A Giant Metaphor

So Baghdad is currently getting an hour of electricity a day because of an insurgent attack -- and they are hoping to get it back to SIX HOURS a day like it was before. The rebuilding of the country has essentially come to an end. Outside of the "Green Zone" things are (in a monumental understatement) not going very well. We cannot even brag about painting schools anymore.

But hey, one thing is getting done:

The future home of the Iranian Embassy --

(picture via Common Dreams)

Three years after a US-led invasion ousted Saddam Hussein’s regime, only one major US building project in Iraq is on schedule and within budget: The massive new American Embassy compound.

The fortress-like compound rising beside the Tigris River will be the largest of its kind in the world — the size of Vatican City, or 80 football fields, or six times larger than the United Nations compound in New York — on about 104 acres. With the population of a small town, it is designed to be entirely self-sufficient; it will have its own defense force and self-contained power and water plants.

The high-tech compound will have 21 buildings reinforced to 2.5 times usual standards. Some walls as said to be 15 feet thick or more. Scheduled for completion by June 2007, the installation is touted as not only the largest, but the most secure diplomatic embassy in the world.

The $592 million facility is being built inside the heavily fortified Green Zone by 900 non-Iraqi foreign workers who are housed nearby and under the supervision of a Kuwaiti contractor, according to a Senate Foreign Relations Committee report.

But at least, thanks to the Bush Administration, we are successfully completing our salute to the great imperial carcasses of the past. Yet another underreported victory of Operation Iraqi Freedom Behold our Mighty Penis!