Making sure Obama becomes Bush's third term

If McCain doesn't make it:

Bush wants 50 military bases, control of Iraqi airspace and legal immunity for all American soldiers and contractors:

A secret deal being negotiated in Baghdad would perpetuate the American military occupation of Iraq indefinitely, regardless of the outcome of the US presidential election in November.

The terms of the impending deal, details of which have been leaked to The Independent, are likely to have an explosive political effect in Iraq. Iraqi officials fear that the accord, under which US troops would occupy permanent bases, conduct military operations, arrest Iraqis and enjoy immunity from Iraqi law, will destabilise Iraq's position in the Middle East and lay the basis for unending conflict in their country.

But the accord also threatens to provoke a political crisis in the US. President Bush wants to push it through by the end of next month so he can declare a military victory and claim his 2003 invasion has been vindicated. But by perpetuating the US presence in Iraq, the long-term settlement would undercut pledges by the Democratic presidential nominee, Barack Obama, to withdraw US troops if he is elected president in November.

The timing of the agreement would also boost the Republican candidate, John McCain, who has claimed the United States is on the verge of victory in Iraq – a victory that he says Mr Obama would throw away by a premature military withdrawal.

I don't think anyone is really surprised by this. You can't build the largest effing embassy on earth and not have it discussed.

Now we're pissing off the Germans

An incident between American soldiers and three Iraqi workers at the German embassy in Baghdad has created new tensions between Berlin and Washington, SPIEGEL reports in advance of its Monday issue.

According to a classified report sent by German Ambassador to Iraq Hanns Schumacher to the Foreign Ministry in Berlin, three off-duty Iraqi security guards were temporarily taken into custody in Baghdad and allegedly mishandled. A third was taken by the Americans and detained for four months at a prison camp near Basra.

After receiving complaints from German diplomats, two of the security personal, who claim to have been mishandled, received financial compensation. So far, however, the Americans have not apologized to the Iraqi taken to Basra. The German diplomatic mission to Iraq currently employs about 120 Iraqis, who mostly provide security to embassy facilities.

Can't we do just ONE thing right in Iraq? Or are our soldiers being told that ALL Iraqis are bad guys?

Oh, look! More incompetence.

At least the Bush administration is consistent.

WASHINGTON — The fire-fighting system in the mammoth new $740 million U.S. Embassy in Baghdad is defective, according to documents obtained by McClatchy and U.S. officials, who said that their concerns were ignored or overruled in a rush to declare the complex completed.

"As far as I know, nothing's been fixed," said one State Department official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he feared retaliation for speaking to the news media. "The lives of the people who are working in that building are going to be at stake" if the complex doesn't meet building codes, he said.

The 104-acre embassy complex, which has been hit at least once by mortar fire, will house more than 1,000 U.S. diplomats, coalition military officials and associated personnel. U.S. diplomats in Iraq are still headquartered in a former palace of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad's Green Zone and haven't moved into the new embassy complex.

Well.. what can you say when you work with slave labor and under such dangerous conditions? And by the way.... who are you going to get to come work at this monument to the Neocon PNAC and the Bush administration?

Remember that honkin' big ass embassy we are building in Iraq?

The one that shows we intend to stay for a thousand years? It's being built with slave labor and shitty materials:

WASHINGTON — The latest problem with the trouble-plagued new U.S. embassy complex in Iraq is that the sprinkler systems meant to contain a fire do not work, according to officials in Congress and the State Department.

The previously undisclosed problem in the $592 million project was discovered several weeks ago when the fire-safety systems were tested and pipe joints burst, State Department representatives recently informed Congress.

The embassy complex, being built by First Kuwaiti General Trade and Contracting Co., has been marred by repeated problems. In May, when kitchen facilities at a guard camp that is part of the embassy complex were tested, the electrical system malfunctioned and wires melted. A subsequent inquiry showed that First Kuwaiti had used counterfeit electrical wiring that did not meet specifications, according to testimony at a congressional hearing in July.

Former top investigators for State Department Inspector General Howard Krongard have charged that Krongard refused to aggressively investigate allegations of misconduct by First Kuwaiti and deficiencies in the Baghdad Embassy.

Krongard has disputed his former aides' version of events, and is expected to testify before Congress later this month.

The one-time aides to Krongard, including former Assistant Inspector General for Investigations John DeDona, have told Congress that the inspector general did not pursue allegations that First Kuwaiti failed to construct blast-resistant walls to protect the embassy, as required by its contract.

Krongard also took the unusual step of personally investigating allegations that First Kuwaiti abused foreign workers and illegally brought some workers to Iraq against their will, the aides have told Congress.

