An American Plantation in Baghdad
We’ve known about the Bush administration’s Fortress of Folly for a while. It’s one of Iraq’s endless occupation-bred, American-made scandals: the $600 million American “embassy compound” redrawing Baghdad’s skyline along the Tigris River-and American designs on the Middle East. But like every scandal with this administration-from sleeping at the wheel of 9/11 to nonexistent WMDs to Abu Ghraib to the most corrupt Justice Department in history thanks to torture-apologist Alberto Gonzales-the embassy folly continues to evade the din of accountability. A new Congressional Research Service report shows just what the major media are missing, and how illustrative of American imperiousness the compound is becoming.
The embassy project was contracted through First Kuwaiti General Trading and Contracting Company, a Kuwaiti company that works in tandem with Halliburton’s Kellogg, Brown, and Root on many military contracts. Kuwaiti General hires only non-Iraqis at slave wages, Bangladeshis, Egyptians and Pakistanis especially, paying them $1,000 a month, or $5 an hour (assuming that they work them only 50 hours a week, which is doubtful. The workweek is probably six days, the workday about 10 to 12 hours long). Iraqis allegedly can’t be trusted to put up buildings in their own capital city for their “liberators.”
First Kuwaiti has been investigated for possibly engaging in human trafficking to fill up its workers’ ranks (Iraqis can’t be trusted, but kidnapped demi-slaves from the Subcontinent can). The Congressional Research Service (disappointingly, for such a usually thorough investigator) dismisses the allegation in the equivalent of a footnote: “According to a State Department official, a recent Inspector General report determined that reports of improper labor practices by First Kuwaiti are unfounded.” The official is not named. Nor is the report documented. CRS only notes that the official works in the Office of Acquisition Management, and that he was interviewed by phone. Here’s a more damning report by the State Department’s own 2007 “Trafficking in Persons Report,” from the section about “Special Cases” such as Iraq:
Iraq is a source and destination country for men and women trafficked for commercial sexual exploitation and involuntary servitude. Children are trafficked for commercial sexual exploitation; criminal gangs may have targeted young boys and staff of private orphanages and may have trafficked young girls for forced prostitution within Iraq and abroad. Iraqi women are trafficked to Syria, Jordan, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Turkey, and Iran for the purpose of commercial sexual exploitation. Iraq is also a destination country for men and women trafficked from South and Southeast Asia for involuntary servitude as construction workers, cleaners, and domestic servants. Some of these workers are offered fraudulent jobs in safe environments in Kuwait or Jordan, but are then forced into involuntary servitude in Iraq instead; others go to Iraq voluntarily, but are subjected to conditions of involuntary servitude after arrival. Although the governments of India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and the Philippines have official bans prohibiting their nationals from working in Iraq, workers from these countries are increasingly coerced into positions in Iraq with threats of abandonment in Kuwait or Jordan, starvation, or force.
The report, of course, doesn’t link human trafficking with First Kuwaiti. It is a State Department report: the State Department wouldn’t want to indict its own construction firm. Just as the Department of Justice’s report, if there is one, isn’t going to do more than provide cover, as Alberto Gonzales’s Justice Department always doesn’t for Bush and his Halliburtonite cronies. Now for the explanation regarding First Kuwaiti’s preference for foreign workers. It has nothing to do with security. It has to do with slavery. If First Kuwaiti was to hire locals (and help bring down Baghdad’s unemployment rate, which would also bring down the level of violence and the killing of Iraqis and Americans), it would have to contend with Iraqi workers on their own soil, free to come and go, to quit work if they please, to go home, to organize. Iraqis would, in short, have pull. Not so foreign workers. First Kuwaiti can confiscate their passports and essentially threaten them, as the State Department says, at will. The workers are First Kuwaiti’s property. And there you have it: The American embassy, alleged symbol of “the face of America” in Iraq, is showing its true colors in its foundations and construction. It is, as America itself is, the work of slaves. And no one is saying word one about it.
