One building that's been built on time and on budget in Iraq: America's fortress embassy

http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/22780

One building that's been built on time and on budget in Iraq: America's fortress embassy
Submitted by davidswanson on Tue, 2007-05-22 20:46. Media

By Ed Pilkington, The Guardian

snip//

But commentators and Iraq experts believe the project was flawed from
its inception, and have raised concerns it will become an enormous,
heavily targeted white elephant that will be an even greater liability
if and when the Americans scale back their presence in Iraq.

"What you have is a situation in which they are building an embassy
without really thinking about what its functions are," Edward Peck, a
former American diplomat in Iraq, told AP.

"What kind of embassy is it when everybody lives inside and it's
blast-proof, and people are running around with helmets and crouching
behind sandbags?"

Since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in 2003 about 1,000 US
diplomatic and military staff have been using one of his former
palaces as a make-shift embassy, which several observers have
criticised as giving the regrettable impression that the Americans
merely replaced Saddam's authoritarian rule with their own.

Joost Hildermann, an Iraq analyst with the International Crisis Group,
said of the new embassy: "This sends a really poor signal to Iraqis
that the Americans are building such a huge compound in Baghdad. It
does very little to assuage Iraqis who are angry that America is
running the country, and not very well at that."

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How much do you want to bet?

i believe it was the last dictators fortress of solitude as well.