U.S. Embassy in Iraq to be biggest ever
U.S. Embassy in Iraq to be biggest ever
By ANNE GEARAN, AP Diplomatic Writer 11 minutes ago
WASHINGTON - The new U.S. Embassy in Baghdad will be the world's largest and most expensive foreign mission, though it may not be large enough or secure enough to cope with the chaos in
Iraq.
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The Bush administration designed the 104-acre compound - set to open in September in what today is a war zone - to be an ultra-secure enclave. Yet it also hoped that downtown Baghdad would cease being a battleground when diplomats moved in.
Over the long term, depending on which way the seesaw of sectarian division and grinding warfare teeters, the massive city-within-a-city could prove too enormous for the job of managing diminished U.S. interests in Iraq.
The $592 million embassy occupies a chunk of prime real estate two-thirds the size of Washington's National Mall, with desk space for about 1,000 people behind high, blast-resistant walls. The compound is a symbol both of how much the United States has invested in Iraq and how the circumstances of its involvement are changing.
The embassy is one of the few major projects the administration has undertaken in Iraq that is on schedule and within budget. Still, not all has gone according to plan.
The 21-building complex on the Tigris River was envisioned three years ago partly as a headquarters for the democratic expansion in the Middle East that
President Bush identified as the organizing principle for foreign policy in his second term.
The complex quickly could become a white elephant if the U.S. scales back its presence and ambitions in Iraq. Although the U.S. probably will have forces in Iraq for years to come, it is not clear how much of the traditional work of diplomacy can proceed amid the violence and what the future holds for Iraq's government.
"What you have is a situation in which they are building an embassy without really thinking about what its functions are," said Edward Peck, a former top U.S. diplomat in Iraq.
"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?"
The compound will have secure apartments for about 615 people. The comfortable but not opulent one-bedrooms have offered hope for State Department staff now doubled up in tinny trailers.
Morale is at an ebb among the embassy staff, most of whom rarely leave the heavily fortified Green Zone during their one-year tours in Iraq. The barricaded zone houses both the current, makeshift U.S. Embassy and the new compound about a mile away. A recent string of mortar attacks has meant further restrictions.
On Saturday, three mortar shells or rockets slammed into a Green Zone compound where British Prime Minister
Tony Blair was meeting with Iraqi leaders. The attack wounded one person. One round hit the British Embassy compound.
The new U.S. ambassador, Ryan Crocker, is reviewing staffing and housing needs, and fielding complaints about any suggestion employees either double up again or live elsewhere.
"We do believe that the embassy compound was right-sized at the time that it was presented to the Congress," Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice told a Senate panel this month. "There have been some additional issues since that time. "
Rice's senior adviser on Iraq, David Satterfield, said the embassy is not disproportionately expensive and will serve U.S. interests for years. The second-most expensive embassy is the smaller $434 million U.S. mission being built in Beijing.
"We assume there will be a significant, enduring U.S. presence in Iraq," Satterfield said.
The Baghdad Embassy will open in September and be fully staffed by the end of the year, Satterfield said. U.S. diplomats will move from a dogeared
Saddam Hussein-era palace they have occupied since shortly after the 2003 invasion, to the growing irritation of many Iraqis.
The International Crisis Group, a nongovernmental organization that seeks to prevent and resolve conflicts, has identified the complex as the world's largest embassy. The organization notes that the embassy is a sore point with Iraqis who are fed up with war, violence and roadblocks and chafing under the perception the U.S. still calls the shots more than four years after Saddam's ouster.
The embassy also is a prime target.
By ANNE GEARAN, AP Diplomatic Writer 11 minutes ago
WASHINGTON - The new U.S. Embassy in Baghdad will be the world's largest and most expensive foreign mission, though it may not be large enough or secure enough to cope with the chaos in
Iraq.
ADVERTISEMENT
The Bush administration designed the 104-acre compound - set to open in September in what today is a war zone - to be an ultra-secure enclave. Yet it also hoped that downtown Baghdad would cease being a battleground when diplomats moved in.
Over the long term, depending on which way the seesaw of sectarian division and grinding warfare teeters, the massive city-within-a-city could prove too enormous for the job of managing diminished U.S. interests in Iraq.
The $592 million embassy occupies a chunk of prime real estate two-thirds the size of Washington's National Mall, with desk space for about 1,000 people behind high, blast-resistant walls. The compound is a symbol both of how much the United States has invested in Iraq and how the circumstances of its involvement are changing.