The embassy ostensibly will cost $600 million. That’s just construction. In 2007, Congress approved $750 million for State Department operations, which means embassy “activities.” Included in that funding, the Congressional Research Service reported, was “mission security, logistics support, overhead security (reinforcing roofs and ceilings to protect against bombs), and information technology.” That’s in existing State Department buildings, not the new embassy. You have to assume that moving into the new compound would not necessitate extra security costs, the compound having been built for security. So State Department costs should go down. Not so. Here’s what has never been reported: The Bush administration has requested $2.8 billion for State Department operations in 2008. It has done so for all but $65 million through those “supplemental” appropriations that expertly sideswipe the regular budgeting process).
Why the difference? Because in 2008 the State Department, which will really be the equivalent of American defense contractors’ and other business’ chamber of commerce operation in Iraq, will have taken possession of the embassy, where it can then roam its ambitions, and American foreign policy designs, freely: Arabs see the embassy “compound” as that alien mother ship in “Independence Day,” with its oblong-headed aliens plotting their crawly take-over wherever they could set down their techy grasp. The embassy is already among the largest in staff and budget, if not the largest. (The Congressional Resarch Service doesn’t say, but no other embassy comes close to a $1 billion budget, let alone a $3 billion one.) Washington’s Baghdadian Rome employs 1,000 Americans ” representing various U.S. government agencies and between 200 and 300 direct hires and locally engaged staff.” Among all of those, how many actually speak Arabic? All of 33. Here’s where it gets creepy:
Americans representing about 12 government agencies are providing the face of America in the embassy and regional offices in Iraq. The agencies include the Departments of State (DOS), Defense (DOD), Agriculture (USDA), Commerce (DoC), Homeland Security (DHS), Health and Human Services (HHS), Justice (DoJ), Labor (DoL), Transportation (DoT), Treasury, and the Agency for International Development (USAID). Agencies that did not recommend staff for an Iraq presence include Departments of Energy, the Interior, and Veterans Affairs, as well as NASA, Peace Corps, Secret Service, and Social Security.
What, may we ask, are the Departments of Health and Human Services, the Department of Labor, the Department of Transportation, and the Department of Homeland Security doing in Iraq? It’s a wonder that NASA chose to skip out, considering the outlandish membership on the embassy’s roster. Since Arabic isn’t a requirement to work on behalf of American agencies in Iraq, the message seems clear. It’s a one-way deal through and through. The United States is there to exploit, not to share. It’s not even about oil anymore. It’s about every resource imaginable, as long as it’s profitable, and as long as the locals don’t get in the way. The embassy has already learned First Kuwaiti’s lesson. Pay the locals no heed.
Proof? Just look at the way the occupiers have dealt with the Iraqi government, their supposed ally, regarding existing facilities used by embassy staff: “The State Department has been using three sites for embassy-related needs. The sites are the Chancery, formerly a Baathist residence which was later occupied by the U.S. Army; the Annex (the Republican Palace) previously used by the CPA; and the Ambassador’s residence, once occupied by Ambassadors Bremer, Negoponte, and Khalilzad. The U.S. government is not paying Iraq for the use of property and buildings, according to the State Department. The Iraqi government has reportedly requested that these facilities be returned to it, with improvements, which State Department officials say will happen when the New Embassy Compound is completed in 2007.” Don’t bet on those improvements. Is Iraq being returned to its people “with improvements” after four and a half years’ occupation? Nor, by the way, is the U.S. government paying for the 104-acre site on which the embassy folly is situated. Iraq and the United States signed “an agreement on diplomatic consular property” in October 2004. “Among other things,” CRS reports, “this agreement transferred to the United States title to a site for the new American Embassy compound and future consulate sites in Basra and Mosul.” So much for the Fifth Amendment’s prohibition against takings applying to any Americans. Then again, the Fifth Amendment is skull and bones even in the United States.
The final paragraph in the CRS report is all irony: “Oversight includes congressional monitoring of how the embassy represents American foreign policy, cultural and commercial interests.” It states the obviously unspoken: The embassy is there to impose American will and purpose. And it states the obviously undone: Oversight? Monitoring? When even Congress is in the bag for furthering “cultural and commercial interests” (keeping in mind the breadth of those interests’ definition), how could we expect it to provide oversight? Come late summer, the networks will televise the Big news of the embassy’s opening, they’ll all report it like it’s the State department’s version of the Mall of America on the Tigris, the story will spin for 24 hours, and beyond that, the symbol of American neo-imperialism will take its place in the American public’s overcrowded den of indifference. In Baghdad, it’ll loom so large that they’ll be able to see its meaning and intentions from all points of the compass as far off as Casablanca, Aden and Jakarta.