The embassy is eventually supposed to hold almost 1,000 U.S. diplomats and embassy staff, who are now crowded into a former palace in Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone.

It remains unclear when the embassy, intended to be the largest U.S. diplomatic post in the world, will open for business. An embassy spokesman in Baghdad had no comment Saturday on the latest problems with the new complex.

In a letter Thursday to Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte, Rep. Tom Lantos, D-Calif., chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, complained that he had been assured repeatedly that the building would meet its scheduled opening date last month.

"Our new embassy compound in Iraq is apparently facing significant contractor deficiencies that will delay its opening for weeks or even months past its promised delivery date," Lantos wrote.

The glorious neocon experiment that is Iraq

Is using slave labor to build the embassy. I can see Cheney's fingerprints all over this.

Via Chet at Vanity Press:

The Oversight Committee holds a hearing, "Allegations of Waste, Fraud, and Abuse at the New U.S. Embassy in Iraq." The hearing examines the performance of the State Department and its contractors in the construction of the new $600 million U.S. embassy in Baghdad. The Committee reviews questions regarding the embassy compound construction as well as allegations of labor abuse through improper contracting practices. Rory Mayberry, a former subcontractor employee for First Kuwaiti Trading & Contracting Company, gives opening testimony.

I know it's your country

But you have to move so our embassy can be even bigger... like covering all of your oil fields...

The massive embassy rising in Baghdad's fortified green zone may not be big enough to house all the planned employees, the LA Times reports. "Despite its brash scale and nearly $600-million cost, the compound designed to accommodate more than 1,000 people is not big enough, and may not be safe enough if a major military pullout leaves the country engulfed in a heightened civil war, U.S. planners now say," the paper writes.

Did they really think nobody would notice?

It's only 104 acres or 80 football fields:

On Tuesday, ThinkProgress highlighted photos of the U.S. embassy in Iraq, which is set to open in September. Projected to cost $592 million, the embassy will have a staff of 1,000 people and operating costs will total $1.2 billion a year. The complex will be 104 acres, which is the size of approximately 80 football fields.

The architectural firm designing the embassy, Berger Define Yaeger, recently posted the designs for the colossus on its website (which is currently down). Today, the State Department ordered Berger to remove the images. AP reports:

Detailed plans for the new U.S. Embassy under construction in Baghdad appeared online Thursday in a breach of the tight security surrounding the sensitive project. […]

The images were removed by Berger Devine Yaeger Inc. shortly after the company was contacted by the State Department.

I take it this 'embassy' is not a permanent base like thing, is it? Right?

This isn't just any old embassy

This embassy is made to last ... permanently:

When the idea of building a new US embassy in Baghdad was first mooted by the American administration in the aftermath of the invasion of Iraq, there seemed to be a grandiose logic to it.

The compound, by the side of the Tigris, would be a statement of President Bush's intent to expand democracy through the Middle East. Yesterday, however, the entire project was under fresh scrutiny as new details emerged of its cost and scale.

Rising from the dust of the city's Green Zone it is destined, at $592m (£300m), to become the biggest and most expensive US embassy on earth when it opens in September.

It will cover 104 acres (42 hectares) of land, about the size of the Vatican. It will include 27 separate buildings and house about 615 people behind bomb-proof walls. Most of the embassy staff will live in simple, if not quite monastic, accommodation in one-bedroom apartments.

The US ambassador, however, will enjoy a little more elbow room in a high-security home on the compound reported to fill 16,000 square feet (1,500 sq metres). His deputy will have to make do with a more modest 9,500 sq ft.

They will have a pool, gym and communal living areas, and the embassy will have its own power and water supplies.

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.

This article was written over a year ago:

Recently, Oliver Poole, a British reporter, visited another of the American "super-bases," the still-under-construction al-Asad Airbase ("Football and pizza point to US staying for long haul"). He observes, of "the biggest Marine camp in western Anbar province," that "this stretch of desert increasingly resembles a slice of U.S. suburbia." In addition to the requisite Subway and pizza outlets, there is a football field, a Hertz rent-a-car office, a swimming pool, and a movie theater showing the latest flicks. Al-Asad is so large -- such bases may cover 15 to 20 square miles -- that it has two bus routes and, if not traffic lights, at least red stop signs at all intersections.

There are at least four such "super-bases" in Iraq, none of which have anything to do with "withdrawal" from that country. Quite the contrary, these bases are being constructed as little American islands of eternal order in an anarchic sea. Whatever top administration officials and military commanders say -- and they always deny that we seek "permanent" bases in Iraq -- facts on the ground speak with another voice entirely. These bases practically scream "permanency."

We are planning to stay in Iraq until the last drop of oil is wrung out of the sand.