The embassy is one of the few major projects the administration has undertaken in Iraq that is on schedule and within budget. Still, not all has gone according to plan.
The 21-building complex on the Tigris River was envisioned three years ago partly as a headquarters for the democratic expansion in the Middle East that
President Bush identified as the organizing principle for foreign policy in his second term.
The complex quickly could become a white elephant if the U.S. scales back its presence and ambitions in Iraq. Although the U.S. probably will have forces in Iraq for years to come, it is not clear how much of the traditional work of diplomacy can proceed amid the violence and what the future holds for Iraq's government.
"What you have is a situation in which they are building an embassy without really thinking about what its functions are," said Edward Peck, a former top U.S. diplomat in Iraq.
"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?"
The compound will have secure apartments for about 615 people. The comfortable but not opulent one-bedrooms have offered hope for State Department staff now doubled up in tinny trailers.
Morale is at an ebb among the embassy staff, most of whom rarely leave the heavily fortified Green Zone during their one-year tours in Iraq. The barricaded zone houses both the current, makeshift U.S. Embassy and the new compound about a mile away. A recent string of mortar attacks has meant further restrictions.
On Saturday, three mortar shells or rockets slammed into a Green Zone compound where British Prime Minister
Tony Blair was meeting with Iraqi leaders. The attack wounded one person. One round hit the British Embassy compound.
The new U.S. ambassador, Ryan Crocker, is reviewing staffing and housing needs, and fielding complaints about any suggestion employees either double up again or live elsewhere.
"We do believe that the embassy compound was right-sized at the time that it was presented to the Congress," Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice told a Senate panel this month. "There have been some additional issues since that time. "
Rice's senior adviser on Iraq, David Satterfield, said the embassy is not disproportionately expensive and will serve U.S. interests for years. The second-most expensive embassy is the smaller $434 million U.S. mission being built in Beijing.
"We assume there will be a significant, enduring U.S. presence in Iraq," Satterfield said.
The Baghdad Embassy will open in September and be fully staffed by the end of the year, Satterfield said. U.S. diplomats will move from a dogeared
Saddam Hussein-era palace they have occupied since shortly after the 2003 invasion, to the growing irritation of many Iraqis.
The International Crisis Group, a nongovernmental organization that seeks to prevent and resolve conflicts, has identified the complex as the world's largest embassy. The organization notes that the embassy is a sore point with Iraqis who are fed up with war, violence and roadblocks and chafing under the perception the U.S. still calls the shots more than four years after Saddam's ouster.
The embassy also is a prime target.
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Ozymandias
By Percy Bysshe Shelley
I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said--"Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desart....Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
5 And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
10 My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings,
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away."0 -
What is it about Iraq that infects people with the notion of building these enormous and useless monuments?
101 acres in downtown Baghdad at the cost of over half a billion dollars...
Let the Iraqis keep the land, give me one-tenth of that budget, I'll kick some government bureaucratic stooge in the nuts about a dozen times, and achieve the same results at a much reduced cost to everyone involved.0 -
just think how big of a wall american could have built on the southern border for $500 million......... 0 -
And the insanity continues. Someone remind me why are we still in this god-forsaken country? 0 -
quote:Originally posted by OJMayo
just think how big of a wall american could have built on the southern border for $500 million.........
$238,095 dollars a mile. Eh, might do it, might not. Still on the low side but we sure as hell could get one started. Bush approved a bill that would have built a 700 mile stretch of fence back in Oct. 06. but he didn't fund it. The republicans were all vowing they were going to get tougher on immigration.
Wonder whatever happened to that?0 -
to do what with whom,where???????? .....a US palace to be a prison....better have a blast proof low orbit elevator to access this joke 0 -
When I saw this story I couldn't help but think of the poem by Shelly that I read in college so many years ago:
I thought of this embassy a hundred years from now, when the Americans have long since gone, and mostly been forgotten.
What will remain of this gigantic embassy?
"Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away."0 -
104 acres...I wonder if they'll have a WAL-MART SUPERCENTER. 0 -
yep, and then when we leave, it can be the biggest museum to American Imperialism, ala the former Embassy in what is now fficially called Ho Chi Minh City.
I'll agree with OJMayo on this one, beter spent on a fence. This is just more coporate welfare for W's cronies IMHO0 -
quote:Originally posted by PBJloaf
This is just more coporate welfare for W's cronies IMHO
Bingo! Just another new, expensive terroist target that we may eventually have to abandon. [V]0
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