In the Chaos of Iraq, One Project Is on Target: A Giant US Embassy

By Daniel McGrory The Times on Line UK Wedneday 03 May 2006

The question puzzles and enrages a city: how is it that the Americans cannot keep the electricity running in Baghdad for more than a couple of hours a day, yet still manage to build themselves the biggest embassy on Earth?

Irritation grows as residents deprived of air-conditioning and running water three years after the US-led invasion watch the massive US Embassy they call "George W's palace" rising from the banks of the Tigris.

In the pavement cafés, people moan that the structure is bigger than anything Saddam Hussein built. They are not impressed by the architects' claims that the diplomatic outpost will be visible from space and cover an area that is larger than the Vatican city and big enough to accommodate four Millennium Domes. They are more interested in knowing whether the US State Department paid for the prime real estate or simply took it.

While families in the capital suffer electricity cuts, queue all day to fuel their cars and wait for water pipes to be connected, the US mission due to open in June next year will have its own power and water plants to cater for a population the size of a small town.

Officially, the design of the compound is supposed to be a secret, but you cannot hide the giant construction cranes and the concrete contours of the 21 buildings that are taking shape. Looming over the skyline, the embassy has the distinction of being the only big US building project in Iraq that is on time and within budget.

In a week when Washington revealed a startling list of missed deadlines and overspending on building projects, Congress was told that the bill for the embassy was $592 million (£312 million).

The heavily guarded 42-hectare (104-acre) site - which will have a 15ft thick perimeter wall - has hundreds of workers swarming on scaffolding. Local residents are bitter that the Kuwaiti contractor has employed only foreign staff and is busing them in from a temporary camp nearby.

After roughing it in Saddam's abandoned palaces, diplomats should have every comfort in their new home. There will be impressive residences for the Ambassador and his deputy, six apartments for senior officials, and two huge office blocks for 8,000 staff to work in. There will be what is rumoured to be the biggest swimming pool in Iraq, a state-of-the-art gymnasium, a cinema, restaurants offering delicacies from favourite US food chains, tennis courts and a swish American Club for evening functions.

The security measures being installed are described as extraordinary. US officials are preparing for the day when the so-called green zone, the fortified and sealed-off compound where international diplomats and Iraq's leaders live and work, is reopened to the rest of the city's residents, and American diplomats can retreat to their own secure area.

Iraqi politicians opposed to the US presence protest that the scale of the project suggests that America retains long-term ambitions here. The International Crisis Group, a think-tank, said the embassy's size "is seen by Iraqis as an indication of who actually exercises power in their country".

A State Department official said that the size reflected the "massive amount of work still facing the US and our commitment to see it through".

Behind Schedule

• A US Inspector General's report into reconstruction found that although $22 billion had been spent, water, sewage and electricity, infrastructure still operated at prewar levels.
  Despite "significant progress" in recent months, less than half the water and electricity projects have been completed.
• Only six of the 150 planned health centres have been completed.
  US officials spent $70 million on medical equipment for health clinics that are unlikely ever to be built. More than 75 per cent of the funds for the 150 planned clinics have been allocated.
• Task Force Shield, the $147 million programme to train Iraqi security units to protect key oil and electrical sites failed to meet its goals. A fraud investigation is under way.
• Oil production was 2.18 million barrels per day in the last week of March. Before the war it was 2.6 million.

Ex-CIA Analyst Condemns Bush 'Manipulation Campaign' on Iraq

Agence France-Presse Thursday 04 May 2006

A former Middle East specialist of the US Central Intelligence Agency has condemned what he called an organised campaign of manipulation by the Bush administration to justify the Iraq war.

Paul Pillar, a former CIA analyst specialising in counter-terrorism in the Middle East and Asia, said in an interview with the Spanish newspaper El Pais that the United States had particularly wanted to prove a link between Al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein.

"That was not the case," he was quoted as saying. "I suppose by some definitions that could be called a lie."

"There was an organised campaign of manipulation," El Pais also quoted Pillar as saying. "That would be the proper way to define it."

