Green Zone Paradise of United States of IRAQ

U.S. wants to build ‘paradise’ amid the burning hell it ignited in Iraq


By Fatih Abdulsalam



Azzaman, May 9, 2008



The United States has leaked what can only exist in the imagination of science fiction writers. It wants to turn its fortress in Baghdad called the Green Zone into a shiny, tourist village with a ‘dream list’ of attractions.



This ‘science fiction’ mentality has been there in the minds of the architects of the Iraq invasion in the U.S., both military and civil leaders.



The U.S. still dreams of transforming its Green Zone, the symbol of its dreadful and horrific military and security machine that has imploded a whole nation into a ‘tourist village.’



The zone is seen in Iraq as a symbol center of terror and oppression. It is dislocated from its surroundings. It is a world the U.S. has created for itself and ringed it with blast walls and concrete bocks.



It is already a very beautiful place for its reclusive inhabitants who even lack the courage to drive to the airport and are mostly airlifted there.



Iraqis resisting U.S. occupation and its lackeys target the zone almost on a daily basis hoping to force their occupiers to leave.



Iraqis do not expect positive things from the U.S. They have already seen what its troops and policies have done to their capital and the rest of their country.



The thought of constructing a fascinating village around its $700 million embassy intensifies their rancor and indignation at what U.S. policy makers have done to their country.



The U.S. has dismembered Baghdad through the concrete barriers it has built to separate its neighborhoods.



The U.S. wants to build a ‘dream village’ in Baghdad at a time its bombers are being deployed to strafe the streets and densely populated areas.



The engineers and the architects the U.S. will hire to design and build this village will need to pay more attention to watch towers, electronic fences and war gadgets on how to protect it.



U.S.’s dream village is a plan to set up a paradise in hell.

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US opens new Iraq embassy, moves to normalise ties
05 Jan 2009 10:11:56 GMT
Source: Reuters
By Tim Cocks

BAGHDAD, Jan 5 (Reuters) - The United States opened its new embassy building in Baghdad on Monday, a step symbolising its transition from occupying power to an ally of a sovereign Iraqi government.

In recent weeks U.S. diplomats have gradually moved into the $592 million newly-built compound, the world's largest U.S. embassy building, leaving behind a sprawling palace they had inhabited since toppling Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein in 2003.

U.S. officials ruled Iraq directly from the same palace for more than a year after ousting Saddam.

The opening of the new embassy is in line with a change of power that was effected on New Year's Day, when U.S. forces in Iraq officially came under an Iraqi mandate.

"This new embassy is significant in that it reflects a more normal situation," U.S. embassy spokeswoman Susan Ziadeh said.

"This is a broadening of the relationship because the situation is more secure and we are able to transition to what we call a more normal embassy."

The embassy has 1,200 employees, including diplomats, servicemen and staff from 14 federal agencies, Ziadeh said, adding that "its scale reflects the importance of the U.S.-Iraq bilateral relationship".

U.S. forces on New Year's Day handed over responsibility to Iraqi troops for the Green Zone, a fortified compound in the heart of Baghdad off limits to most Iraqis, who have widely viewed it as a symbol of foreign military occupation. The new embassy is located in the zone.

The U.S. force in Iraq, now more than 140,000 strong, had previously operated under a U.N. Security Council resolution.

U.S. troops now work under the authority granted by the Iraqi government under a pact agreed by Washington and Baghdad.

That pact -- viewed by both countries as a milestone in restoring Iraqi sovereignty -- requires U.S. troops to leave in three years, revokes their power to hold Iraqis without charge and subjects contractors and off-duty troops to Iraqi law.

Ziadeh said the mission of the new embassy would start to resemble those in other embassies around the world.

"Our work is looking at a whole range of issues on trade, on energy ... transportation sectors, rule of law," she said. (Editing by Samia Nakhoul)


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Mammoth new U.S. Embassy marks new stage for Iraq


By Leila Fadel, McClatchy Newspapers Leila Fadel, Mcclatchy Newspapers – 2 hrs 17 mins ago
BAGHDAD — The U.S. flag was raised Monday over the mammoth new American Embassy in Iraq , symbolizing a new era of restored Iraqi sovereignty and reduced U.S. power, despite the fact that it's the biggest American mission on Earth.

Some have likened the pink-hued complex along the Tigris River to a prison, but Iraqi President Jalal Talabani called it a symbol of a close and growing relationship between Washington and Baghdad .

"This edifice that you constructed is not an edifice of just an embassy but it is of the deep friendship between the American and Iraqi peoples," Talabani said at the dedication ceremony as he stood alongside U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker .

"It is therefore our big hope that the embassy will play the desired role . . . in emphasizing, developing, improving and expanding the Iraqi-American relations at all levels: political, economic, energy, military, cultural, technological and others," Talabani said.

Crocker noted that the U.S. government last Wednesday moved out of the Republican Palace , the most opulent palace built by former dictator Saddam Hussein , which had served as the American headquarters after the U.S.-led invasion in spring 2003.

As of last Thursday, "the last United Nations Chapter Seven resolution declaring Iraq a threat to national security expired," Crocker said to guests as the wind blew outside. "Today a flag is raised and a new era begins."

The ceremony was interrupted sporadically by helicopters flying above the compound, partly drowning out the speeches by Talabani, Crocker and Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte , who'd served as the first U.S. ambassador to Iraq after the invasion.

The invitation to the ceremony included the instruction "No firearms, cameras, cell phones or other electronics," and guests walked into the outdoor ceremony on red carpets snaking around sandy spaces, which eventually will be landscaped.

Future athletic fields are being used to house the cafeteria and trailers where the U.S. military will live. Behind the raised stage, palm trees framed the Iraqi High Tribunal , where Saddam was tried.

