April 14, 2006
The U.S. government/military has been illegally squatting on Cuban soil for more than a century. Now AP reports on the new U.S. "embassy" being built in Baghdad: The
fortress-like compound rising beside the Tigris River here will be the
largest of its kind in the world, the size of Vatican City, with the
population of a small town, its own defense force, self-contained power
and water, and a precarious perch at the heart of Iraq's turbulent
future.
The embassy complex -- 21 buildings on 104 acres,
according to a U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee report -- is
taking shape on riverside parkland in the fortified "Green Zone."
"Embassy
Baghdad" will dwarf new U.S. embassies elsewhere, projects that
typically cover 10 acres. The embassy's 104 acres is six times larger
than the United Nations compound in New York, and two-thirds the
acreage of Washington's National Mall.
It will have its own
water wells, electricity plant and wastewaster-treatment facility,
"systems to allow 100 percent independence from city utilities," says
the report, the most authoritative open source on the embassy plans.
Security,
overseen by U.S. Marines, will be extraordinary: setbacks and perimeter
no-go areas that will be especially deep, structures reinforced to
2.5-times the standard, and five high-security entrances, plus an
emergency entrance-exit, the Senate report says. Consider all that security and self-containment in the light of this:Iraq's
interim government transferred the land to U.S. ownership in October
2004, under an agreement whose terms were not disclosed. The interim government referred to was, as readers will remember, appointed by the United States,
and while it was recognized by the United Nations as being the
"sovereign government" of a "sovereign country," that can't really be
taken seriously, any more than the Platt Amendment,
signed at the point of a gun, by which the U.S. gained control of
Guantanamo. Can we expect the U.S. to be occupying this fortress in the
heart of Baghdad indefinitely in the future, even in the face of a
future hostile Iraqi government? My money's on "yes," which is why
they've already designed it for the security and self-sufficiency they
had to build into Guantanamo years later.
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