'Occupying Iraq, State Department-Style'

what a waste of american fiat money...........tomdispatch...........


.............."as of October 1, 2011, full responsibility for the U.S. presence in Iraq will officially be transferred from the military to the Department of State.  In other words, as Washington imagines it, the occupationwon’t really end at all, even if the landlords are switched.


.............the State Department hasn’t exactly been thinking small when it comes to its future “footprint” on Iraqi soil.  The U.S. mission in Baghdad remains the world’s largest embassy, built on a tract of land about the size of the Vatican and visible from space. It cost just $736 million to build -- or was it $1 billion, depending on how you count the post-construction upgrades and fixes?


In its post-“withdrawal” plans, the State Department expects to have 17,000 personnel in Iraq at some 15 sites. If those plans go as expected, 5,500 of them will be mercenaries, hired to shoot-to-kill Iraqis as needed, to maintain security.  Of the remaining 11,500, most will be in support roles of one sort or another, with only a couple of hundred in traditional diplomatic jobs.


In other words, the occupation run by a heavily militarized State Department will simply continue in a new, truncated form -- unless Congress refuses to pay for it"............LINK