Opening Day

Today was the opening day for our embassy in Baghdad, our largest embassy in the world by far. Some comments from Foreign Policy of late 2007:

Located in Baghdad’s 4-square-mile Green Zone, the embassy will occupy 104 acres. It will be six times larger than the U.N. complex in New York and more than 10 times the size of the new U.S. Embassy being built in Beijing, which at 10 acres is America’s second-largest mission. The Baghdad compound will be entirely self-sufficient, with no need to rely on the Iraqis for services of any kind. The embassy has its own electricity plant, fresh water and sewage treatment facilities, storage warehouses, and maintenance shops. The embassy is composed of more than 20 buildings, including six apartment complexes with 619 one-bedroom units. Two office blocks will accomodate about 1,000 employees. High-ranking diplomats will enjoy well-appointed private residences. Once inside the compound, Americans will have almost no reason to leave. It will have a shopping market, food court, movie theater, beauty salon, gymnasium, swimming pool, tennis courts, a school, and an American Club for social gatherings. To protect it all, the embassy is reportedly surrounded by a wall at least 9 feet high—and it has its own defense force.

The embassy, which was at least $100,000,000 over budget, is of such a scale that the role of most embassies - to interact with the local population - is virtually impossible to fulfill.

Lord of all he surveys

Retired Major General Charles Williams is in charge of Overseas Building Operations (OBO) for the State Department. And he really is in charge. He barred diplomats and Congressmen from entering the embassy being built in Iraq. The State Department refuses to have him grant interviews. His underling on the scene in Iraq, James Golden, was thrown out of Iraq by Ambassador Crocker for incompetence in overseeing the construction of the embassy, but Golden now oversees it from Washington.

One has to question Williams' ability as a construction manager. In August he announced that the embassy in Iraq would open in September. But, as we've seen, there are a few problems there. Now, the sprinkler system has been demonstrated to be faulty and there are questions as to how blast-resistant the building really is.

Williams strives to bring his projects in on time. However, sometimes he cuts corners to do so. In Berlin in order to meet deadlines he built one less floor in the new embassy, which means that one design goal - have all employees in one building - will not be met.

Finally, we have hints of skulduggery with regards to the building of the Iraq embassy.

Who's protecting the embassy in Kabul?

As with our other embassies in the 21st century, the answer to the question - assuming you simply want to know the name, rather than whether the embassy is really being protected - is a private security provider, ArmorGroup, a subsidiary of Wackenhut. It does not appear as though the company is doing a very good job.

First of all, the company has a hard time staffing their embassy force. Turnover is quite high (close to 100% for the American staff) so that the embassy has been understaffed; excessive turnover also severely impacts the building of the relationships that are necessary to the successful functioning of any organization.

Another requirement of a successful organization is the ability to communicate. Two-thirds of the guards are Gurkhas whose English is very poor. Then, there are the weekly 'parties' which feature hazing and other abuse of the staff.

The State Department, to whom ArmorGroup reports, has tried to remedy the situation but has not been very successful. What happened to the days when Marines guarded our embassies?

A very busy schedule

The new ambassador to Egypt, Margaret Scobey, has been too busy to present her credentials to Hosni Mubarak. She needs to do so in order if she is to follow conventions so that she can preside over the embassy's July 4 celebration. Some of her time has been taken up with the investigation of the death of one of her dogs.

An autopsy showed that the dog was poisoned and Ms Scobey is worried that someone may poison her or other embassy staff. The embassy's security staff is hot on the case and is workng with the Egyptian police on the matter. You'll be relieved to know that the dog was buried in the United States, a Marine detachment saw to that.

Most people in the know suspect that the dog ate poison that was placed in the garden to deter stray cats and dogs from enetering the embassy grounds. The ambassador does not place much credence in that story.

No sugar for your coffee

Every so often the American Embassy in Iraq runs out of sugar because it has become much harder for us to bring in food now that the troops have left. Things have been so bad that some holiday meals of the embassy staff consisted of MRE, the food given to soldiers in the field.

Because of our deteriorating relations with the Iraqis, we will likely cut the embassy staff way back, perhaps the staff will be only 8,000, one-half of what it is now. Relations are so bad that the Prime Minister's office has to approve of visas for all Americans; sometimes it takes the approval of the Prime Minister himself. 

