A U.S. Fortress Rises in Baghdad:

[razors edge]

Asian Workers Trafficked to Build World's Largest Embassy
David Phinney, Special to CorpWatch

http://www.uruknet.biz/?p=m27618&hd=0&size=1&l=e

Pctpber 20, 2006

John Owen didn’t realize how different his job would be from his last 27 years in construction until he signed on with First Kuwaiti Trading & Contracting in November 2005. Working as general foreman, he would be overseeing an army of workers building the largest, most expensive and heavily fortified US embassy in the world. Scheduled to open in 2007, the sprawling complex near the Tigris River will equal Vatican City in size.

Then seven months into the job, he quit.

Not one of the five different US embassy sites he had worked on around the world compared to the mess he describes. Armenia, Bulgaria, Angola, Cameroon and Cambodia all had their share of dictators, violence and economic disruption, but the companies building the embassies were always fair and professional, he says. The Kuwait-based company building the $592-million Baghdad project is the exception. Brutal and inhumane, he says "I’ve never seen a project more fucked up. Every US labor law was broken."

In the resignation letter last June, Owen told First Kuwaiti and US State Department officials that his managers beat their construction workers, demonstrated little regard for worker safety, and routinely breached security.

[AIJ Alom]

1. Freedom is on the march....to oblivion !!!

We're spreading Freedom in the Middle East, freedom in Iraq. Pay no attention to the liberal media.

[Leopolds Ghost]

22. Freedom is on the Death March... building Pyramids in Egypt.

[malaise]

2. It will become the biggest white elephant in

history. How appropriate for the Rethug Neocons.

[PA Democrat]

3. This is just another example of the Bush administration's obscene

incompetence. With rampant unemployment in Iraq, they are using imported slave labor to build the US embassy. God damn those morons to hell.

[Octafish]

4. ''I've never seen a project more fucked up.''

Easy to see why. Remember who got those administrative jobs:

Ties to GOP Trumped Know How

Ties to GOP Trumped Know-How Among Staff Sent to Rebuild Iraq
Early U.S. Missteps in the Green Zone

By Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, September 17, 2006; A01

Adapted from "Imperial Life in the Emerald City," by Rajiv Chandrasekaran, copyright Knopf 2006

After the fall of Saddam Hussein's government in April 2003, the opportunity to participate in the U.S.-led effort to reconstruct Iraq attracted all manner of Americans -- restless professionals, Arabic-speaking academics, development specialists and war-zone adventurers. But before they could go to Baghdad, they had to get past Jim O'Beirne's office in the Pentagon.

To pass muster with O'Beirne, a political appointee who screens prospective political appointees for Defense Department posts, applicants didn't need to be experts in the Middle East or in post-conflict reconstruction. What seemed most important was loyalty to the Bush administration.

O'Beirne's staff posed blunt questions to some candidates about domestic politics: Did you vote for George W. Bush in 2000? Do you support the way the president is fighting the war on terror? Two people who sought jobs with the U.S. occupation authority said they were even asked their views on Roe v. Wade .

Many of those chosen by O'Beirne's office to work for the Coalition Provisional Authority, which ran Iraq's government from April 2003 to June 2004, lacked vital skills and experience. A 24-year-old who had never worked in finance -- but had applied for a White House job -- was sent to reopen Baghdad's stock exchange. The daughter of a prominent neoconservative commentator and a recent graduate from an evangelical university for home-schooled children were tapped to manage Iraq's $13 billion budget, even though they didn't have a background in accounting.

The decision to send the loyal and the willing instead of the best and the brightest is now regarded by many people involved in the 3 1/2 -year effort to stabilize and rebuild Iraq as one of the Bush administration's gravest errors. Many of those selected because of their political fidelity spent their time trying to impose a conservative agenda on the postwar occupation, which sidetracked more important reconstruction efforts and squandered goodwill among the Iraqi people, according to many people who participated in the reconstruction effort.

The CPA had the power to enact laws, print currency, collect taxes, deploy police and spend Iraq's oil revenue. It had more than 1,500 employees in Baghdad at its height, working under America's viceroy in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer, but never released a public roster of its entire staff.

SNIP...

Haveman's critics, including more than a dozen people who worked for him in Baghdad, contend that rewriting the formulary was a distraction. Instead, they said, the CPA should have focused on restructuring, but not privatizing, the drug-delivery system and on ordering more emergency shipments of medicine to address shortages of essential medicines. The first emergency procurement did not occur until early 2004, after the Americans had been in Iraq for more than eight months.

CONTINUED...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/16/AR2006091600193.html

Thanks for the info, DiktatrW. One brave contractor, Mr. Owen is.

[Selatius]

5. Mark my words, we will leave that embassy like we left the one in Saigon

We will be forced out.

[dkofos]

6. Not that they care

The bUSH buddies got their multi million dollar contracts

[SlavesandBulldozers]

12. yep, and. . . wait for it. . .

they'll profit from the reconstruction of it.

[Swede]

7. Until then it will be a magnificent symbol for insurgents.

What the fuck is wrong with this Bush gang? Oh,nevermind.

[Canuckistanian]

17. They might as well paint a Vatican-sized bullseye on it

It will become the most valued target for destruction when the Iraqi revolution comes.

[FogerRox]

18. Choppers on the roof... yup.

[Ravy]

8. If he wasn't already working, they should hire Gerald McRainey

to replace him. He did a great job in Deadwood.

[Leopolds Ghost]

23. Swearingen and the Innkeeper (McCall?) would make a great Cheney/Bush n/t

[Olney Blue]

9. Did they hire Karen Hughes to be the hostess?

[Homer Wells]

10. Has anyone taken any pictures of the new embassy?

I figure anyone who got caught photographing it would be Gitmoed post haste. However I do think it would be a good thing for the people here to see what the US is doing, all the while claiming to have no interests in staying in Iraq for the long term.

[The Wielding Truth]

15. Found this in the Archives. Picture and article.

When there is talk of leaving Iraq I think that * would never leave this. He has plans he still hasn't told us.http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,7374-2162249,00.html

[AlCzervik]

11. hope the roof can hold a helicopter, they're going to need it for

the airlift thats coming.

[formercia]

13. A Crusader Castle to put in the moat.

how appropriate. Enter Saladin, stage left.

[Imagevision]

14. Embassy builing is as pathetic as 20 million for Iraq war celebration

[bigtree]

16. palace of babel

[sutz12]

19. Funny, I thought we were going to make Iraq safe and democratic

Why should we have to build Barad-Dur to keep our ambassador safe?

(Hey, they started the LoTR references :))

[fooj]

20. Where's the MSM on this?

Nevermind.:grr:

[entanglement]

21. Highlights: "Managers beat their construction workers",

"poor sanitation, squalid living conditions and medical malpractice..."

Apparently, some of the workers were tricked into going to Iraq :grr:

[Joanne98]

24. FREEDOM SLAVES!