Why are we building an embassy in Iraq the size of the Vatican?

The fortress-like compound rising beside the Tigris River here will be the largest of its kind in the world, the size of Vatican City, with the population of a small town, its own defense force, self-contained power and water, and a precarious perch at the heart of Iraq's turbulent future.

The new U.S. Embassy also seems as cloaked in secrecy as the ministate in Rome.

"We can't talk about it. Security reasons," Roberta Rossi, a spokeswoman at the current embassy, said when asked for information about the project.

A British tabloid even told readers the location was being kept secret — news that would surprise Baghdadis who for months have watched the forest of construction cranes at work across the winding Tigris, at the very center of their city and within easy mortar range of anti-U.S. forces in the capital, though fewer explode there these days.

The embassy complex — 21 buildings on 104 acres, according to a U.S. Senate Foreign Relations report — is taking shape on riverside parkland in the fortified "Green Zone," just east of al-Samoud, a former palace of Saddam Hussein's, and across the road from the building where the ex-dictator is now on trial.

Bold emphasis above is mine. So how much is this costing? Is Halliburton involved?

"Embassy Baghdad" will dwarf new U.S. embassies elsewhere, projects that typically cover 10 acres. The embassy's 104 acres is six times larger than the United Nations compound in New York, and two-thirds the acreage of Washington's National Mall.

Original cost estimates ranged over $1 billion, but Congress appropriated only $592 million in the emergency Iraq budget adopted last year. Most has gone to a Kuwait builder, First Kuwaiti Trading & Contracting, with the rest awarded to six contractors working on the project's "classified" portion — the actual embassy offices.

Higgins declined to identify those builders, citing security reasons, but said five were American companies.

Who still thinks we're going to pull troops out of Iraq in our lifetime?

Christ vs. Christians

Two excellent pieces to celebrate Easter. First from Tom in Lake Jackson, commenting on this news from Houston:

If you think Jesus will be lurking up in the rafters of Minute Maid Park for this appalling display of extratheological fluff, I would make you a small bet that, instead, he will be out in some park with the kids looking for the eggs the bunny left for them.

He may even help hide the eggs.

The Christian church that has gone bats over abortion and homosexuality while turning a blind eye to war and poverty still manages to have a good time worshipping entertainers and celebrity. I find it nauseating.

And "If I were a Christian":

If I were Christian, I'd have to guess that Christ doesn't care what the heck you call yourself, Republican, Democrat, Boy Scout, Muslim, Hindu or even atheist; it's your deeds that count, your actions that matter, and your character that defines you. Good people are identified as good by the good deeds they do, while evil people are identified by doing evil deeds. I'd point out clearly that arguing for the cult like worship of any human being, in any nation, as an inerrant God like leader, praising warfare or terrorism, the repression and bombing of innocent civilians, arguing that torture or murder or genocide is a good thing, and defending the wealthy and powerful, is completely at odds with what Christ clearly taught.

...

If I were Christian I would be filled with pride and wonder that my blood, organs, skin, and hair, are made from the elements cooked inside of ancient stellar furnaces. That the mortal coils we each inhabit were bequethed to us via countless generations of living things and exquisite constructs, from primate to bacteria, from organic protien to cosmic proton. And I would weep with the glorious knowledge that I am made of star-dust.

...

If I were Christian, I'd have to guess that Christ, who was after all beaten to a bloody pulp and then nailed to a cross to die a horrible, lingering, death, for our sins, wouldn't think very highly of a (political) party, a faction, a group, a pharaoh, a Caesar, or a President, that thinks they should be able to legally whisk people off to torture chambers to foreign shit-holes run by despots, with no trial or charges ever held for them! And were I a Christian, I'd have to guess that any beliver would and absolutely should be very nervous about being associated with torture in any way, shape, or form.

...

But I'd also have to guess there is one huge difference between Christ and me: I have little patience for folks that use religion as a tool of manipulation. And for the mad bombers and their enablers, whether they justify their killing sprees with passage's or sura's, I wouldn't mind if they spent the rest of their days in prison mumbling holy hatred to themselves while strapped to a gurney in a straitjacket. Christ was an inspiring example, and that's true regardless if the underlying theology is accurate or not. But I'd have a hard time living up to His standard. It would be challenging for me to forgive some of those people, including I'm sad to say those that are destroying this nation from within and without. But I'd pray for the strength to do so, if I were Christian.

Read the entire post here.