"It's as if it's their country, and we are guests staying here."

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.newsday.com/news/printedition/world/ny-woemba305321347aug05,0,665814.story

BAGHDAD - Huge, expensive and dogged by controversy, the new U.S. Embassy compound nearing completion here epitomizes to many Iraqis the worst of the U.S. tenure in Iraq.

"It's all for them - all of Iraq's resources, water, electricity, security," said Raid Kadhim Kareem, who has watched the buildings go up at a floodlighted site bristling with construction cranes from his post guarding an abandoned home on the other side of the Tigris River. "It's as if it's their country, and we are guests staying here."

For all its scale and nearly $600-million price tag, the compound - which would be the largest embassy in the world with accommodations for more than 1,000 people - is not big enough and might not be safe enough if a major military pullout left the country engulfed in a heightened civil war, U.S. planners say now. More than 85 rocket and mortar strikes killed at least 16 people in the 5-square-mile Green Zone between February and June, the UN reported. Five more people died in fierce barrages in early July.

"Having the 'heavily fortified Green Zone' doesn't matter one iota to indirect fire," said a senior military officer, using a term for rocket and mortar attacks. Like much U.S. planning in Iraq, the embassy was conceived three years ago on the assumption stability was around the corner and the military effort would draw down, leaving behind an array of civilian experts who would remain intimately engaged in Iraqi state-building. The result is what some analysts call a $592-million anachronism.

[tom_paine]

1. Do trhe Iraqis think it is different for the Imperial Subjects of Amerika.?

No, the Royal and Loyal Bushies have sezied OUR country, as well.

Our nation, during it's 224 1/2 year reign (1776-2000), became very rich and it is only because of this surplus of resource, that the Imperial Subjects of Amerika are living at a much higher quality that the Imperial Subjects of Freedomstan (formerly Iraq).

Not to worry, the Amerikan Aristicracy, the Royal and Loyal Bushies, mostly, are preparing to make Amerika much more Iraq-like.

Lokk how much closer we have travelled to being like Saddam's Iraq here in Amerika already, AFTER ONLY 6 1/2 YEARS.

[dipsydoodle]

2. Is a $592-million anachronism

a synonym for a badly planned expensive fuck up ?:shrug:

[mikeytherat]

4. Who cares if anyone ever uses it? Did Halliburton (KBR/Bechtel) get paid?

Well then, mission accomplished!

mikey_the_rat

[UKProPeace]

3. This article doesn't seem to mention....

those abducted and threatened with submachine guns to carry out the work on that embassy....Every time that embassy is mentioned, we should all be reminding people of the following reports on the use of slave labour:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x3426442

"MANILA: The Filipinos thought they were flying to Dubai. One of them told a fellow passenger how excited he was about his new job as a telephone repairman at a hotel in the emirate.

It was only after liftoff from Kuwait, when the captain made an announcement, that they learned their destination was, in fact, Baghdad.

"All you-know-what broke loose on that airplane. People started shouting," said Rory Mayberry, an American passenger on the flight who had been hired to work in the Iraqi capital.

The Filipinos settled down only after a security guard from the company that had hired them waved a submachine gun, according to Mayberry. "They realized they had no other choice but to go to Baghdad," he said."

Oh, and a snippet of the report on the Nepalese slave labour also in that thread:

"The US government outsources to Halliburton's KBR, which outsources to 200 subcontractors, which recruit thousands of workers from impoverished countries. This multi-layered system cuts costs and creates walls of deniability for the US government and Halliburton. US law calls for sanctions against countries that engage in human trafficking but in September 2005, Bush, citing Kuwait's and Saudi Arabia's efforts in the "Global War on Terror," waived the sanctions against them

The pay for such workers ranges from $65 to $112 weekly. In Nepal the per capita (average per person) annual income is about $270! The Nepalese government relies on an estimated $1 billion sent home each year by citizens working overseas.

A recent two-part investigative series in the Chicago Tribune (Cam Simpson and Aamer Madhani, October 9-10, 2005) explained how a village agent recruited twelve Nepalese men and turned them over to a broker who sent them to Amman, Jordan. It was only then that some of them learned they were really destined for Iraq. While being transported to an American air base northwest of Baghdad in an unprotected van, they were kidnapped and killed."

The message needs to get out loud and clear, the US is using slave labour, kidnapping and threatening foreign nationals to build that embassy.

