Halliburton doing the $592 million American Embassy in Iraq project

[sabra]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/thenation/20060620/cm_thenation/20060703howl

<snip>

It will come as less than a surprise to learn that this project is another Halliburton deal subbed out to an outfit in Kuwait. The Tribune says that "for security reasons, the new embassy is being built entirely by imported labor. The contractor, First Kuwaiti General Trading and Contracting Co., which was linked to human-trafficking allegations by a Chicago Tribune investigation last year, has hired a workforce of 900 mostly Asian workers who live on the site." In a land where half the population is out of work the United States ought to win countless native hearts and minds with this labor policy.

...

This gigantic complex does not square with the repeated assertions by the people who run the American government that the United States will not stay in the country after Iraq becomes a stand-alone, democratic entity. An "embassy" in which 8,000 people labor, along with the however many thousand military personnnel necessary to defend them, is not a diplomatic outpost. It is a base. A permanent base.

[FloridaPat]

1. Is the unemployment rate in Iraq still around 80%? Gee, what else is

there to do in that country but fight the invaders. The Iraqis as far as I can see aren't allowed to do anything in their country except fake voting.