JFC, these 3-4 never ending wars and mega-embassies are going to kill us

[Taverner]

http://motherjones.com/politics/2010/11/stimulus-package-kabul

One night in May 2007, I was nattering on at the dinner table about reports of a monstrous new US embassy being constructed in Baghdad, so big that it put former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's grandiose Disneyesque palaces to shame. On 104 acres of land in the heart of the Iraqi capital (always referred to in news reports as almost the size of Vatican City), it was slated to cost $590 million. (Predictable cost overruns and delays—see F-35 above—would, in the end, bring that figure to at least $740 million, while the cost of running the place yearly is now estimated at $1.5 billion.)

Fucking A - what the hell are we thinking????

At a time when cities can't even pay their cops and firemen, we are blowing BILLIONS on mega embassies, pipelines that cost $400 a gallon to maintain - all to prop up folks who don't even like us.

Where's the pay off?

What do we, any of us, gain from this?


And now we're off to Yemen...and probably ready to turn them into another client state

Pax Americana - a joke really...

[dkf]

1. I don't get the mega embassy thing.

[DJ13]

4. Prepping to close military bases maybe?

Those super sized embassies are large enough to act as temp bases for military responses should a need arise.

[dkf]

5. Hmm if that is so I can't really argue there.

[Motown_Johnny]

2. Vatican City is a country unto itself and is 110 acres

http://schools-wikipedia.org/wp/v/Vatican_City.htm

^snip^

Vatican City, officially State of the Vatican City ( Italian: Stato della Città del Vaticano), is a landlocked sovereign city-state whose territory consists of a walled enclave within the city of Rome. At approximately 44 hectares (110 acres), and with a population of around 800, it is the smallest independent state in the world by both population and area.



What do we get from it? Oil, I guess, not really sure.

[Poll_Blind]

3. I would love to have any sitting president asked those same questions.

Most of the reporters who get to speak with a president would not ask those questions, though, and the natural next thought is "Why not?" After all, reporters are just as intellectually-curious as I am, they have access to the President (or the other high government officials)...and yet don't you and any others reading this feel, deep down, that such a simple query is something not likely to be posed to them?

Well, if we can't expect answers from our President (and this really isn't about Obama but any president, presiding over a similar setup/situation), then how about asking the journalists why they won't pose the question?

In my limited experience with that, I imagine the only answer would be stony silence from the reporters, themselves, or possibly a number of more authentic answers about wishing to continue to have access to the President, etc.

So if the President won't answer the questions and the journalists won't ask them, then where are we? Well, obviously in pretty bad shape.

But like a logician working over how to describe a situation in which they have access to few facts, I think one can safely assume that there are some basic questions about the state of affairs of how this country is being run. Those questions naturally and uncontroversially flow from even a simple observation of the state of America's priorities.

So here's where I proudly put on my tinfoil hat, because honestly there is no other hat to put on in a situation like this and state: There are, now, a very large number of behaviors the American government is pursuing, and at great cost to the American People, which simply do not make any sense. My tinfoil hat says there is some way to look at it where these expenditures do make sense.

And, Taverner, that's about the moment when I pull that tinfoil hat off my head and toss it as far away from me as possible: Those ideas which do purport to describe, in some sensible way, the behavior of the American government, are also far more disturbing than the thought that the American government's behavior is some crazy, unpredictable, horribly-expensive madness.

Just the realization itself is disturbing.

PB

[Taverner]

7. My fear is that its all about Peak Oil

And the "powers that be" know we are going to run out sooner than later...

All this is known and agreed on, that we are going to run out of oil some day. The question is when - and the neo-colonization of the middle east is a sign that its much sooner than expected.

[sarcasmo]

6. World Police. This country doesn't car about it's people only about Corporations making money.

[DCKit]

8. Welcome to DU Taverner!

Just kidding, but you're kinda behind the curve.

[Taverner]

9. Oh I know, I'm just giving a delayed response

Sometimes that happens with me

DUBYA GOT REELECTED????

[gratuitous]

10. Sure, they might kill us

But a few people are going to get stinkin' rich (or richer and stinkier), so we must go forward.