It's not an embassy, it's a fort - sort of like what the Romans did at the
far reaches of their empire.

JP wrote:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12319798/

MSNBC.com

New U.S. Embassy in Iraq cloaked in mystery
Baghdad locale, slated to be completed in 2007, to be largest of its kind

The Associated Press
Updated: 5:45 p.m. ET April 14, 2006


BAGHDAD, Iraq - 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 new U.S. Embassy also seems as cloaked in secrecy as the ministate in
Rome.

"We can't talk about it. Security reasons," Roberta Rossi, a spokeswoman
at
the current embassy, said when asked for information about the project.

A British tabloid even told readers the location was being kept secret -
news that would surprise Baghdadis who for months have watched the forest
of
construction cranes at work across the winding Tigris, at the very center
of
their city and within easy mortar range of anti-U.S. forces in the
capital,
though fewer explode there these days.

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," just east of al-Samoud, a former palace of
Saddam Hussein's, and across the road from the building where the
ex-dictator is now on trial.

The Republican Palace, where U.S. Embassy functions are temporarily
housed
in cubicles among the chandelier-hung rooms, is less than a mile away in
the
4-square-mile zone, an enclave of American and Iraqi government offices
and
lodgings ringed by miles of concrete barriers.

5,500 employees at the embassy
The 5,500 Americans and Iraqis working at the embassy, almost half listed
as
security, are far more numerous than at any other U.S. mission worldwide.
They rarely venture out into the "Red Zone," that is, violence-torn Iraq.

This huge American contingent at the center of power has drawn criticism.

"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.

State Department spokesman Justin Higgins defended the size of the
embassy,
old and new, saying it's indicative of the work facing the United States
here.

"It's somewhat self-evident that there's going to be a fairly sizable
commitment to Iraq by the U.S. government in all forms for several
years,"
he said in Washington.

Higgins noted that large numbers of non-diplomats work at the mission -
hundreds of military personnel and dozens of FBI agents, for example,
along
with representatives of the Agriculture, Commerce and other U.S. federal
departments.

They sleep in hundreds of trailers or "containerized" quarters scattered
around the Green Zone. But next year embassy staff will move into six
apartment buildings in the new complex, which has been under construction
since mid-2005 with a target completion date of June 2007.

Iraq's interim government transferred the land to U.S. ownership in
October
2004, under an agreement whose terms were not disclosed.

"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.

Estimated cost of over $1 billion
Original cost estimates ranged over $1 billion, but Congress appropriated
only $592 million in the emergency Iraq budget adopted last year. Most
has
gone to a Kuwait builder, First Kuwaiti Trading & Contracting, with the
rest
awarded to six contractors working on the project's "classified"
portion -
the actual embassy offices.

Higgins declined to identify those builders, citing security reasons, but
said five were American companies.

The designs aren't publicly available, but the Senate report makes clear
it
will be a self-sufficient and "hardened" domain, to function in the midst
of
Baghdad power outages, water shortages and continuing turmoil.

It will have its own water wells, electricity plant and
wastewater-treatment
facility, "systems to allow 100 percent independence from city
utilities,"
says the report, the most authoritative open source on the embassy plans.

Besides two major diplomatic office buildings, homes for the ambassador
and
his deputy, and the apartment buildings for staff, the compound will
offer a
swimming pool, gym, commissary, food court and American Club, all housed
in
a recreation building.

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.

Higgins said the work, under way on all parts of the project, is more
than
one-third complete.

© 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not
be
published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

© 2006 MSNBC.com

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12319798/