Iraq Green Zone a stand-in for U.S.

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

http://msnbc.com/news/1001913.asp

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Dec. 6 — In Elzain Elzain’s Baghdad, they serve peanut butter, lobster and ice cream. The cell phones have a 914 area code. The television sets show Monday Night Football. The people speak English. And the strictly enforced speed limit is 35 mph.

“IT’S LIKE I never left America,” said Elzain, an artist from the District who works as an interpreter for the U.S.-led occupation government.

Elzain and several thousand other government workers, contractors and soldiers live and work in what is called the Green Zone. The four-square-mile area, encircled by 15-foot concrete walls and rings of barbed wire, includes Saddam Hussein’s presidential palace compound, which is now the headquarters of the Coalition Provisional Authority that rules Iraq.

Once an oasis of fabulous architecture, date palms and swimming pools, it is now an eerie mix of shiny white trailers, SUVs, Black Hawk helicopters and other symbols of occupation and ruins created by months of bomb, rocket and mortar attacks.
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Eye opening piece.

[sistersofmercy]

1. 4 square miles...hmmmm

[wtmusic]

2. How can they possibly claim

Iraq is succeeding when it's come down to this?

It will be a bloodbath within a year.