"We call it the 'nec'," he said.

"It stands for the new embassy compound. And it's a pain in the neck."

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/iraq/article2364255.ece

September 1, 2007

From The Times

Welcome to the new US embassy

It's bigger than Saddam's palace and, with a cinema, gym and pool, is
the safest and smartest place to live in Iraq...
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Martin Fletcher in Baghdad

Baghdad is a city of ruins - of burnt-out homes, of shops wrecked by
suicide bombs, of the crumbling shells of Saddam-era palaces and
ministries destroyed by smart bombs in the US invasion of 2003.

There is one notable exception.

It is probably the only big new building project in the capital in the
past four years.

It is the new US Embassy on the west bank of the Tigris which the
contractors will transfer to the US Government officially today.

A towering wall renders the huge new embassy almost invisible from
ground level.

For security reasons the State Department has refused all requests for
media tours - promising instead to release pictures of the interior at
some later date.

The only way to view it is from the roof of the Babylon hotel, across
the river.

What you can see through the haze of heat and pollution is a complex
of two dozen smart new dun and grey blocks set in 104 acres of grounds
ringed by that impregnable wall.

It is a fortress within the fortress that is the green zone.

It is designed to repel any physical attack and when it opens for
business in a few weeks, it will be protected by a detachment of
Marines with their own barracks.

It is not, however, invulnerable to criticism.

This is the largest US Embassy built - roughly the size of Vatican
City - and at $600 million the most expensive.

At a time when millions of Baghdadis outside the green zone receive
only a couple of hours of water and electricity daily, Iraqis observe
that this project has been completed on time, on budget, and is
entirely self-sufficient with its own fresh water supply, electricity
plant, sewage treatment facility, maintenance shops and warehouses.

"People are very angry," said one young Iraqi.

"It's for the Americans, not for the Iraqis."

There are two office blocks that will house 1,000 staff,

six apartment blocks containing 619 one-bedroom units,

spacious residences for the Ambassador and his deputy,

a school, shopping centre and food court;

a swimming pool, tennis and basketball courts;

a gymnasium, cinema, beauty salon and social club.

This is known because the architects - Berger Devine Yaeger, of Kansas
City - posted drawings on its website briefly until the State
Department ordered their removal.

The embassy was built with imported labour.

This year a congressional committee heard charges that First Kuwaiti
General Trading & Contracting told a planeload of Filipino
construction workers that they were flying to Dubai to build hotels
and did not admit that they were heading for Baghdad until they had
taken off, forcing them, in effect, to work there.

Critics also portray the new compound as a symbol of American
isolation and occupation, and a sign of how little confidence the US
has in Iraq's future.

Jane Loeffler, an expert on the architecture of embassies, writes in
the latest edition of Foreign Policy magazine:

"Encircled by blast walls and cut off from the rest of Baghdad, it
stands out like the crusader castles that once dominated the Middle
East."

Embassies were traditionally designed to promote interaction with
their host communities, she says, but not this one.

"Although US diplomats will technically be 'in Iraq' they may as well
be in Washington.

"Although the US Government regularly proclaims confidence in Iraq's
democratic future, the US has designed an embassy that conveys no
confidence in Iraqis and little hope for their future. Instead, the US
has built a fortress capable of sustaining a massive, long-term
presence in the face of continued violence."

Edward Peck, a former US Ambassador to Iraq, says in the same
magazine:

"The embassy is going to have a thousand people hunkered behind
sand-bags. I don't know how you conduct diplomacy in that way."

US diplomats roll their eyes in the face of such verbal assaults.

"The size and scale of the embassy reflects very much our expectation
of a strong long-term relationship with Iraq," one senior official
insisted.

"Of course it's a fortress. What embassy isn't nowadays? Is it a
tragedy? Of course it is. It's a sad statement of the reality of
today's world."

The relentless criticism clearly grates.

"We call it the 'nec'," he said.

"It stands for the new embassy compound. And it's a pain in the neck."

_____________________________________________________

Your dollars at work.

Harry