Welcome to the new US embassy

[cal04]

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.

(snip)
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.”

(snip)
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.”

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/iraq/article2364255.ece

[Warren Stupidity]

1. We are arrogant armored thugs.

Funny how we have no problem building that horror show while Baghdad lies in ruins. What have we spent so far on this fucked occupation? $1,000,000,000,000 or so. What have we gotten for our money? This?

[samplegirl]

2. Welcome to...

Fort Washington.

[Grandrose]

3. Something is missing....?

I know, a bubble top to stop the incoming missiles, what a gross waste of my tax dollars and I am pissed!:mad:
If I was Iraqi, I would be livid and enraged by this slap in the face!
Lord willing, we will leave someday (soon)....hope they put this Bush/Cheney egotistical monstrosity to good use! :grr: