Yet Another "End of the World As We Know It" in Iraq's Green Zone
By Susie Madrak Friday Jan 02, 2009 7:45amI know I'm going to miss the Green Zone. Ah, good times! Just think back to when Paul Bremer and the rest of the hapless Republican incompetents first attempted to impose their neocon and libertarian fantasies onto Iraq's economic and social system:
BAGHDAD, Dec. 31 -- The walls of the majestic Republican Palace in Baghdad's Green Zone have been stripped bare. The vaults that secured American cash and classified documents are gone, and the cement blast walls that protected the front entrance were taken down this week. The U.S. military dining facility inside what was once the American Embassy served its last meal New Year's Eve.
"This is the end of the world as we know it," said Sgt. 1st Class Patrick McDonald, 47, who co-authored a guide to historic sites in the Green Zone. "It's not like everyone is shredding documents and fleeing Saigon. But we are stepping away from a building."
Saddam Hussein had the palace compound's main building decorated with giant busts of himself to demonstrate his hold over Iraq. After the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, the palace came to symbolize the American role in the country, first as the headquarters of the U.S. occupation authority and later the U.S. Embassy. American civilians and troops held "salsa night" dances around the pool behind the palace before retiring to trailers sheathed in sandbags.
When the clock struck midnight on Wednesday, the U.S. returned the palace to the Iraqi government and relinquished formal control over the Green Zone, a heavily fortified six-square-mile enclave on the Tigris River where key U.S. and Iraqi bureaucracies are situated.
The handover is a sign of the shrinking footprint and influence of the United States in a country where it has lost thousands of lives and spent billions of dollars. For many Iraqis, the handover represents a significant step forward in their gradual reassertion of dominion over their own affairs.
"On January 1, we are going to control this," Adnan Karim, 22, an Iraqi soldier manning a checkpoint at one of the entrances to the Green Zone, said, beaming. "The U.S. will be here just as observers. It's a matter of pride."
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I always hated moving day.
The palace with pool will forever serve as a symbol of the U.S. occupation, in contrast with the bullet pocked, power absent, waterless wasteland of Baghdad around them.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LS75NtlH3gI
what our nation building efforts have resulted in. Given the recent condemnation of Israeli actions in Gaza by the Iraqi government, it's probably NOT going to be what they told us the lives of those 4000+ American military personnel were worth.
Iraqi farmers still gotta grow what we tell em to,!!!
and we tell em' to grow Monsanto seeds, or nothing at all...
http://www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net/GMO/Ira...
I'm sure we still get to keep all their oil too!...we wouldnt just give up the "black zone"
That's a fucking evil-ass corporation there...
Patenting seeds...fuck them!
And the global mediatainment industry broadcasts this victorious event for the world to see. *vomit* Like any government in Iraq will be controlled by Iraqis as long as the US is still a superpower. Uh huh. Sure. The puppets are so obvious they don't even hide their strings.
Were we anything else? The US was sure not liberators.
They are taking surveys of soldiers to see if they like Barack?
WTF?
www.MacYapper.blogspot.com
... it changes again...
the new 'new commet' box is a drag... it gets hidden behind other boxes - in particular, the blogroll box now... and i hafta scroll down to find it and bitchbitchbitch... the little blue tab thingy was easier...
just sayin'...
good morning... i think it must be a sugar/junkfood hangover...
...and I'm not sure if I like the way Susie Madrak equates libertarianism with neoconism by using them in the same sentence together...
If anything we need to equate Neo-cons and Neo-libs together.
I never saw any libertarians rubberstamp Bush's agenda like some of the democrats did these past 6-8 yrs...
from what I saw (voting record wise) libertarians totally opposed Bush compared to the "democrats"
understand why anyone uses labels. I don't consider myself liberal, left wing, conservative, repulsive, etc...why does everything have to be labelled? An overwhelming majority of the world if asked their views, would be classified as liberals. Does it make any difference? Not really.
young conservatives are heartless...
old liberals are moneyless...? (just askin')
I consider myself liberal...pro-choice... pro stem cell reasearch...gay marriage, fine by me...
I prefer liberal judges...
I dont mind the liberal/conservative labels but but "Democrat" is not a good "label"... lately.
Heard those sayings. I prefer individuality in life. Nobody has the exact same priorities, regardless of label. Most (especially in this economy) are just too busy trying to feed their family and put a roof over their head. What I've never understood, is how some people can support their leaders or parties, even after they rape them over. It happens in every nation too. Take Canada. Harper has done nothing substantial ever in the House of Commons. Yet people vote for him. Liberals were booted out of office because of the perception of crookedness. Yet they had a surplus every year and attempted to bring down the deficit. Another one. Bush and his party have all but destroyed the US. Yet Obama still didn't win a landslide victory. It should not have been anywhere close at all.
I'm for all that...and the right to own guns too. But my stance on immigration may piss off alot on this site. Hence the name "liberalNmoderation".
I'm pretty liberal on most subjects, and a bit conservative on others.
While the label "Democrat" may indeed be tarnished...it still shines compared to "Republican"
But one label above has been nearly irredeemably tarnished..."American".
Thanks bush!
Asshole!
stems from threat recognition. Once you sufficiently define, label, a thing, you don't need to give it all your attention.
Thus we lock away the possibility of truly interacting; we place that thing (person) in a static place.
We're animals, and it shows.
I much prefer provocateur.
Pride
Honor
Cut and Run
Manufactured language for a manufactured war. No pride in killing the innocent, no honor in destroying a society, cut and run to the bank before it forecloses your ass.
2009
That was the best book on Iraq I read(and I read most of them). If anyone has a lingering doubt about the fruitlessness of this adventure, or the perfidy of bushco, read that book.
I like how you lump everything that isn't "progressive" (a woefully deceptive misnomer if ever there was one) into the categories of "neocon and libertarian fantasies," even though nothing the Republicans have done for the last eight years comes remotely close to being "libertarian" in nature.
If you're going to run a political blog and tout yourself as some kind of authority on something, at least take the trouble to learn the nuances of and differences between the various political ideologies.
...if libertarianism was every corporations "wet dream" like a lot of people "seem" to imply...
then where are the massive corporate political donations to the libertarian party?
...all I see is half the corpo money goin' to "dems" other half to "republicans"
Hopefully this is a step toward our departure from Iraq. I wish our armed forces a speedy return to their family's. I'd like to add that I buy eyeglasses from the dollar store as an example of an economical and thrifty American. The waste of our resources that went into that Green Zone appalls. No doubt valuables in the millions will be left behind. All around a very disheartening exercise in hubris.
On the 23 of Dec 2007 I arrived late at night at the Baghdad Int airport, what we call BIAP. Later in the AM I found myself outside of the Republican palace near the pool. It took hours for them to sort us out and asign us our rooms. My team took over the VTC operations after the first of the year inside the palace itself. I wish you guys could see that place, absolutely incredible, inside and out. They did not allow photography inside the palace itself without special permision, but I found some really good photos of the palace on our network server (not to mention several hundred GB of movies).
Here I am one year later with two months left on my 15 month deployment, I left the IZ (we never called it the green zone because we were still getting mortar and rocket attacked, for us it was the International Zone, the IZ)around March for camp Victory a much larger FOB next to BIAP where I have been ever since.
I can still remember the IZ pretty well, it was a fascinating place and the food in the D-Fac was much better than anything I ever got back at Ft Huachuca in Arizona (T-bone steak and Lobster every Sat). We knew about the IZ going back to the Iraqis way back in Oct when our personnel began moving here from there. The palace was enchanting however, and best of all it was the safest place to be from the mortars, its where everyone holed up when they were being constantly mortared back in march (two days after I left, close call), some memories at least.
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