U.S. Retools Hussein Pleasure Palace as Camp Victory
By THOM SHANKER
Published: June 12, 2004
AGHDAD, Iraq - At a desert retreat where Saddam Hussein's cronies hunted gazelles and entertained mistresses, the American military is building one of its largest overseas bases since the Vietnam War, a rambling, dusty mix of tents, trailers and villas where sandbags rival chandeliers as the second-most notable architectural feature.
That is because at the renamed Camp Victory, the signature design element is the marble column, many with a swirling stone pattern in sandy hues nearly matching those of desert combat fatigues.
The largest palace, called Qasr al Fao, sits in the middle of a man-made lake stocked with carp and catfish, and is the new headquarters for senior military commanders in Iraq.
A third-story palace wall was hit by an American JDAM (Joint Direct Attack Munition) bomb in the war, but the damaged section has been rebuilt to hold a classified planning room that is so overly air-conditioned that it is known as the Meat Locker.
Twenty-four hours a day, officers and staff members climb and descend spiral staircases that recall headquarters from past wars, a simpler era when logistics were more important than information operations. Eisenhower or Patton can be imagined striding these polished floors, but they would hardly recognize the technology that has been injected throughout the palace....cont'd
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/12/international/middleeast/12camp.html