The Billion Dollar US Embassy in Iraq

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 )