My Kingdom for a Toilet: Summing Up the American Debacle in Iraq

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/economy/153061/my_kingdom_for_a_toilet%3A_summing_up_the_american_debacle_in_iraq_

Sometimes, just when you least expect it, symbolism steps right up and coldcocks you. So how about this headline for -- in the spirit of our last president -- ushering America’s withdrawal from Iraq right over the nearest symbolic cliff: “U.S. empties biggest Iraq base, takes Saddam’s toilet.” They’re talking about Victory Base, formerly -- again in the spirit of thoroughly malevolent symbolism -- Camp Victory, the enormous American military base that sits at the edge of Baghdad International Airport and that we were never going to leave.

If you want to measure the size of American pretensions in Iraq once upon a time, just consider this: that base, once meant -- as its name implied -- to be Washington’s triumphalist and eternal military command post in the oil heartlands of the planet, is encircled by 27 miles of blast walls and razor wire. (By comparison, the island I live on, Manhattan Island to be exact, is just 13.4 miles long.) So that’s big. It was, in fact, the biggest of the 505 bases the U.S. built in Iraq.

By the way, it does seem just a tad ironic that only at the moment of departure are Americans given an accurate count of just how many bases “we” built in that country to the tune of billions of dollars. Previous published figures were in the “more than 300” range. In recent months, Victory Base has been stripped of much and locked down. You can almost hear taps playing for the closing of its Burger King, Subway, Taco Bell, and Cinnabon franchises, its bottled water plant, its electric grid (which delivered power with an effectiveness the occupation was otherwise incapable of providing for the people of Baghdad), its “mother of all PXs,” its hospital, and so many of the other “improvements” now valued at $100 million or more.

[dtexdem]

1. Even if intended to last forever, when a base is built by Halliburton ...

it won't last even a few months.

[OnyxCollie]

3. It was built by First Kuwaiti, a company with ties to KBR,

but it's still a piece of shit.

Firm blamed for Baghdad embassy flaws gains new jobs
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2007/10/24/20821/firm-blamed-for-baghdad-embassy.html#ixzz1dnjbPuu5

WASHINGTON — The Kuwaiti contractor that's building the new U.S. Embassy in Baghdad — behind schedule and plagued by allegations of shoddy construction and safety flaws — is still winning lucrative new contracts to build U.S. diplomatic installations overseas.

Late last month, First Kuwaiti General Trading & Contracting Co. was part of a team that won a $122 million State Department contract to build a U.S. consulate in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, according to contract documents.

That's one of at least three State Department jobs, in addition to the Baghdad project, that First Kuwaiti won in association with a U.S. firm, Grunley Walsh LLC of Rockville, Md.

Since 2006, by operating as a subcontractor to Grunley Walsh, First Kuwaiti has won contracts for work on a new U.S. Embassy in Libreville, Gabon; on a consulate in Surabaya, Indonesia; and on the Jeddah project.

U.S. Embassy in Iraq
http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/mideast/RS21867.pdf

First Kuwaiti General Trading and Contracting Company (a Kuwaiti company with ties to Kellogg, Brown, and Root in some Defense Department activities) was selected through a competitive bidding process to build the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, according to State Department officials. Current controversy surrounding construction of the embassy involves news accounts of First Kuwaiti’s construction defects, using improper labor practices, and possibly trafficking in people to build the embassy. According to a State Department official, a recent Inspector General report determined that reports of improper labor practices by First Kuwaiti are unfounded.1

[indepat]

2. Obscenity in the extreme in the context that social security, Medicare, and Medicaid must now take

large cuts in order to protect MIC spending at near present levels of approximately one-half the world's with only 5% of the population. Indisputably obscenely depraved misfeasance of office, but who gives a shit? :patriot: