Building Vatican City in Baghdad

Now under construction and otherwise shrouded in secrecy, the new American Embassy in Baghdad. Conjure an image of a sedate but solid white building, surrounded by a high wrought iron fence, a guard at the gate?

Not exactly. The so-called Embassy is a compound composed of 21 separate buildings on 104 acres in the heart of Baghdad. It will be six times larger than the United Nations in NYC, roughly the size of Vatican City, with its own power supply and water.

This is separate from several new military bases that have the same scale, size and sense of permanence. The AP report on them began:

The concrete goes on forever, vanishing into the noonday glare, 2 million cubic feet of it, a mile-long slab that's now the home of up to 120 U.S. helicopters, a "heli-park" as good as any back in the States.At another giant base, al-Asad in Iraq's western desert, the 17,000 troops and workers come and go in a kind of bustling American town, with a Burger King, Pizza Hut and a car dealership, stop signs, traffic regulations and young bikers clogging the roads.At a third hub down south, Tallil, they're planning a new mess hall, one that will seat 6,000 hungry airmen and soldiers for chow.

The Embassy and the bases are more than huge: they are permanent. Why else would they be going up when the Bushites say the Americans are turning things over to the Iraqis, and will leave when asked ? What does this say about what the Bushites are really doing in Iraq? What does the secrecy itself tell us?

The Bushites have masked their operations in melodrama, the fighters for freedom against the evil-doers, both for political gain in American elections, and to cover their operations in Iraq. Apart from enriching Halliburton and other crony corporations, they are establishing a corporate base in the Middle East, and the waning American middle class as well as the poor, plus several unborn generations, are paying for it all.

A political key is not creating more of a fuss at home over cost. That's where the tax cuts for the wealthy come in. Bush has provided the wealthiest Americans with four successive tax cuts and is now promoting their permanence. He is enriching the rich at the expense of everyone else, and is investing what's left of our money in seeing that his wealthy cronies get wealthier.

This is the future that the Bushites are building.