Rachel About to Reveal The World's Largest Embassy! (Super Top Secret!!)

[Stephanie]

How long have we been waiting to see this? Turn off American Idol! I'm talking to YOU! I mean it - this Bush boondoggle has been hiding in plain sight until now. Let's see where our tax dollars have gone - to build the World's Largest Embassy! Bigger than Vatican City!

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12319798 /

Construction cranes loom above the site of the new U.S. Embassy being built in Baghdad. The embassy will sit on 104 acres, six times larger than the United Nations compound in New York and two-thirds the acreage of Washington’s National Mall.

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060703/howl

howl | posted June 20, 2006 (web only)
Bush's Baghdad Palace
Nicholas von Hoffman

What About the World's Largest Embassy?

Among the many secrets the American government cannot keep, one of its biggest (104 acres) and most expensive ($592 million) is the American Embassy being built in Baghdad. Surrounded by fifteen-foot-thick walls, almost as large as the Vatican on a scale comparable to the Mall of America, to which it seems to have a certain spiritual affinity, this is no simple object to hide.

So you think the Bush Administration is planning on leaving Iraq? Read on.

The Chicago Tribune reports, "Trucks shuttle building materials to and fro. Cranes, at least a dozen of them, punch toward the sky. Concrete structures are beginning to take form. 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."

****

On the other hand, the latest is that the facilities for the 8,000 people scheduled to work in the vice-regal compound will be completed on time next year. Doubtless the cooks, janitors and serving staff attending to the Americans' needs and comforts in this establishment, which is said to exceed in luxury and appointments anything Saddam Hussein built for himself, will not be Iraqis either.

According to Knight Ridder, "US officials here 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 what the locals call "George W's Palace" are confined to using telephoto lenses on this, the largest construction project undertaken by Iraq's American visitors.

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, a swimming pool, 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.

USA Today has learned that the "massive new embassy, being built on the banks of the Tigris River, is designed to be entirely self-sufficient and won't be dependent on Iraq's unreliable public utilities." Thus, 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.

[liberalmuse]

1. Disgusting. What a colossal waste of money.

It's an ugly, arrogant reminder of our invasion. I wish they'd tear it down. :mad:

[Stephanie]

2. Cheney planned to rule the ME from that Embassy

It was the foundation of for his imperial dreams.

[Stephanie]

3. So the school is empty because it's not safe for diplomats' children

The kitchens are useless because it's not safe for diplomats to shop for food in Baghdad. How much did the contractor make? Who can we sell it to now?

[Submariner]

4. A White Elephant - We need to abandon that dump too when the troops come home

[NYC_SKP]

5. 104 acres, largest US embassy in the world, close to one billion dollars...

The largest and most expensive embassy we have in the world.

Because we were rolling in surplus money, doncha know...

:puke:

[Thickasabrick]

6. Give it to the Iraqis and let them make a college or something

out of it.

[jberryhill]

9. Naw, at least give them the challenge of overrunning it in protest

Make 'em earn it the way the Vietnamese and Iranians did.

[Gregorian]

7. Maybe Obama can sell it to Iraq to use for low income housing.

Screw Bush.

And here I was screaming about a "billion dollar embassy" when it came out. A billion. Ha. Like that's small change now.

[Stephanie]

8. And the "swish club for evening functions"?

Let's hold Bush & Cheney's trials there.