The American embassy in Baghdad is a form of political architecture.
A lot of government buildings in the United States were built to be larger than life in order to tell the native Americans that the Europeans were here to stay. The same is happening in Iraq.
Rumor has it that the reason for the Super Embassy, Mall and Theme Park is because Cheney is planning to move in and run his shadow dictatorship from the basement. That’s why Libby was kicked - so he could shop curtains and flooring.
I hope Cheney does live there. The radiation readings of DU in downtown Baghdad are 2,000 times above normal background reading. he’ll die of radiation poisoning, just like every single person who lives there now will.
Did Halliburton make any money on the job?
Why can’t we just buy our oil like everybody else?
MEN, listen up: how about showing some disdain, when amongst other men that brag about frequenting prostitutes (whom generally have no empowerment, and are typically exploited).
Don’t deny the “boy’s club” mentality isn’t pathetically pervasive. Things won’t change, unless guys flip each other some serious sh!t about this issue- which they really just never seem to do.
Shameless LIERS & MURDERERS!!!!!!!!!!
Nature at work.
The big fish eat the little fish.
The Philippines revisited.
I’ve been waiting to see pictures of the ’super’ bases and Vatican-sized US embassy since we first started construction, which, if I’m not mistaken, was immediately after we imperiously invaded Iraq. Didn’t the puppetmaster, errrr, President Bush state four years ago that the US had no intention of staying in Iraq permanently? Didn’t he also campaign on a platform of “no nation-building?” Oh, that’s right, he lies…. Silly me, I keep forgetting….
Finally, someone, Mr. Tristam, is writing about the inflated, no-bid contracts to KBR and Halliburton, and their complicity in exploiting labor at US taxpayer expense. What a surprise that US Corporations would exploit its labor force. Now that’s not very egalitarian, is it? Oh that’s right, US corporations kneel at the altar of capitalism…. I keep forgetting….
Wouldn’t it be nice if we could count on our mainstream media to dutifully act in their special ‘Fourth Estate,’ ‘watchdog’ capacity to keep WE THE PUPPETS, errrr, PEOPLE, apprised of the construction of these phallic symbols of arrogant US imperialism? Oh, that’s right, they’re in bed with the neo-cons. Silly me, I keep forgetting…. What’s wrong with me?
Will the next debate be about asking Obama
and Hillary what they intend to do about
that new city in Iraq called the Embassy?
Or will they go on talking about abortion
and lesbians, issues that distract the real
issues, Bush, Cheney, The Carlyle Group.
I can clearly see the future. Resources are running thin from the world oil to the american military. Rumors are flying of a NEW ATTACK here in the united states in the near future. Possibly this summer? Maybe today, maybe tomorrow. The Bush Dictatorship is spoiling for a war in Iran. Where will they get the troops? A draft. Due to the ensuing agitation, Bush will postpone the elections.
You will be at home watching t.v., probably American Idol, and will hear a loud knock at the door. It’s a group of agents from Homeland Security and they are requesting every person on your block to “report” to an agency and given papers with which to document all guns and household valuables you may have.
What will you do?
The border in Canada will be closed to all but the RICHEST americans to pass through. Oh, thinking about mexico? No chance, they’re building the wall to keep us from getting away.
They aren’t building the fence to keep mexicans out. If they did that, where would they get the cheap labor and HUGE source of revenue? They never wanted to keep mexicans out.
Face it, resistance is futile! Assimilate or die!
And they hate us for our freedom…
Yes it is clear that the US is determined to suck every last dollar of profit possible out of Iraq. With departments of agriculture, commerce, labor, transportation and treasury scheduled to begin operations there in this state of the art facility larger than Vatican City, one need not question that intent.
That this construction is ongoing despite the lack of clean drinking water or electricity for Iraqis may explain some of the hostility throughout Bahgdad and the country.
