U.S. Building Massive Embassy in Baghdad

You will remember that bin Laden made two demands to the US after the attacks of 9-11: the removal of US troops from the country of the two Holy Places (Saudi Arabia), and the establishment of a state of Palestine.

In due course, Bush became the first US President ever to publicly call for a Palestinian state. And, in a story that received very little publicity in the United States, the US has removed it's troops from Saudi Arabia citing the reason, in Rummy's words, that the Middle East "is now a safer region because of the change in Iraq."

You've got to hope his tongue is firmly in his cheek when he spouts this garbage.

Anyway, so far 2-0 to bin Laden.

This has obviously left the US with the major problem of where to place it's troops in order to protect it's broader interests in the Middle East.

There are many of us on the left who argued that this was, indeed, one of the main reasons that Bush decided to invade Iraq.

Not, as some claimed, because the US wanted Iraq's oil; the US actually don't need the oil from Iraq. No, what the Bush administration actually seek to do is to control who else has access to this region's invaluable natural resources. With the rise in demand for oil from India and China this becomes a US bargaining chip, if you will.

Now, in order to do this, the US need to establish a permanent military presence there, to replace the heavy footprint lost in Saudi Arabia.

And now, comes further proof that we, who protested against the Iraq War, were right in our assumptions.

I reported here how the US and UK were building six "enduring" bases in Iraq.

Now comes the rather startling news that the US is building an American Embassy in Iraq, consisting of 21 buildings, and covering an area of 104 acres. To put those figures into some kind of perspective, the US is building an Embassy in Iraq the size of Vatican City!

The 5,500 Americans and Iraqis working at the Embassy are larger in number than at any other US mission anywhere in the world.

The presence of a massive U.S. embassy - by far the largest in the world - co-located in the Green Zone with the Iraqi government is seen by Iraqis as an indication of who actually exercises power in their country," the International Crisis Group, a European-based research group, said in one of its periodic reports on Iraq.

Now, if anyone still believes that the US presence there is, "at the invitation of the Iraqi government", and that the US "would leave" if the Iraqis requested that they do so: I have a bridge in London to sell you.

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Tags: US, Iraq, military, bases, Embassy, enduring, permanent, longterm, oil, strategic, assets,