US embassy in Baghdad: We caused "expletives" in the State department and an order to remove the images from the Berger Website!

An AP press release, relayed by CNN today (June 1, 2007):

Web site offers too much detail on new U.S. Embassy

Story Highlights:

• Architectural firm posts detailed plans for U.S. Embassy being built in Baghdad
• State Department says images "detract" from security of new embassy
• Company says they were "conjectural" and you'd learn more from Google Earth
• Images were removed from Web site Thursday at State Department's request

But on this blog, they were published in full! (See yesterday's "Pharaonic US Embassy in Baghdad"). Here is one of them:

[Marine guards US Deputy Ambassador's villa in Baghdad. Computer drawing (design phase) from BTY website.]

We did not intend to do harm to US security. Really! Our post about the "Pharaonic US embassy in Baghdad" (29.5.07) was about its "hybris", its provocative grandeur and aloofness. Not about it's security provisions.
We deemed it a symbol of the new US "isolationism", an aggressive isolationism for export.

Just like the Project for an American Century of the NeoCons imagined it.

But, let us not exaggerate: Very few (too few!) people read "Legal Alien". Some more "At Home in Europe", and, practically nobody "huibslog", the very new comprehensive blog, I publish on another network than "blogger.com". It is difficult to imagine, that these marginal blogs caused such a "shock and awe" in the State Department...

Sudden nervous visiting from Washington on my blogs...
However... After publication of the drawings of the Kansas BTY Bureau in my blogs, I saw, on my monitoring site 'Motigo', some nervous visitors' movements from Washington and California on my 'blogger'-related websites. But not on "huibslog". I should work at my Technorati and Google ratings for that last blog...

In short, I think, that the main cause of the panic was the blog post by Tom Engelhardt, in the Tomdispatch Blog, a widely read anti-MSM publication, that also served as my link to the BTY drawings.

Tomdispatch blog did not publicize the images. Engelhardt only ridiculed them in a delicious way. I DID look them up and posted them here, with my comments and those of the BTY-Bechtel firm.

So, if I am not mistaken, this blog is now one of the few places in the world, where curious people (people who got curious because of the panicky Washington move), may see, copy and transfer those very dangerous images!

It was not at all my intention, to deliver blueprints for would-be attackers of the buildings! I am a peace-minded, anti-violence person. I loathe the Al Qaeda terrorists as much as I hate the racist protagonists of a "Clash Of Civilizations".

Much ado about nothing
In earnest: I do not think that the computer-generated drawings will learn anything new to evil people. That is also the opinion of US experts. (AP:)

Berger Devine Yaeger's parent company, the giant contractor Louis Berger Group, said the plans had been very preliminary and would not be of help to potential U.S. enemies.

"The actual information that was up there was purely conjectural and conceptual in nature," said Louis Berger spokesman Jeffrey Willis. "Google Earth could give you a better snapshot of what the site looks like on the ground."

But that is not the view of the secretive Washington administration of today:

"Expletives"

Some U.S. officials acknowledged that damage may have been done by the postings and used expletives to describe their personal reactions, but downplayed the overall risk posed.

In translation, that means, that self-imposed secretive rules have been broken by stupidity (hence the 'expletives'), but that, the 'officials' personally think, that it is much ado about nothing. Look:

"People are eventually going to figure out where all these places are, but you don't have to draw them a map," said one senior official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak about the embassy project.

The construction site in Baghdad is under heavy guard and treated with extreme secrecy. It is off-limits to all but those with special passes, surrounded by tall, concrete blast walls and impossible to see except from the air.

And, as if to refute this last statement AP and CNN publish this photo of the construction site:

If I am guilty of divulging US State secrets, then I am in excellent company!

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US embassy in Baghdad: We caused "expletives" in the State department and an order to remove the images from the Berger Website! 2.6.07

An AP press release, relayed by CNN today (June 1, 2007):

Web site offers too much detail on new U.S. Embassy

• Architectural firm posts detailed plans for U.S. Embassy being built in Baghdad
• State Department says images "detract" from security of new embassy
• Company says they were "conjectural" and you'd learn more from Google Earth
• Images were removed from Web site Thursday at State Department's request

But on this blog, they are published in full! (See yesterday's "Pharaonic US Embassy in Baghdad")

We did not intend to do harm. Really! Our post about the "Pharaonic US embassy in Baghdad" (29.5.07) was about its "hybris", its provocative grandeur and aloofness. Not about it's security provisions.
We deemed it a symbol of the new US "isolationism", an aggressive isolationism for export.