Deputy Prime Minister Barham Saleh posed for photographs with guests in the tented reception area. South Asian waiters in bow ties served pastries and appetizers to the crowd.

"It's happening, it's pumping through. It's just a drastic, drastic change," Saleh said. " Iraq has a chance of developing normal politics or quasi-normal politics now. Is it a coup by Western standards? Maybe not, but by our standards it's phenomenal."

The ceremony came in the midst of the month of Muharram, a sad, holy time for many Shiite Muslims, who commemorate the Battle of Karbala , in which Hussein, the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, was killed. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki , who'd recently returned from Iran , wasn't at the ceremony Monday, nor were most other Shiite officials.

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US inaugurates $700 million embassy in Iraq


By CHELSEA J. CARTER, Associated Press Writer Chelsea J. Carter, Associated Press Writer – 2 hrs 36 mins ago


BAGHDAD – The United States inaugurated its largest embassy ever on Monday, a fortress-like compound in the heart of the Green Zone — and the most visible sign of what U.S. officials call a new chapter in relations between America and a more sovereign Iraq.

U.S. Marines raised the American flag over the adobe-colored buildings, which sit on a 104-acre site and has space for 1,000 employees — more than 10 times the size of any other American Embassy in the world.

"Iraq is in a new era and so is the Iraqi-U.S. relationship," Ambassador Ryan Crocker proclaimed.

In perhaps an unintended sign of the new relationship, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki did not attend Monday's ceremony because he was traveling in Iran, a country the U.S. has accused of aiding and arming Iraqi militants.

Explaining the opening of such a large embassy three years before the U.S. must finish withdrawing its 146,000 troops from Iraq, Crocker told The Associated Press that it is vital for the U.S. to remain involved in nonmilitary ways.

"I think we have seen a tremendous amount of progress," Crocker said before the ceremony, "but the development of this new Iraq is going to be a very long time in the making, and we need to be engaged here."

Crocker said Baghdad was looking to the West for the first time since the Army's 1958 revolution that toppled Iraq's monarchy and set the stage for the ascendance of the Baath party, which dominated Iraq until the 2003 invasion.

"Iraq has defined itself in general hostility to the West and the United States. You now have a fundamentally different state and society taking shape that values those relations, that values those contacts, that wants its children educated in American and other Western universities. And we need to be there as a partner to ensure that those relationships are solidly built and well maintained," he said.

"We will be engaged in different ways as security continues to improve and as Iraqi security forces are more and more in the lead. But that engagement over the long term is key," he added.

The veteran diplomat has served many years in the Middle East, where a lack of U.S. resolve in Lebanon 20 years ago opened that country to meddling from Iran and Syria.

The inauguration of the $700 million embassy came just days after a security agreement between Iraq and the United States took effect, replacing a U.N. mandate that gave legal authority to the U.S. and other foreign troops to operate in Iraq.

Under the new security agreement, U.S. troops will no longer conduct unilateral operations and will act only in concert with Iraqi forces. They must also leave major Iraqi cities by June and the entire country by the end of 2011. Another accord mapped out the bilateral relations.

Crocker said that since 2003 invasion, "perhaps no single week has been more important than this past week. On Dec. 31 we left the Republican Palace."

U.S. diplomats and military officials moved into the embassy on Dec. 31 after vacating Saddam Hussein's Republican Palace, which they occupied when they captured Baghdad in April 2003. The palace will now seat the Iraqi government and al-Maliki's office.

For nearly six years, the grandiose and gaudy palace, with its gold-plated bathroom fixtures, wall paintings of Scud missiles and enormous chandeliers, served as both headquarters for occupying forces and the hub for the Green Zone — the walled-off swath of central Baghdad that was formally turned over to the Iraqi government on New Year's Day.

The new embassy's exact dimensions are classified, but it is said to be six times larger than the U.N. complex in New York and more than 10 times the size of the new U.S. Embassy in Beijing, which at 10 acres is America's second-largest mission.


Reinforced concrete surrounds the new compound, which provides housing for hundreds of staff who had been living in makeshift quarters with aluminum walls that provided little protection from mortar rounds that were fired daily into the Green Zone a year ago. "It is from the embassy that you see before you that we will continue the tradition of friendship, cooperation and support begun by the many dedicated Americans who have worked in Iraq since 2003," U.S. Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte told guests at the ceremony in the complex's courtyard.

Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, a longtime Washington ally, praised President George W. Bush's decision to invade Iraq in 2003 and topple the regime of Saddam Hussein, who was executed two years ago.

"The building of this site would not be possible without the courageous decision by President Bush to liberate Iraq," said Talabani, a Kurd. "This building is not only a compound for the embassy but a symbol of the deep friendship between the two peoples of Iraq and America."

But as U.S. and Iraqi officials lauded progress in the country, Baghdad was rocked by a second day of violence that saw four car bombs explode in various parts of the city, killing four people and wounding 19.

Though violence has plummeted around Iraq in the past year, with attacks dropping from an average 180 a day to just 10, horrific bombings still plague the capital. Many recent attacks have targeted pilgrims during ceremonies commemorating the death of a much revered Shiite saint.

On Sunday, a suicide bomber killed at least 38 people at a Shiite shrine just four miles north of the new embassy.

Iraqi officials said the bomber was a man disguised as a woman. Initial reports said the attacker was a woman concealing a bomb under her black cloak. At least 17 of the dead were Iranian pilgrims.

In response to that attack, Iraqi authorities banned female pilgrims from entering the district for ceremonies on Tuesday and Wednesday.

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Associated Press reporter Patrick Quinn contributed to this report.