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| The U.S. Embassy as a lush campus in the middle of a uranium-contaminated Iraqi desert |
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| This yard will be your "campus," guys. That embassy will be ours. Deal, Maliki? Deal! |
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We left Iraq a long time ago, didn't we?
As the U.S. “relocates” personnel (rather than “evacuating” them) out of the World’s Largest Embassy [military base] in Baghdad, it is valuable to look at our one billion dollar monument to American hubris (overarching pride and ambition).
Hey, we meant well! And everyone knows the road to Ramadi is paved with good intentions.
Though likely tens of thousands of people have been inside the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, and a great many of them have scattered photos of the place across the social media landscape, actual official photos of the embassy have been limited to a handful of narrow views. The stated reason for all this is “security.”
Of course a simple
Google search [which can be done better and more privately at
Startpage.com, which incorporates Google search without tracking users] will reveal many images; there even were
3-D model of the place online.
US veterans are reflecting on the crisis in Iraq. Blake Hall served in Iraq in 2006 and 2007, in Mosul and in Baghdad among other places. Nowadays, Hall runs a tech company in Washington, DC, and he's been following the news from Iraq closely. That's been frustrating, he says, and heartbreaking.
Still, what has been missing is a really nice color shot of the lawn. We have that now,
posted online by someone:
There is a very interesting backstory to that nice lawn you see pictured above. If you’ve read my book about Iraq,
We Meant Well, you may already know the story:
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| Iraq: Babylon, Mesopotamia, Sumeria |
The World’s Biggest Embassy (104 acres, 22 buildings, thousands of staff, a $116 million vehicle inventory), physically larger than the Vatican, was a sign of our commitment to Iraq, at least our commitment to excess. “Along with the Great Wall of China,” said the ambassador,
Chris Hill at the time, “the Baghdad Embassy is one of those things you can see with the naked eye from outer space.”
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| Iraqi troops reject puppet gov't, go militant |
The newly-opened embassy was made up of large office buildings, the main one built around a four-story atrium, with overhead lights that resembled sails. If someone told us there was a Bath and Body Works in there, we would not have thought it odd.
The World’s Biggest Embassy sat in, or perhaps defined, the Green Zone. Called the Emerald City by some, the Green Zone represented the World’s Largest Public Relations Failure. In the process of deposing Saddam, we placed our new seat of power right on top of his old one, just as the ancient Sumerians built their strongholds on top of fallen ones out in the desert.
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| Less Mesopotamia but more MESS |
In addition to the new buildings, Saddam’s old palaces in the Zone were repurposed as offices, and Saddam’s old jails became our new jails. Conveniently for Iraqis, the overlords might have changed, but the address had not. The place you went to visit political prisoners who opposed Saddam was still the place you went to look for relatives who opposed the Americans.
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| Read in reverse, add zeros for civilian deaths |
The new Embassy compound isolated American leadership at first physically, and, soon after, mentally as well. The air of otherworldliness started right with the design of the place. American architects had planned for the Embassy grounds to have all sorts of trees, grassy areas and outdoor benches; the original drawings made it look like a leafy college campus.
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