Just like the Project for an American Century of the NeoCons imagined it.

But, let us not exaggerate: Very few (too few!) people read "Legal Alien in New York", another og my blogs, where the images originally appeared. Some more "At Home in Europe", and, practically nobody "huibslog".

 

Sudden busy Washington web traffic on my blogs...
Indeed, after publication of the drawings of the Kansas BTY Bureau in my blogs, I saw, on my monitoring site 'Motigo', some nervous visitors' movements from Washington and California on my 'blogger'-related websites. But not on "huibslog". I should work at my Technorati and Google ratings for that last blog...

In short, I think, that the main cause of the panic was the blog post by Tom Engelhardt, in the Tomdispatch Blog, a widely read anti-MSM publication, that also served as my link to the BTY drawings.
Tomdispatch blog did not publicize the iages themselfves. He only ridiculed them in a delicious way.

 

I, however DID. Looked them up and posted them here, with my comments and those of the BDY-Berger firm.

So, if I am not mistaken, this blog here, is one of the few places in the world, where curious people (people who got curious because of the panicky Washington move) , may see, copy and transfer those very dangerous images!

It was not at all my intention, to deliver blueprints for would-be attackers of the buildings! I am a peace-minded, anti-violence person. I loathe the Al Qaeda terrorists as much as I hate the racist protagonists of a "Clash Of Civilizations".

In earnest: I do not think that the computer-generated drawings will learn anything new to evil people. That is also the opinion of US experts. (AP:)

Berger Devine Yaeger's parent company, the giant contractor Louis Berger Group, said the plans had been very preliminary and would not beof help to potential U.S. enemies.

"The actual information that was up there was purely conjectural and conceptual in nature," said Louis Berger spokesman Jeffrey Willis. "Google Earth could give you a better snapshot of what the site looks like on the ground."

But that is not the view of the secretive Washington administration of today:

"Expletives"

Some U.S. officials acknowledged that damage may have been done by the postings and used expletives to describe their personal reactions,but downplayed the overall risk posed.

In translation, that means, that self-imposed secretive rules have been broken by stupidity (hence the 'expletives'), but that, the 'officials' personally think, that it is much ado about nothing. Look:

"People are eventually going to figure out where all these places are, but you don't have to draw them a map," said one senior official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak about the embassyproject.

The construction site in Baghdad is under heavy guard and treated with extreme secrecy. It is off-limits to all but those with special passes, surrounded by tall, concrete blast walls and impossible to see except from the air.

And, as if to refute this last statement AP and CNN publish this photo of the construction site:

If I am guilty of disseminating state secrets, I am in respectable company! 

Powered by ScribeFire.

Pharaonic US Embassy in Baghdad 30.5.07

Pharaonic US Embassy in Baghdad

The NeoCon-driven US imperial policy is building its pharaonic monuments, it's own Babel Tower, even before it can show any tangible positive result. I mean: a positive result measured at it's own designs. No cheap oil is flowing. No secure permanent military bases have been established. No way to intimidate Syria and Iran. No Iraqi oil money to pay for the astronomic costs (and wasted money) of the Iraq adventure, as promised by Paul Wolfowitz in 2003.

No better illustration of this, than the effort to build a Mesopotamian palace with tennis courts, swimming pools in the Baghdad Green Zone, under mortar fire, truck-bombs and failing supply of hamburgers by the Kowait convoys that should arrive every week. That palace, cost: $592 millions, is to house "the largest embassy in the world". The Mother of All Embassies, so to say.

Tom Engelhardt, in the Tomdispatch Blog, writes about it in a superb style. Here is the beginning of his text:

Tomgram: The Mother Ship Lands in Iraq

The Colossus of Baghdad

Wonders of the Imperial World
By Tom Engelhardt

Of the seven wonders of the ancient Mediterranean world, including the Hanging Gardens of Babylon and the Colossus of Rhodes, four were destroyed by earthquakes, two by fire. Only the Great Pyramid of Giza today remains.

