Construction Woes Add to Fears at Embassy in Iraq

The new U.S. embassy in Baghdad, Iraq, a 104-acre complex, the size of approximately 80 football fields is expected to open in September, at a projected cost of $592 million, with a staff of 1,000 people and an annual operating cost of $1.2 billion a year. An American architectural firm, Berger Devine Yaeger of Kansas City, Missouri, designed the new United States Embassy, the largest in the world!
When the US State Department discovered that the firm had published their designs on their website, they ordered them removed, but Antiwar.com has the full set, here: http://dissentradio.com/embassy/embassy.html
 

From the Washington Post:


Construction Woes Add to Fears at Embassy in Iraq


By Glenn Kessler

Washington
Post Staff Writer

Thursday, July 5, 2007; A01

U.S. diplomats
in Iraq,
increasingly fearful over their personal safety after recent mortar attacks
inside the Green
Zone, are pointing to new delays and mistakes in the U.S. Embassy
construction project in Baghdad
as signs that their vulnerability could grow in the months ahead.

A
toughly worded cable sent from the embassy to State
Department headquarters on May 29 highlights a cascade of building and
safety blunders in a new facility to house the security guards protecting the
embassy. The guards' base, which remains unopened today, is just a small part
of a $592 million project to build the largest U.S. embassy in the world.

The
main builder of the sprawling, 21-building embassy is First Kuwaiti General
Trade and Contracting Co., a Middle Eastern firm that is already under Justice
Department scrutiny over alleged labor abuses. First Kuwaiti also erected
the guard base, prompting some State Department officials in Washington
and Baghdad
to worry that the problems exposed in the camp suggest trouble lurking ahead
for the rest of the embassy complex.

The
first signs of trouble, according to the cable, emerged when the kitchen staff
tried to cook the inaugural meal in the new guard base on May 15. Some
appliances did not work. Workers began to get electric shocks. Then a burning smell
enveloped the kitchen as the wiring began to melt.

All
the food from the old guard camp -- a collection of tents -- had been carted to
the new facility, in the expectation that the 1,200 guards would begin moving
in the next day. But according to the cable, the electrical meltdown was just
the first problem in a series of construction mistakes that soon left the base
uninhabitable, including wiring problems, fuel leaks and noxious fumes in the
sleeping trailers.

"Poor
quality construction . . . life safety issues . . . left [the embassy] with no
recourse but to shut the camp down, in spite of the blistering heat in Baghdad," the May 29 cable informed Washington.