Failure is no impediment

First Kuwaiti General and Trading, the builder of our embassy in Iraq, will be doing more work for us. It will build another embassy in Gabon and consulates in Indonesia and Saudi Arabia. In this new work it is a subcontractor to an American firm, Grunley Walsh. That's a good American name, a Yank and an Irishman. However, the owner is a Lebanese who is very friendly with Michel Aoun.

First Kuwaiti must have some strong connections in Washington as it was awarded the Iraq embassy contract on a sole source basis.

Another Moyers Interview

Here are excerpts from an interview with Jeremy Scahill (emphases mine):

BILL MOYERS: How do explain this spike in private contractors in both Iraq and Afghanistan?

JEREMY SCAHILL: Well, I think what we're seeing, under President Barack Obama, is sort of old wine in a new bottle. Obama is sending one message to the world, but the reality on the ground, particularly when it comes to private military contractors, is that the status quo remains from the Bush era. Right now there are 250 thousand contractors fighting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. That's about 50 percent of the total US fighting force. Which is very similar to what it was under Bush. In Iraq, President Obama has 130 thousand contractors. And we just saw a 23 percent increase in the number of armed contractors in Iraq. In Afghanistan there's been a 29 percent increase in armed contractors. So the radical privatization of war continues unabated under Barack Obama.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

But, ultimately, I think that we have to look to what Jan Schakowsky, the congresswoman from Illinois, says. We can no longer allow these individuals to perform what are inherently governmental functions. And that includes carrying a weapon on U.S. battlefields. And that's certainly not where President Obama is right now.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

BILL MOYERS: But many people will say of course, the truth, which is he inherited a quagmire from the Bush administration. What's he to do?

JEREMY SCAHILL:Well, there's no question that Obama inherited an absolute mess from President Bush. But the reality is that Obama is escalating the war in Afghanistan right now. And is maintaining the occupation of Iraq. If Obama was serious about fully ending the occupation of Iraq, he wouldn't allow the U.S. to have a colonial fortress that they're passing off as an embassy in Baghdad. Bill, this place is the size of 80 football fields. Who do you think is going to run the security operation for this 80 football field sized embassy? Well, it's mercenary contractors.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

JEREMY SCAHILL:Well, I mean, we have two parallel realities here. We have the speeches of President Obama. I'm not questioning his sincerity. And then you have the sort of official punditry that's allowed access to the corporate media. And they have one debate. On the ground though, in Afghanistan and Pakistan, you hear the stories of the people that are forced to live on the other side of the barrel of the gun that is U.S. foreign policy. And you get a very different sense. If the United States, as President Obama says, doesn't want a permanent presence in Afghanistan, why allocate a billion dollars to build this fortress like embassy, similar to the one in Baghdad, in Islamabad, Pakistan? Another one in Peshawar. Having an increase in mercenary forces. Expanding the US military presence there

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

JEREMY SCAHILL:No. It doesn't surprise me. Because this is increasingly turning into a war of occupation. That's why General McChrystal is making that statement. If this was about fighting terrorism, it would be viewed as a law enforcement operation where you are going to hunt down criminals responsible for these actions and bring them in front of a court of law. This is turning into a war of occupation. If I might add about General McChrystal, what message does it send to the Afghan people when President Obama chooses a man who is alleged to have been one of the key figures running secret detention facilities in Iraq, and working on these extra judicial killing squads. Hunting down, quote unquote, insurgents, and killing them on behalf of the U.S. military. This is a man who's also alleged to have been at the center of the cover-up of Pat Tillman's death, who was killed by U.S. Army Rangers.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The fact is that I think most Americans are not aware that their dollars being spent in Afghanistan are, in fact, going to for-profit corporations in both Iraq and Afghanistan. These are companies that are simultaneously working for profit and for the U.S. government. That is the intricate linking of corporate profits to an escalation of war that President Eisenhower warned against in his farewell address. We live in amidst the most radical privatization agenda in the history of our country. And it cuts across every aspect of our society.

Where you turn war, essentially, into a videogame that can be waged by people half a world away. What this does, these drones, is they it sanitizes war. It means that we increase the number of people that don't have to see that war is hell on the ground. And it means that wars are going to be easier in the future because it's not as tough of a sell.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

When the United States goes in and bombs Farah province in Afghanistan, on May 4th, and kills civilians, according to the Red Cross and other sources, 13 members of one family, that has a ricochet impact. The relatives of those people are going to say maybe they did trust the United States. Maybe they viewed the United States as a beacon of freedom in the world. But you just took you just took that guy's daughter. You just killed that guy's wife. That's one more person that's going to line up and say, "We're going to fight the United States." We are indiscriminately killing civilians, according to the UN Human Rights Council. A report that was just released this week by the UN says that the United States is indiscriminately killing civilians in Afghanistan and elsewhere around the world. That should be a collective shame that we feel in this society. And yet we have people calling it the good war.

Doing God's Work

The Christian Embassy does God's work in Washington, D.C. It seeks to evangelize members of the military and politicians. It holds regular Bible studies meetings and prayer breakfasts; every Wednesday the breakfast is held in the executive dining room of the Pentagon.

God's work does not come cheaply, so the embassy decided to create a fundraising video espousing its worth. They were able to get several generals to tout the virtues of the embassy. It so happens that the generals, who were all on active duty, were in uniform when they gave their spiel. It also so happens that such behavior violates Army regulations. Thus far, no action has been taken against these generals.

Earlier this year a corporal and a sergeant were prosecuted for marching in an antiwar protest while wearing their uniforms. Will the generals be prosecuted and threatened with dishonorable discharge?

Everybody affiliated with making this video was doing God's work. Therefore, the film crew was given unrestricted access to the Pentagon. Should they have been?

Reporting on Afghanistan

This month the GAO issued a report on Afghanistan reconstruction and it's not much better than that issued for Iraq. Management problems are virtually the same - "USAID lacked a comprehensive strategy to direct its efforts. USAID did not systematically collect information needed to assess the progress of its major projects...measures provided by the embassy to decision-makers in Washington did not comprehensively portray progress in each sector of the overall US program."

On this last point(poor reporting by the embassy), isn't our new ambassador in Iraq (Zalmay Khalid?) the same guy who led the embassy in Afghanistan? I hope he's read this report.

The report also pointed out the difficulties in planning when one is relying on a supplemental appropriation as we are doing in funding our wars. Not only is this an attempt to mask the true cost of these wars, but it also makes managing them harder.

Thus far, reconstruction has not done much to benefit Afghanistanis. They're still the fifth poorest country in the world. Half of them live below their poverty line. 20% don't get the minimum food they need daily. Perhaps, that's why opium production continues to rise.

The Occupying Army

Obama has said that all troops will be removed from Iraq by 1/1/2012. It looks like the Administration is waffling on this point, as Panetta is talking about leaving 3-4,000 troops there. The military wants 3-4 times as many. Perhaps, Obama is looking at having some troops there as a sop to the military, but a senior military man had this to say about the number of troops to be left in Iraq, “I think we’re doing this backwards. We should be talking about what missions we want to do, and then decide how many troops we’ll need.”

Irrespective of the number of troops, you have to realize that we now are living in the world of the professional army. Soldiers no longer do all the work of fighting our wars. The CIA has its hand in all over the world. And we still have our battalions of private security companies.

I doubt that we will close our embassy in Iraq. It is our largest in the world and will house not only diplomats but more security contractors. The embassy will also house an Office of Security Cooperation that, like similar ones in countries like Egypt, would be staffed by civilians and military personnel overseeing the training and equipping of Iraq’s security forces.

Sixty-six years later we still have troops in Germany and Japan. It's unlikely that we'll have troops in Iraq anywhere near that long, as our empire will be over long before then.

We're out of Iraq

So says our President. What about the 16,000+ who will be staffing our largest embassy? There will be troops and contractors as well as embassy personnel in Iraq for many, many years. Remaining in countries with whom we have battled is not a new phenomenon for us. Germany, Japan, Korea still have substantial American troops residing there. Is this a good use of our military or a good financial investment?

Tit for Tat

Russia has expelled four staff members from the English embassy in Moscow. Is that because England has done the same with the Russian embassy in London?

What a difference six weeks makes

On May 21 I commented on our new embassy in Iraq and reported that it was one of the few projects that was supposed to be on time and on budget. I spoke too soon. Today's Washington Post speaks of a cable from the current embassy which reports that the first major building, the base for the guards, was not habitable - some appliances did not work, workers got electrical shocks, wiring melted, rooms in trailers were filled with formaldehyde fumes

How the situation could change so rapidly is the question.

Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan

We're moving into Pakistan in a very big way. Obama is asking Congress for $736,000,000 to build a new embassy in Islamabad. This is only $4,000,000 shy of our Baghdad embassy, which just happens to be our largest. And, this is not all we are spending on embassies in Pakistan. We've just upgraded our consular facilities in Karachi, will be buying the only 5-star hotel in Peshawar and will upgrade the facilities in Lahore.