We no longer know who built those fabled monuments to the grandiosity of kings, pharaohs, and gods; nowadays, at least, it's easier to identify the various wonders of our world with their architects. Maya Lin, for instance, spun the moving black marble Vietnam Memorial from her remarkable brain for the veterans of that war; Frank Gehry dreamt up his visionary titanium-covered museum in Bilbao, Spain, for the Guggenheim; and the architectural firm of BDY (Berger Devine Yaeger), previously responsible for the Sprint Corporation's world headquarters in Overland Park, Kansas; the Visitation Church in Kansas City, Missouri; and Harrah's Hotel and Casino in North Kansas City, Missouri, turns out to have designed the biggest wonder of all -- an embassy large enough to embody the Bush administration's vision of an American-reordered Middle East. We're talking, of course, about the still-uncompleted American embassy, the largest on the planet, being constructed on a 104-acre stretch of land in the heart of Baghdad's embattled Green Zone, now regularly under mortar fire. As Patrick Lenahan, Senior Architect and Project Manager at BDY, has put it (according to the firm's website): "We understand how to involve the client most effectively as we direct our resources to make our client's vision a reality."

And what a vision it was! What a reality it's turned out to be!

The Legal Alien wanted to know for himself, and went to the BDY website. We found a map of the construction area in Baghdad, along the river:

The (walled) area has the size of an urban district. The about a 1.000 strong staff (not counting family members to be housed in villas and apartment blocks on the site) and several 1.000s of other personnel (local staff, guards, maintenance) and protection (US army, American contractors). The building itself is done by kowaitian firms, employing cheap east-asian workers. It is not difficult to imagine, what the Baghdad man in the street feels about all that. Those feelings are probably stronger even, than they had against Saddam Hussein's frenetic palace-building. I suppose, that the New Orleans Katharina-victims, who are still waiting for reconstruction, will share those feelings.

The following images from the BDY Architects' website, need to be clicked on, to see them in full splendor:

1. An overview of the site.
2. residence of the Deputy Ambassador.
3. A Marine Guards an entrance.
4. Tennis- and Basketball facilities.
5. Apartments Building with palm garden.
6. Swimming Pool.

Accompanying text by BergerDevine+Yaeger Architects, Kansas, USA:

Baghdad US Embassy

Following successful completion of the preliminary concept plans and the full embassy master plan, Berger was commissioned to prepare the design-build “bridging documents” (based on 35% design) for construction of the self-contained embassy compound. Berger Devine Yaeger, Inc. (BDY) was the architect for this work. The construction (currently underway) is being executed in four concurrent packages. This self-contained compound will include the embassy itself, residences for the ambassador and staff, PX, commissary, cinema, retail and shopping, restaurants, schools, fire station and supporting facilities such as power generation, water purification system, telecommunications, and waste water treatment facilities. In total, the 104 acre compound will include over twenty buildings including one classified secure structure and housing for over 380 families.

In short: This construction was designed to symbolise the New American Century, the power of intimidation of the sole "superpower". It goes along with the huge US military command center "Camp Victory" that is housed, somewhat to the Northeast of Baghdad, in a former Saddam palace, complete with zoo.

Imperial Isolationism?
During my whole life, from when I was a pupil in an Amsterdam high school, until the end of the century, when we criticised US policies, we were told that, perhaps we were right, but that it was dangerous to say it too loudly, for, otherwise, the US could return to "isolationism" - one of the causes of the European crises, leading to the Second World War, in the 20s and 30s.

The new European generation can no more be convinced of that: The US have, since 1990, and à fortiori, since 2001, already returned to an isolationism that is more aggressive than 75 years ago. They are not only celebrating it at home. Now, they have also exported it.

A new phenomenon in history: An isolationist imperium!

Like Nietzschean "Übermenschen", unmoved by the feelings of others, even provokingly humiliating them, they offend allies, pretend to rob nations of their wealth in the name of some free-market principle.

No isolationism so dangerous as an exported isolationism...

Originally posted in A Legal Alien in New York

Pharaonic US Embassy in Baghdad

The NeoCon-driven US imperial policy is building its pharaonic monuments, it's own Babel Tower, even before it can show any tangible positive result. I mean: a positive result measured at it's own designs. No cheap oil is flowing. No secure permanent military bases have been established. No way to intimidate Syria and Iran. No Iraqian oil money to pay for the astronomic costs (and wasted money) of the Iraq adventure, as promised by Paul Wolfowitz in 2003.

No better illustration of this, than the effort to build a Mesopotamian palace with tennis courts, swimming pools in the Baghdad Green Zone, under mortar fire, truck-bombs and failing supply of hamburgers by the Kowayt convoys that should arrive every week. That palace, cost: $592 millions, is to house "the largest embassy in the world". The Mother of All Embassies, so to say.

