The Billion Dollar US Embassy in Iraq

[Dunvegan]

The Billion-Dollar Baghdad Embassy
by Leigh Saavedra
From www.oldamericancentury.org



That's the estimate, though only half of it has been appropriated so far, a billion dollars to build a new embassy in Iraq. It will be the largest on the globe, the largest the world has ever seen, the size of Vatican City in Italy.

U.S. embassies typically cover ten acres. This one, a 104-acre complex, will be comprised of 21 buildings, its own water wells, an electricity plant and waste water-treatment facility that makes the huge compound completely independent of Iraq ,whose "interim government" sold the land to the U.S. in October 2004. Terms of the agreement do not appear to be readily accessible.*

{snip}

In this case, the devil is less in the details than in the monumental size and cost of the endeavor. The likeness to a small fortified city is frightening to those who object to a permanent presence of the U.S. in Iraq, already destroyed by American bombs and depleted uranium, and the core of such fear lies in the question of WHY the U.S., already dangerously in debt back home and dangerously despised in Iraq and most of the mideast, is pounding its chest with such a noisy bravado. Is this the finale of "Shock and Awe"?

{snip}

This is a notable expenditure. It costs as much as it does to bomb mud huts in the desert each week. We, the dwindling middle class, are paying for it, and paying through the teeth. And we're not paying sums like this for something that's meant to be temporary....Of our neocon acquaintances and non-political friends we might ask: Can you read about this construction, look at the numbers involved, think of the homeless, disease-ridden people of Iraq, suffering from the highest unemployment of their lives and often having difficulty finding clean water, and then truly believe that the U.S. went to the Garden of Eden to help the Iraqi people?

...more here...

* (Thanks to AP correspondent Charles Hanley for providing the statistics and descriptions of the new embassy. See his full report at http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060414/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_new_embassy_2 )

[TheCowsCameHome]

1. I hope IdiotSon takes the whole Bush family to live there someday

The sooner the better.

[MadMaddie]

2. To think what a Billion dollars could do for the Gulf Coast...

It's these kind of things that have to be screamed from every mountain...we have Americans sufferring and they are building a friggen embassy.....

[Dunvegan]

7. That's EXACTLY the first thought I had when I saw the figure.

Why aren't we doing sweet-f-all about rebuilding NOLA and the Gulf?

Oh...because carpetbagger developers are going to buy all that up and displace the native dwellers PERMANENTLY, that's why.

[No New War]

3. WTF

I'm sure there's a perfectly reasonable explaination for this, amirite?

:wtf:

[Dunvegan]

6. Um...nope.

Just so we can have a permanent "Green Zone" because we're so safe being the Great Liberators and all.

It's just so large so there'll be a place to put all the flowers and candies the Iraqi people will be showering us with for the next 100 years.

[Oversea Visitor]

4. Have you guys counted

the operation cost and the cost of running the other 14 superbase yet.
No sir this embassy is a nightmare in so many sense

Either get written off
Or eating up US taxpayer money long into the future

US broke
Dont think can afford
But well dont think they ever think in that way hahaha.

[Dunvegan]

5. Hey, Oversea Visitor...

...yes, some of us are counting: dollars...years...lives (military and civilian.)

But it's beginning to break our calculators, just like it will break Americans for generations.

[Oversea Visitor]

8. Yeah

People in DU know
Just that many people live in bubble
Dont want to see outside