The decision to invade Iraq was taken as early as the beginning of 2002, a year before hostilities began, Pillar said.

It was decided "for other reasons and did not depend on weapons of mass destruction or the results of United Nations inspections," he said, according to the interview published in Spanish.

"As far as weapons of mass destruction were concerned, there was a generally false perception in the American, British and other intelligence services that Iraq possessed these. We were wrong."

"The problem was the wider message, the attempt to spread the impression that there was a terrorist alliance between Iraq and Al-Qaeda," Pillar was also quoted as saying.

The theory of the link interested the government of President George W. Bush because "it was this that most strongly affected public opinion in the United States, and which would keep alive the images of September 11, 2001.

"The administration's voracious appetite to obtain material about this non-existent alliance cost a great deal of time and work to senior intelligence staff and the most highly experienced analysts in the CIA," Pillar said in the interview.

Report Blames Top US Officials for Alleged Torture of Detainees

By Matthew Schofield Knight Ridder Newspapers Wednesday 03 May 2006

Berlin - Torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment of detainees by U.S. forces is widespread and, in many cases, sanctioned by top government officials, Amnesty International charged Wednesday.

The allegations, contained in a 32,000-word report released in New York and London and posted on the human rights organization's Web site, are likely to influence a U.N. hearing on U.S. compliance with international torture agreements that begins Friday in Geneva. Amnesty International sent a copy of the report to the U.N. Committee Against Torture, which is holding the hearings.

"Although the U.S. government continues to assert its condemnation of torture and ill-treatment, these statements contradict what is happening in practice," said Curt Goering, the group's senior deputy executive director in the United States. "The U.S. government is not only failing to take steps to eradicate torture, it is actually creating a climate in which torture and other ill-treatment can flourish."

American officials denied the allegations. "There's no more staunch defender of human rights around the world than the United States government," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said.

A Pentagon spokesman, Lt. Col. Mark Ballesteros, said "humane treatment of detainees is and always has been the (Defense Department) standard." He noted that a dozen reviews of military detention operations had found no evidence that the top officials encouraged abuse.

The report notes that American military officials have listed 34 deaths of detainees in U.S. custody as "confirmed or suspected criminal homicides." It suggested that the true number may be much higher, saying "there is evidence that delays, cover-ups and deficiencies in investigations have hampered the collection of evidence."

"In several cases," it says, "substantial evidence has emerged that detainees were tortured to death while under interrogation. . . . What is even more disturbing is that standard practices as well as interrogation techniques believed to have fallen within officially sanctioned parameters, appear to have played a role in the ill-treatment."

The Amnesty International report was a foretaste of the hearing in Geneva, scheduled for Friday and Monday.

The United States is dispatching a delegation of 30 officials to testify at the hearing, which is a follow-up to a review in 2000 that was critical of America's treatment of inmates in its domestic prisons.

The hearing is expected to focus on the allegations of mistreatment of prisoners taken captive in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq or seized by U.S. agents in other countries and later jailed at the American naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, or at undisclosed locations.

The United States is one of seven nations the committee is reviewing during meetings this month. The others are Georgia, Guatemala, Peru, Qatar, South Korea and Togo.

The United States is one of more than 140 nations that have approved the convention against torture. The U.S. has written to the committee saying it's unequivocally opposed to torture.
The Amnesty International report questions that, saying there's evidence that top American officials had approved abusive interrogation techniques.

"Most of the torture and ill-treatment stemmed directly from officially sanctioned procedures and policies, including interrogation techniques approved by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld," said Javier Zuniga, Amnesty International's Americas director.

The report criticizes the United States for giving those convicted of abuse relatively light sentences.

"The heaviest sentence imposed on anyone to date for a torture-related death while in U.S. custody is five months, the same sentence that you might receive in the U.S. for stealing a bicycle," Goering said. "In this case, the five-month sentence was for assaulting a 22-year-old taxi driver who was hooded and chained to a ceiling while being kicked and beaten until he died."
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The Amnesty International report is available online at http://web.amnesty.org/library/index/engamr510612006.