Tom Engelhardt, in the Tomdispatch Blog, writes about it in a superb style. Here is the beginning of his text:

Tomgram: The Mother Ship Lands in Iraq

The Colossus of Baghdad

Wonders of the Imperial World
By Tom Engelhardt

Of the seven wonders of the ancient Mediterranean world, including the Hanging Gardens of Babylon and the Colossus of Rhodes, four were destroyed by earthquakes, two by fire. Only the Great Pyramid of Giza today remains.

We no longer know who built those fabled monuments to the grandiosity of kings, pharaohs, and gods; nowadays, at least, it's easier to identify the various wonders of our world with their architects. Maya Lin, for instance, spun the moving black marble Vietnam Memorial from her remarkable brain for the veterans of that war; Frank Gehry dreamt up his visionary titanium-covered museum in Bilbao, Spain, for the Guggenheim; and the architectural firm of BDY (Berger Devine Yaeger), previously responsible for the Sprint Corporation's world headquarters in Overland Park, Kansas; the Visitation Church in Kansas City, Missouri; and Harrah's Hotel and Casino in North Kansas City, Missouri, turns out to have designed the biggest wonder of all -- an embassy large enough to embody the Bush administration's vision of an American-reordered Middle East. We're talking, of course, about the still-uncompleted American embassy, the largest on the planet, being constructed on a 104-acre stretch of land in the heart of Baghdad's embattled Green Zone, now regularly under mortar fire. As Patrick Lenahan, Senior Architect and Project Manager at BDY, has put it (according to the firm's website): "We understand how to involve the client most effectively as we direct our resources to make our client's vision a reality."

And what a vision it was! What a reality it's turned out to be!

The Legal Alien wanted to know for himself, and went to the BDY website. We found a map of the construction area in Baghdad, along the river:

The (walled) area has the size of an urban district. The about a 1.000 strong staff (not counting family members to be housed in villas and apartment blocks on the site) and several 1.000s of other personnel (local staff, guards, maintenance) and protection (US army, American contractors). The building itself is done by kowaitian firms, employing cheap east-asian workers. It is not difficult to imagine, what the Baghdad man in the street feels about all that. Those feelings are probably stronger even, than they had against Saddam Hussein's frenetic palace-building. I suppose, that the New Orleans Katharina-victims, who are still waiting for reconstruction, will share those feelings.

The following images from the BDY Architects' website, need to be clicked on, to see them in full splendor:

1. An overview of the site.
2. residence of the Deputy Ambassador.
3. A Marine Guards an entrance.
4. Tennis- and Basketball facilities.
5. Apartments Building with palm garden.
6. Swimming Pool.

Accompanying text by BergerDevine+Yaeger Architects, Kansas, USA:

Baghdad US Embassy

Following successful completion of the preliminary concept plans and the full embassy master plan, Berger was commissioned to prepare the design-build “bridging documents” (based on 35% design) for construction of the self-contained embassy compound. Berger Devine Yaeger, Inc. (BDY) was the architect for this work. The construction (currently underway) is being executed in four concurrent packages. This self-contained compound will include the embassy itself, residences for the ambassador and staff, PX, commissary, cinema, retail and shopping, restaurants, schools, fire station and supporting facilities such as power generation, water purification system, telecommunications, and waste water treatment facilities. In total, the 104 acre compound will include over twenty buildings including one classified secure structure and housing for over 380 families.

In short: This construction was designed to symbolise the New American Century, the power of intimidation of the sole "superpower". It goes along with the huge US military command center "Camp Victory" that is housed, somewhat to the Nort-East of Baghdad, in a former Saddam palace, complete with zoo.

Imperial Isolationism?
During my whole life, from when I was a pupil in an Amsterdam high school, until the end of the century, when we criticised US policies, we were told that, perhaps we were right, but that it was dangerous to say it too loudly, for, otherwise, the US could return to "isolationism" - one of the causes of the European crises, leading to the Second World War, in the 20s and 30s.

The new European generation can no more be convinced of that: The US have, since 1990, and à fortiori, since 2001, already returned to an isolationism that is more agressive than 75 years ago. They are not only celebrating it at home. Now, they have also exported it.

A new phenomenon in history: An isolationist imperium!

Like Nietzschean "Übermenschen", unmoved by the feelings of others, even provokingly humiliating them, they offend allies, pretend to rob nations of their wealth in the name of some free-market principle.

No isolationism so dangerous as an exported isolationism...