Posted on 08/31/2007 10:34:38 PM PDT by bruinbirdman
It’s bigger than Saddam’s palace and, with a cinema, gym and pool, is the safest and smartest place to live in Iraq...
Baghdad is a city of ruins - of burnt-out homes, of shops wrecked by suicide bombs, of the crumbling shells of Saddam-era palaces and ministries destroyed by smart bombs in the US invasion of 2003.
There is one notable exception. It is probably the only big new building project in the capital in the past four years. It is the new US Embassy on the west bank of the Tigris which the contractors will transfer to the US Government officially today.
A towering wall renders the huge new embassy almost invisible from ground level. For security reasons the State Department has refused all requests for media tours – promising instead to release pictures of the interior at some later date. The only way to view it is from the roof of the Babylon hotel, across the river.
What you can see through the haze of heat and pollution is a complex of two dozen smart new dun and grey blocks set in 104 acres (42 hectares) of grounds ringed by that impregnable wall. It is a fortress within the fortress that is the green zone. It is designed to repel any physical attack and. when it opens for business in a few weeks, it will be protected by a detachment of Marines with their own barracks. It is not, however, invulnerable to criticism.
This is the largest US Embassy built – roughly the size of Vatican City – and at $600 million (£300 million) the most expensive. At a time when millions of Baghdadis outside the green zone receive only a couple of hours of water and electricity daily, Iraqis observe that this project has been completed on time, on budget, and is entirely self-sufficient with its own fresh water supply, electricity plant, sewage treatment facility, maintenance shops and warehouses.
“People are very angry,” said one young Iraqi. “It’s for the Americans, not for the Iraqis.”
There are two office blocks that will house 1,000 staff, six apartment blocks containing 619 one-bedroom units, spacious residences for the Ambassador and his deputy, a school, shopping centre and food court; a swimming pool, tennis and basketball courts; a gymnasium, cinema, beauty salon and social club. This is known because the architects – Berger Devine Yaeger, of Kansas City – posted drawings on its website briefly until the State Department ordered their removal.
The embassy was built with imported labour. This year a congressional committee heard charges that First Kuwaiti General Trading & Contracting told a planeload of Filipino construction workers that they were flying to Dubai to build hotels and did not admit that they were heading for Baghdad until they had taken off, forcing them, in effect, to work there.
Critics also portray the new compound as a symbol of American isolation and occupation, and a sign of how little confidence the US has in Iraq’s future. Jane Loeffler, an expert on the architecture of embassies, writes in the latest edition of Foreign Policy magazine: “Encircled by blast walls and cut off from the rest of Baghdad, it stands out like the crusader castles that once dominated the Middle East.”
Embassies were traditionally designed to promote interaction with their host communities, she says, but not this one. “Although US diplomats will technically be ‘in Iraq’ they may as well be in Washington.
“Although the US Government regularly proclaims confidence in Iraq’s democratic future, the US has designed an embassy that conveys no confidence in Iraqis and little hope for their future. Instead, the US has built a fortress capable of sustaining a massive, long-term presence in the face of continued violence.”
Edward Peck, a former US Ambassador to Iraq, says in the same magazine: “The embassy is going to have a thousand people hunkered behind sand-bags. I don’t know how you conduct diplomacy in that way.”
US diplomats roll their eyes in the face of such verbal assaults. “The size and scale of the embassy reflects very much our expectation of a strong long-term relationship with Iraq,” one senior official insisted. “Of course it’s a fortress. What embassy isn’t nowadays? Is it a tragedy? Of course it is. It’s a sad statement of the reality of today’s world.”
The relentless criticism clearly grates. “We call it the ‘nec’,” he said. “It stands for the new embassy compound. And it’s a pain in the neck.”
“Iraqis observe that this project has been completed on time, on budget, and is entirely self-sufficient with its own fresh water supply, electricity plant, sewage treatment facility, maintenance shops and warehouses.”
That’s because it wasn’t carried out by modern day barbarians who are more interested in spilling their neighbors’ blood over 8th century nonsense. We actually thought these animals could be civilized WHY exactly?
LOL! Eat it, haji! It's not our fault your country sucks!
"...said one young Iraqi. “It’s for the Americans, not for the Iraqis.”...Uh yes ....yes it is Haji.
Now get your rag-tag Government and country in some kind of, at least, 1oth century order and build one of your own and stop whining.
The Philippines has a policy that the Passports Filpinos carry are marked invalid for Iraq. Every time they get caught working there, they claim they were kidnapped. It's easy to do, gets them out of trouble, and the American press automatically believes it. I have heard this story 1,000 times.
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0WDQ/is_2004_Nov_1/ai_n6284362
When you are talking about the American Embassy, the controversy becomes supercharged. I don't believe this whole story.
That being said, I do believe the time has come for Congress to look at labor conditions on US Government contracts overseas. The laborers are seriously taken advantage of big time all over the world. Congress appropriates the money for these projects and really should establish some bare minimum protections for these workers. Be careful and don;t go too far however, because if the jobs were to be so far above "prevailing" conditions, then other problems will certainly ensue.
Duh! It's the AMERICAN Embassy.
Edward Peck, now there's a real hero who 'loved' Saddam.
Any thoughts?
The author is the Drama Queen of Hyperbolia.
I have been watching this Embassy grow for over a year. It is ‘our tax dollars at work’.
Please read the entire article, before you reach an intellectual conclusion - then do a ‘google’ on it.
You will be shocked.
I cannot post any more on this........
Thank you for posting this article, bruinbirdman.
Money well spent!
>>Money well spent!<<
May I ask what brought you to that conclusion?
We're going to be there a long time with lots of 'mercans.
yitbos
Please tell me you are being sarcastic.
Wait, so technically, it’s American soil right?
Just add temple vessels and wine ping.
>>October 11, 2001
Former US Ambassador to Iraq
Calls US War Plan “Dumb”
“Why it is that all of these people hate us. It’s not because of freedom. It’s not because Britney Spears has a belly button or because we export hamburgers. They hate us because of things they see us doing to their part of the world that they definitely do not like.”
Edward Peck, former US Ambassador to Iraq and deputy director of President Reagan’s terrorism task force. <<
Oh he did a bangup job as director of Reagan’s terrorism task force...
Negative, negative, negative, blah, blah, blah, media garbage, spin, spin, spin...
I could poke holes all through this media slant-piece, but I've done it so many times...(sigh)
I'm at the current Embassy right now, BTW...just for a visit.
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