For Giovanna or anyone else who hasn’t seen the scope of this “plantation”, go here…
http://images.google.co.uk/images?hl=en&q=US%20Embassy%20In%20Iraq&btnG=Google+Search&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&um=1&sa=N&tab=wi
The domination desired by the US is in large part due to China’s rapid economic growth. With full control of Iraq, and it’s oil, the US can curb the consumption of China and thus it’s growth and competition with the US on a global scale.
Iran will of course provide China what it needs energy wise. That’s why they are in the neocons crosshairs next.
Cheers for the Empire! So long human race…
billhilly
There’s nothing natural about it. And by the way, how big a fish are you and who’s meal are you willing to be?
Empire and slavery go hand in hand. Ya caint have one without t’other.
Americans have been slaves to corporate marketing manipulations for decades. Their slavery has always had the pleasing veneer of consumerism to give it a certain deceptive shine. Soon this illusion will no longer be needed.
Stand and fight or be consumed.
“Stand the marchers soaring talons,
Peaceful lives will not deliver freedom,
Fighting we know, Destroy oppression
The point to reaction”
relayer@q.com
The pay seems to be reallly high, in 1990,1991 the “workers” from India, Pakistan, etc were getting around $27.00 per month. This was in Saudi.
I just came from a visit to Kuwait and Mr Tristam has probably never been there as $1,000 a month is very high wages for Bangladeshis, Egyptians and Pakistanis to be paid. Thats why these people come to the Gulf as this is more than they can earn at home. Why he is focusing on this aspect I don’t know as its a distraction from the real issue a permanent large Embassy fotress in Iraq and a war that is not ending!
Kuwaitis by the way are very Pro-US as they are grateful for American protection during the Sadaam invasion in 1991. They treated me as a Western Blonde woman with great respect and I never felt threatened or that my life was in any sort of danger. I experienced little to no harrasement there and was incredible safe and welcomed. This was very nice especially given that our media always portrays Gulf Aarbs in a very negative way. These stereotypes simply aren’t true.
Yes one can find computerized images of the interior of new Ebassy at site above, in fact many people copied them off the US Design firms website when they were posted there as an advertizent of firms capabilitys.
T firm Berger Devine Yaeger put on web bragging about ther work and other Bush Connected militry works, but within two days after being contactd by State Department had to remove them as they violated Secrecy laws and may endanger our people.
Bull!
The Kuwaiti Firm, First Kuwiti Trading and Contracting is in fact a sub contractor to Haliburton. First Kuwiti is also at present and in the future going to be the subcontractor to Haliburton for delivery of supplies to that embassy which will require a 247 convoy of materials shipped from certain food and luxury goods, Tyson chickens anyone, with connections here in states into Kuwait and then trucked to Baghdad.
How large is the second sub contract to Kuwiati First for supplying embassy after it is built from Haliburton, well lets say it will run over 220 million a month to supply and is so large that Kuwiti First is subcontracting its subcontract to many other firms.
This is not an embassy per se it is a buisness center for the new Middle East Free Trade Center.
How will it be paid for, by Irauqi oil of course as under the Constitution the 70% rule for Iraqui oil has to all go to out of country firms.
Where will the buisness contracts be signed and sealed, in the embassy.
The hurry is because the Middle East Free Trade Association is already well underway and the WTO, World Bank and over 35 ME and European finacial interest, the bank of Irqaq is us owned along with German and Austrian fiancial institutions, are involved with one new bank being formed of just ME oil shieks having a planned 100 billion in cash advanced to be invested.
Symbolism is not so well understood by most Americans and that is one reason the Towers attack was so easy to pass off as they hate our freedoms when in reality the only things attacked were symbols of American Empire, the towers where almost all of worlds trade and cash transfers go through, the pentagon self explanatory, the white house self explanatory and the other target was in all probability the CIA headquarters even if not accidental actons for the conspiracy folks look who gained the most from the attacks,
So when the US builds an embassy of so huge a size, Al Jazeera had pictures of one portion of wall that will surround the complex; those pictures are illegal in states, and it is immense in proportion to any other structure not just in ME but world.