Will all this building defuse the anti-American feelings in Pakistan or will it intensify them?

Is there really a change in our policies in South Asia? It's starting to look like there will not be.

O, Canada

Lieutenant Colonel Douglas Martin is a military attache at the Canadian embassy in Washington. There must have been many changes in the way Canada manages its embassies, as Lt. Col. Martin has apparently been given the green light to show Americans

Image by MATEUS_27:24&25 via Flickr

how much Canada is doing in the battle in Afghanistan.

His way of achieving this is to build a small Afghan village on the grounds of the embassy and have the Taliban - rather actors playing as the Taliban - attack it. As part of the attack they will create fake - but loud - IED explosions in downtown DC twice a day on September 23 and 24. One Afghan civilian will be damaged by the IED and helped by a Canadian medic. “If this works the way I want it to, more Americans will know what Canada is doing in Afghanistan,” says Lieutenant-Colonel Martin. "It should provide the full flavour of hyper-realistic training. Absolutely, you are going to hear it out on Pennsylvania Avenue.”

Does anybody besides Lt. Col. Martin think that there is a chance of the explosions causing panic? I find it amazing that he has been given the authority to stage an event that is very likely to embarrass Canada.

Congressmen arrested

The title of this post does not refer to being arrested for not doing their job, although one could wish something as drastic as arrest would have some effect on our leaders.  Seven Congressmen - John Lewis of Georgia, Keith Ellison of Minnesota, Joseph Crowley of New York, Luis Gutierrez of Illinois, Al Green of Texas, Raul Grijalva of Arizona, and Charles Rangel of New York - were arrested along with other protesters at yesterday's Camino Americano rally on the National Mall for Congress to act on a comprehensive immigration bill.  All are Democrats.  Lewis has been arrested five times as a member of Congress - twice at Washington's South African embassy to protest apartheid, twice outside the embassy of Sudan to protest genocide in Darfur, and at the immigration rally.

You won't believe this

We, the US of A, are building the largest embassy on earth. Where? Baghdad, Iraq. It will be visible from space, cover 104 acres, consist of 21 buildings, accommodate 8,000 people and cost a mere $592,000,000. But, it is one of the few, if not the only, large project that is on time and within budget in that war-ravaged country; we should be grateful for that.

Of course, the Iraqis who have had limited water and electricity for three years may not be too pleased to hear that the embassy will have its own water and power plants. Or, that the Kuwaiti contractor has not hired a single Iraqi.

What in God's name are we trying to do? Alienate all the Iraqis?

What the f@#$ is going on?

It's really too bad that the on-line Wall Street Journal requires you to join (unless of course you take advantage of their introductory offer) as Tuesday's Journal had a fascinating article about David, an Army foreign-area officer.

David is a West Point graduate who has become an expert in the ways, customs and, most important, the language of Arabs. He spent two years in Yemen, where he was able to meet people who wouldn't step foot into the US Embassy and establish close relationships with these people.

In May 2004 he was transferred to Mosul to help build relationships with Iraqis who could be considered trustworthy. By all accounts he has performed superbly in a variety of tasks from reconaissance to nation-building. The chief of staff for the general in charge of the northern third of Iraq says of David and other foreign-area officers, "We ought to have one of these guys assigned to every commander in Iraq." Yet, David and his colleagues are being transferred out of Iraq. When David leaves Mosul, the Embassy there will have exactly zero people who speak Arabic or who can be considered a Middle East expert. Does that make any sense? Particularly when we have made so many mistakes in Iraq because we don't understand the culture or speak the language.

Immediate withdrawal? No

But a major withdrawal from Iraq within a year makes a lot of sense to the Center for American Progress. We would extract the vast majority of our troops in a phased 'redeployment' and leave about 10,000 in northern Iraq and some Marines to protect the embassy. There would be help nearby: a brigade and airmen in Kuwait, the navy and Marines in the Persian Gulf.

One of the authors is Lawrence Korb, who has produced a number of provocative articles over the past year or so.

Fire! Fire!

Let's hope that there is not a fire at the new embassy in Baghdad. The alarm system does not work. At least one pump is out of commission. Some kitchens are, in fact, fire hazards. And, since we declared the building ready in December, the wonderful contractor, First Kuwaiti, is now being paid $4,500,000 to maintain it.

Talk about a boondoggle!