"Due to the continuing threat of indirect fire in the International Zone, all personnel are advised to remain under hard cover at all times," it says. "Personnel should only move outside of hard cover for essential reasons."
"Essential outdoor movements should be sharply limited in duration," the memo says, adding that personal protective equipment "is mandatory for all outside movements."
"We strongly recommend personnel do not sleep in their trailers," it goes on to say, offering space inside the Saddam Hussein-era palace that is the embassy's temporary home as well as room at an as-yet uncompleted new embassy compound and a limited supply of cots.
----------------------The US has been occupying Baghdad for five years and the people in the Green Zone are sleeping in trailers? In a malaria and sporadic shelling zone? And what to they mean by a "limited" supply of cots? It sounds like they actually don't have room for everyone to sleep in hardened areas. If true, that is really, really bad. It can lead to fights between personnel for hardened space in an environment where there are guns all over the place.
And like New Orleans, there are ugly class and race conflicts in the Green Zone. I would bet that hard space isn't going to the contract laborers they bring in from India. By the way, a lot of those guys have military experience. But don't worry, there's no way they could ever find a gun- they're in the middle of Baghdad!
Note to the planners of the next war. When you are planning the headquarters of the occupation authority, don't try to referbish those nifty palaces and things downtown. You don't want to be within mortar range of several million people you might not always control. Think big office park near the airport next time.
1 comment:
And wouldn't you know it- one of the two guys killed today by shelling was from the Inspector General's office. What are the odd's they'd kill an auditor...
"Mr. Converse was a civilian government employee who worked for the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, which is under the Department of Defense. He was a financial analyst who audited contracts in Iraq. The agency's Inspector General, Stuart W. Bowen Jr., says Paul Converse survived one day after being injured."
Post a Comment