Not a wall but a multi storied extremely well fortified with missle emplacemnts microwave weaponry and nuke proof.
This feature can be seen in almost all of Baghdad and will be the symbol of American superiority and authority as to who rules country.
Every bad aspect of US nation is in extant in Embassy, pure greed and avarice, luxury and amenities that rival those of an Oil shiek for the state dept. workers, butchery of civilians and unarmed populace, deliberately causing inter religios warfare by deliberate blowing up even Mosques to inflame the other side, Negroponte is blamed for that one by even the US press as it leaked out after his visit last year, a prostitute can earn 30,000 USD a year in area just outside of Green Zone, Hash and other drug are frequently found upon Us soldiers and booze is flagrantly exhibited along with whoring in open, and the embassy staff is complaining at how rude the Iraqui Miltiary force and laborers from Kuwiati First talk to them.
When Gods walk in Baghdad maybe we should just have mere mortals bow down.
Why not they already have us bent over and when done with that positon have us on our knees on our knees here in the Good OLD US of A.
billhilly July 26th, 2007 4:23 pm
Nature at work.
The big fish eat the little fish.
—-
I beg to differ. It is rather a corruption of nature. Meaning it is we, the human animals, who are pathologically corrupted. In nature even the bigger fish do not (typically) eat the little ones of their own species. And yet everywhere you look in the human world, it is evident that we are hell bent on destroying our own. Our own species. We’re not only homicidal, but genocidally suicidal. We don’t even need to fear an alien invasion to usher in an extinction, we’re quite capable of managing one by ourselves, and may well be on the path towards one.
Chew on that fact, billhilly, before you attempt another blase, twisted ‘darwinism’ again. Furthermore Nature, including the non-human animal aspects of it, is far superior to us, contrary to popular human myths.
——————-
Mr. Tristam,
Thanks for that essay. A plantation indeed! Everything “old” is new/s again…
and so it goes… Imo, mid-evil times is what we’re living in.
Annemarie j. Speaking of humanity exhibiting the way of lemmings, read this website. This will be showing up in every state in a year or so. It isn’t just Iraq and the Mid-East.
www.protecthawaii.ws/page2.html
Kem,
We reap what we sow? It seems to be true. Tragically true, in many, many cases.
I’ve seen some of those photos before, and more. At first I felt that you should have provided a caveat/warning about them. On the other hand, CD is a website for adults. So why should adults be sheltered from seeing/witnessing a handful of photos of the god-awful results of our hideous, hateful actions? I cannot begin to imagine how I would feel if I had to personally witness or experience any of this.
Those photos of the malformed babies and children are heartwrenching. They are shocking and disturbing. And what’s most disturbing to me is the fact that they were/are all avoidable, unnecessary. Maybe even worse is the fact that many people (especially those most directly responsible for those atrocities) do not give even a second thought to the fact/reality of them?
I’m not a religious person. And don’t ask me why (especially today!), but I do believe that there’s a god/s. But too often lately I’m wondering where exactly god is or went? And I wonder, have we been abandoned, left to our own devices because we have demonstrated again and again that we are appallingly wicked, uncaring, selfish, callously indifferent? Perhaps we are the hideously frightened and frightening monster of Dr. Frankenstein’s creation? I can’t say for certain. But I can say without doubt or hesitation that we are defective. Pathologically defective.
Lemmings? Even lemmings are better than us. So help me God!
Why is it we never see pictures of this compound? Yes, people are being used as slaves throughout the whole middle east and children are being kidnapped and shipped abroad. What makes men be so despicable? Makes one wonder if the human race is worth saving. Or to be more correct, are the male genders deserving of life altogether? Men are really unnecessary anymore for survival of the human race.
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judi July 29th, 2007 3:45 am
Makes one wonder if the human race is worth saving. Or to be more correct, are the male genders deserving of life altogether? Men are really unnecessary anymore for survival of the human race.
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Geeze did you go just a little too far? Man hating much?! Oh yeah right, men are solely responsible for all the evils in this world. And ALL women are delicate, loving, nuturing flowers! Honestly, did you even read what you wrote before you hit the submit button? pfft!