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Tom Engelhardt: Stuff Happens: The Pentagon's Argument of Last Resort on Iraq
Politics on HuffingtonPost.com — ... To the tune of multi-billions of dollars, they continued to build these bases up, and then, in Baghdad, put the icing on the Iraqi cake by constructing an almost three-quarter-billion dollar embassy of embassies, a veritable citadel in the heart of the capital's American-controlled Green Zone, meant for 1,000 "diplomats" with its own pool, tennis courts, recreation center, post exchange/community center, commissary, retail and shopping areas, and restaurants -- again, the works. ...

Stuff Happens: The Pentagon's Argument of Last Resort on Iraq
Antiwar.com Original — ... well guarded, 15-20 miles around, with multiple PXes, fitness clubs, brand fast-food outlets, traffic lights, the works. (This, in a country where, for years after the invasion, nothing worked.) To the tune of multi-billions of dollars, they continued to build these bases up, and then, in Baghdad, put the icing on the Iraqi cake by constructing an almost three-quarter-billion dollar embassy of embassies, a veritable citadel in the heart of the capital's American-controlled Green Zone, meant for 1,000 "diplomats" with its own pool, tennis courts, recreation center, post ...

Stuff Happens
The Latest on Air America — ... well guarded, 15-20 miles around, with multiple PXes, fitness clubs, brand fast-food outlets, traffic lights, the works. (This, in a country where, for years after the invasion, nothing worked.) To the tune of multi-billions of dollars, they continued to build these bases up, and then, in Baghdad, put the icing on the Iraqi cake by constructing an almost three-quarter-billion dollar embassy of embassies, a veritable citadel in the heart of the capital's American-controlled Green Zone, meant for 1,000 "diplomats" with its own pool, tennis courts, recreation center, post ...

Tom Engelhardt: Missing Word, Missing World
Politics on HuffingtonPost.com — ... It's about the size of Vatican City, a self-enclosed world with its own elaborate defenses and amenities inside the citadel of Baghdad's Green Zone. Staffed by approximately 1,000 "diplomats," it's the sort of place Cold War Washington might once have dreamed of building in Moscow (not that the Russians would have let them). ...

To the Graduating Class of American Empire, 2009
Commondreams.org Views — ... , is the largest embassy compound on the planet. It's about the size of Vatican City, a self-enclosed world with its own elaborate defenses and amenities inside the citadel of Baghdad's Green Zone. Staffed by approximately 1,000 "diplomats," it's the sort of place Cold War Washington might once have dreamed of building in Moscow (not that the Russians would have let them). Do the Iraqis want such an establishment in their capital? Would you, if it was a foreign "embassy" in your land? Once again, that old-fashioned word "impunity," which once went so well with words like ...

Charisma and the Imperial Presidency
Commondreams.org Views — ... on Earth, built in Baghdad by the Bush administration to imperial proportions as a regional command center. It now houses what are politely referred to as 1,000 "diplomats." Recent news reports indicate that such a project wasn't just an aberration of the Bush era. Another embassy, just as gigantic, ...

Tom Engelhardt: Obama Looses the Manhunters
Politics on HuffingtonPost.com — ... on Earth, built in Baghdad by the Bush administration to imperial proportions as a regional command center. It now houses what are politely referred to as 1,000 "diplomats." Recent news reports indicate that such a project wasn't just an aberration of the Bush era. Another embassy, just as gigantic, ...

Colonizing Iraq
Commondreams.org Views — ... typical case, a Kuwaiti contractor hired to feed U.S. soldiers was accused of imprisoning its foreign workers and then, when they protested, sending them home without pay. This case was handled by U.S. officials, not the Iraqi government. Beyond this legal segregation, the U.S. has also been erecting a segregated infrastructure within Iraq. Most embassies and military bases around the world rely on the host country for food, electricity, water, communications, and daily supplies. Not the U.S. embassy or the five major bases that are at the heart of the American military ...

Biking Out of Iraq
Commondreams.org Views — ... grasp, and possibly even a global version of the same. As for oil -- or what President Bush referred to, on the rare occasion when he mentioned it, as Iraq's "patrimony" -- mum was the word, even though that country had the world's third largest proven petroleum reserves and sat strategically at the heart of the energy heartlands of the planet. Now, with those 130,000 troops still there, not to speak of the scads of rent-a-guns and private contractors, with that overstuffed , overstaffed embassy the size of the Vatican built for 1,000 "diplomats," ...

Biking Out of Iraq
Antiwar.com Original — ... grasp, and possibly even a global version of the same. As for oil — or what President Bush referred to, on the rare occasion when he mentioned it, as Iraq’s "patrimony" — mum was the word, even though that country had the world’s third largest proven petroleum reserves and sat strategically at the heart of the energy heartlands of the planet. Now, with those 130,000 troops still there, not to speak of the scads of rent-a-guns and private contractors, with that overstuffed , overstaffed embassy the size of the Vatican built for 1,000 "diplomats," ...

The More Things Change
Antiwar.com Original — ... being issued about whether it can even be met. That administration also built a humongous , three-quarters-of-a-billion-dollar embassy in Baghdad, undoubtedly the most expensive on the planet. Staffed with approximately 1,000 “diplomats,” it was clearly meant to be a massive command center for Iraq (and, given neocon dreams, the region). Last weekend, well into the Obama era, the Washington Post ...

Is America Hooked on War?
Commondreams.org Views — ... in the Nation magazine.) Diplomacy itself has been militarized and, like our country, is now hidden behind massive fortifications , and has been placed under ...

Tom Engelhardt: Is America Hooked on War?
Politics on HuffingtonPost.com —

Is America Hooked on War?
Antiwar.com Original — ... in the Nation magazine.) Diplomacy itself has been militarized and, like our country, is now hidden behind massive fortifications , and has been placed under ...

2014 or Bust: The Pentagon’s Afghan Building Boom
Antiwar.com Original — ... (His is the sort of summary picture of a less-than-adequately-covered situation that TomDispatch specializes in, based in part on investigative Internet reporting and the mining of Pentagon contracts, government and corporate websites, and military publications.) In fact, some percentage of those 1.5 million pieces of equipment will undoubtedly simply be sent Afghanistan-wards. As the Bush administration built the world’s largest — and shoddiest — embassy in Baghdad, our own mother ship , mission control center for the region, and modern ziggurat , so now, the ...