From the Washington Times:
The fortresslike compound rising beside the Tigris River here will be the world’s largest of its kind, the size of Vatican City, with the population of a small town, its own defense force, self-contained power and water, and a precarious perch at the heart of Iraq’s turbulent future.
The new U.S. Embassy also seems as cloaked in secrecy as the ministate in Rome. “We can’t talk about it, security reasons,” Roberta Rossi, a spokeswoman at the current embassy, said when asked for information about the project.
A British tabloid told readers that even the location was being kept secret, but the news would surprise Baghdadis who for months have watched the forest of construction cranes at work across the winding Tigris, at the very center of their city and within easy mortar range of anti-U.S. forces in the capital, though fewer explode there these days. The embassy complex — 21 buildings on 104 acres, according to a U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee report — is taking shape on riverside parkland in the fortified Green Zone just east of al-Samoud, a former palace of Saddam Hussein’s, and across the road from the building where the ex-dictator is now on trial.
Maybe I’ve been playing too much Total War, but the idea of building a huge palace complex in conquered territory smacks of something ominous to me. I can’t imagine the Iraqis are terribly happy about it either.