[JohnyCanuck]

5. After the Pentagon misplaced a couple trillion dollars

of US taxpayers' money a few years ago, it's only reasonable that Dubya has ordered there to be strict cost controls on the embassy construction in Iraq. It's hard to beat slave labor for keeping construction costs down. Of course there's always the chance that the contractors are charging the US government for the construction based on using normal labor rates of pay and then pocketing the difference that they make by using the cheap, impressed labor they kidnap off the streets of various Asian cities. Nah, could never happen. Why did I even bring it up.

[stillcool]

6. Do I see a pattern...

Or is this just the way "Business is Done"?

Big Dig payment for fraud at $50m
But company can still do business
By Sean P. Murphy, Globe Staff | July 28, 2007

Aggregate Industries NE Inc., which pleaded guilty to fraud for supplying 5,700 truckloads of substandard concrete on the Big Dig, will pay $50 million to settle the case, but it can still do business with the state and federal governments.

In a key provision of the agreement announced yesterday between Aggregate and state and federal prosecutors, the region's largest concrete supplier avoided debarment, an administrative sanction that would have prevented the company from bidding on federal or state contracts, which make up most of the company's business.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
While the case against the company is finished, criminal charges remain against six of its former managers. In a 135-count indictment announced last year, the managers were accused of repeatedly passing off over-age concrete as fresh and of falsifying documents to cover the scheme.
---------------
In an interview yesterday, Daniel Johnston, a fourth whistle-blower who filed suit in 2006 and will receive $75,000, said he was a concrete inspector for Aggregate on the Big Dig when he began to suspect that too-old concrete was being recycled and delivered as new.

When he questioned the practice, he said, Aggregate personnel told him, "This is how business is done." He said later that he was warned his questions could cause him to wind up "in a hole."
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2007/07/28/big_dig_payment_for_fraud_at_50m/?page=2

3 senators want Big Dig manager barred
By Andrea Estes, Globe Staff | July 12, 2007
http://www.boston.com/news/traffic/bigdig/articles/2007/07/12/3_senators_want_big_dig_manager_barred/
Three state senators renewed their call yesterday for the governor to disqualify Big Dig manager Bechtel/Parsons Brinckerhoff from receiving any more contracts from the state.

Senators Steven Baddour, Marc Pacheco, and Bruce Tarr said the report released Tuesday by the National Transportation Safety Board left no doubt that the company failed in its responsibility to assure the safety of Massachusetts motorists.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Baddour, Democrat of Methuen and cochairman of the Joint Committee on Transportation, told the Globe that after the tunnel collapse July 10, 2006, he looked at the ceiling himself.

"You could see where the bolts had slipped," he said. "You didn't have to be an engineer. You didn't have to have an advanced degree. If they had done the most basic, cursory inspections, they would have shut down the tunnels. That's inexcusable neglect."

Iraq: Follow the Money
`Let's Hope They're Not Waiting For The Americans To Fix It'
By Joy Gordon*
Le Monde diplomatique
April 2007
-----------------------------------------------
Hundreds of irregularities

All this has been documented by auditors, including those from US agencies. The DFI was audited by outside accountants KPMG and later Ernst & Young, hired by the UN international advisory monitoring board. Its report from December 2004 noted that there were "hundreds of irregularities" in the CPA's contracting process, including missing contract information and payment for contracts that had not been supervised.

A typical KPMG audit for 2004 found 37 cases involving $185m of contracts where files could not be located; there were 111 cases with no documentation for services performed under the contracts.7 Another audit found that the Halliburton subsidiary firm, Kellogg, Brown & Root, had "significantly and systematically" violated US federal contracting rules by providing false information about its costs.8 Despite this, KBR's contracts were repeatedly expanded and renewed.

As reconstruction projects were completed, stories emerged of terrible incompetence and neglect. The US awarded a contract to renovate Al-Hillah General Hospital, south of Baghdad, to include the installation of four new elevators. The project officer signed a certificate of completion, authorising full, immediate payment even though the project was not completed. Three months later an elevator crashed, killing three people. The contractor had never installed new elevators, only badly renovated the existing ones.9

In another case, the contractor responsible for construction at Al-Sumelat water plant had done such incompetent work that the plant could not produce drinkable water: the pipeline was installed in three unusable segments, none of them connected to the main. 10There have been dozens more incidents involving shoddy work, goods that were never delivered or equipment that never worked.
About the Author: Joy Gordon is a professor of philosophy at Fairfield University, Connecticut

[DeposeTheBoyKing]

7. Funny - when I clicked on this I thought it was about the U.S. under the Rethugs!

Very maddening story. How would we feel if someone did this to us?