NYT: U.S. Planning to Slash Iraq Embassy Staff by Up to Half
BAGHDAD Less than two months after American troops left, the State Department is preparing to slash by as much as half the enormous diplomatic presence it had planned for Iraq, a sharp sign of declining American influence in the country.
Officials in Baghdad and Washington said that Ambassador James F. Jeffrey and other senior State Department officials are reconsidering the size and scope of the embassy, where the staff has swelled to nearly 16,000 people, mostly contractors.
The expansive diplomatic operation and the $750 million embassy building, the largest of its kind in the world, were billed as necessary to nurture a postwar Iraq on its shaky path to democracy and establish normal relations between two countries linked by blood and mutual suspicion. But the Americans have been frustrated by Iraqi obstructionism and are now largely confined to the embassy because of security concerns, unable to interact enough with ordinary Iraqis to justify the $6 billion annual price tag.
The swift realization among some top officials that the diplomatic build-up may have been ill-advised represents a remarkable pivot for the State Department, in that officials spent more than a year planning the expansion and that many of the thousands of additional personnel have only recently arrived. Michael W. McClellan, the embassy spokesman, said in a statement, over the last year and continuing this year the Department of State and the Embassy in Baghdad have been considering ways to appropriately reduce the size of the U.S. mission in Iraq, primarily by decreasing the number of contractors needed to support the embassys operations.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/08/world/middleeast/united-states-planning-to-slash-iraq-embassy-staff-by-half.html?_r=1&hp
Is there an emoticon for puking in your hand, carrying it to a warmongering neighbor's house, and throwing the vomit at his door? Just asking.
gateley
(62,683 posts)Was this begun when they were still under the illusion that we would essentially be taking over the country? Were they grooming their new Shaw?
JustABozoOnThisBus
(23,344 posts)I think most of the staffing must have been done under HRC's watch. Bush was maybe responsible for the buildings.
KansDem
(28,498 posts)--more--
http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/09/baghdad-peter-van-buren-we-meant-well
Yeah, Bush can be blamed for the size of the embassy staff...
yurbud
(39,405 posts)SharonAnn
(13,776 posts)Boy, was he wrong!
think
(11,641 posts)Amonester
(11,541 posts)All the while, US bridges and roads need urgent repairs, and only get budget cuts!
All hail the cheneys and bu$hies!
sinkingfeeling
(51,457 posts)DCKit
(18,541 posts)Why won't they just admit how much they love U.S.?
kemah
(276 posts)They were candy shoes, thrown with love and admiration. It was the lame stream media who said they were made of leather. In the video it is hard to tell, but chocolate shoes look a lot like leather shoes in cams.
Boombaby
(139 posts)Not a pretty sight.
penndragon69
(788 posts)The shear scale of the embassy screams the name of the contractors
who designed and built this monstrosity...can you say
HALIBURTION and BECKTEL.
All that money flowed back into the dark lord CHENNYS pockets.
Obama3_16
(157 posts)That with a giant castle fortress in Bagshad, the U.S. was going to run Iraq as a colony. I think that was the ideal plan of Neocons. Thank goodness that crazy mofo McCain didn't make it into the White House.
yurbud
(39,405 posts)the last helicopters out of town.
I guess they DID learn something from Vietnam.