrong foot.The Embassy was supposed to open in June, 2007, but because of inferior work that date has been moved forward several times, it is now scheduled to officially open sometime in 2008. Due to sub standard wiring there have been several fires at the embassy.
The Embassy is surrounded by a high fifteen foot thick wall, and in size is comparable to the National Mall of America in Washington D.C.
National Mall in Washington D.C.
At a time when most Iraqis are enduring blackouts of up to 22 hours a day, the site is floodlighted by night so work can continue around the clock.
It will come as less than a surprise to learn that this project was subbed out to an outfit in Kuwait. The Chicago Tribune says that for security reasons, the new embassy is being built entirely by imported labor.
Asian Workers
The contractor, First Kuwaiti General Trading and Contracting Co., which was linked to human-trafficking allegations by a Chicago Tribune investigation last year, has hired a work force of 900 mostly Asian workers who live on the site." In a land where half the population is out of work the United States ought to win countless native hearts and minds with this labor policy. Doubtless the cooks, janitors and serving staff attending to the Americans' needs and comforts in this establishment, will not be Iraqis either.
Home office of Knight Ridder (sold in June, 2006 to the McClatchy Company)
In 2006, Knight Ridder, one of the most respected newspaper chains in America, reported: "US officials here [in Baghdad] greet questions about the site with a curtness that borders on hostility. Reporters are referred to the State Department in Washington, which declined to answer questions for security reasons." Photographers attempting to get pictures of "George W's Palace" are confined to using telephoto lenses on this, the largest construction project undertaken by Iraq's American visitors. ( This explains why the photos of the embassy on this page aren't of a very good quality.)
Just a part of this vast compound, I'm not sure but this may be the apartment buildings. We're just not being told anything yet, it's been a hush hush secret project from the git-go.
This picture is of another part of the embassy, being guarded by a Marine (computerized image)
Nonetheless, we know much of what is going on in the place, where there will soon be twenty-one buildings, 619 apartments with very fancy digs for the big shots, restaurants, shops, gym facilities, the biggest swimming pool in Iraq, a food court, a beauty salon, a movie theater (we can't say if it's a multiplex) and, as the Times of London reports, "a swish club for evening functions." This should be ideal for announcing the various new milestones marking the trudge of the Iraqi people toward democracy and freedom.
Since the embassy is designed to be entirely self-sufficient and won't be dependent on Iraq's unreliable public utilities there will be no reason or excuse for any of the thousands of Americans working in this space, which is about the size of eighty football fields, to share the daily life experience of an Iraqi or even come in accidental contact with one.
Can you imagine an area 80 times the size of this football field? ---Whew, now that's BIG!!!!!
This gigantic complex does not square with the repeated assertions by the people who run the American government that the United States will not stay in the country after Iraq becomes a stand-alone, democratic entity. An "embassy" in which 8,000 people labor, along with the however many thousands of military personnel necessary to defend them, is not a diplomatic outpost. It is a base, a permanent base! To any thinking person it should be obvious that the U.S. plans to remain in Baghdad and run the country. To me this is beyond lunacy
Marine guards at the Embassy
When this place is finally completed and fully operational there will be 8,000 Americans holed up in a private city, who do not dare to leave their fortified luxury bunker for fear of being killed or kidnapped and tortured if caught outside their fortified walls, and who are trying to run the country by giving orders to the Iraqi government, which is also operating out of the Green Zone, that vast fortified place isolated from the people of the country.
Rocket and mortar attack on Green Zone in 2008
This large heavily guarded area is certainly not safe from violence. There have been repeated rocket and mortar attacks on it by Shiite militia groups, and there is no reason at this point to believe these attacks will cease,
Democrats demanding an exit strategy from Iraq are routinely derided by the Bush Administration as cowards who "cut and run." But if this Embassy plan is not a form of cut and run, what is it? Instead of cutting and making a run for Kuwait, they intend to cut and run into what amounts to the world's largest bunker, a capacious rat hole where they can wait in safety until all the Iraqis have killed one another or all factions unite, march on this air-conditioned citadel and slit the throats of its irrelevant inhabitants. This is not a pleasant scenario and it may never happen, but the possibility that it could is a very real one.
Web Page by Mary Jones
March, 2008
A WORD FROM THE WEBMASTER
The State Department finally took possession of the new Iraq Embassy on April 14, 2008. However they are having a hard time getting enough volunteer diplomats to agree to move into the new building because the heavily fortified Green Zone has been attacked so much lately by Shiite Militia Groups that the area is no longer considered safe.
There is actually speculation that diplomats will have to be drafted to fill the required number that is needed..
And now I have learned that there isn't enough room to house all the diplomats and other embassy workers who will be living in the new embassy.
Among other things they are considering making a lot of the apts. into two units instead of one.. The reason the Government gives for the problem is that the need for additional diplomats and other important jobs has more than doubled since the embassy was designed in 2005.
Diplomats and other workers have been living in aluminum trailers in the Green Zone until the Embassy was ready to be occupied. Now it seems it could be as late at next year before it is fully operational.
The people living in the trailers are demanding to have new trailers with fortified roofs that will better withstand mortar and rocket attacks as the trailers they are living in now are of little if any protection.
Recently everyone who ventures outside in the Green Zone has been ordered to wear body armor and other protective gear. The government has recently ordered the cots in the trailers be moved back into Saddam Husseins Republican Palace nearby, no-one is to sleep in the trailers.
The palace has been the U.S. embassy while the new one was being built and most of the embassy staffers are still living there. It is doubtful the trailers will be replaced with safer ones as they were meant to be temporary until the new embasy was ready to move into. It is uncertain how long these new problems will delay the completion of the embassy.This new modern day monstrosity has been one big inexcusable mess almost from day one and now there is yet another setback.
There needs to be an impartial investigation into this matter to find out who is to blame for all the mistakes and delays, and why it was allowed by our government to happen, sure sounds like some hanky panky involved to me. ---Mary Jones
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