"The United States in Iraq, population 16,000, is a country within a country. It has a $6 billion budget, its own airline and three hospitals, and imports virtually all of its food. Its central fortress, otherwise known as the Baghdad embassy compound, is nearly as large as Vatican City.
But what seemed like a good idea seven years ago — when plans to construct the embassy and its various outposts were initiated and U.S. interests in Iraq appeared limitless — now increasingly looks like a white elephant of questionable value and staggering expense, critics say.
“The place was a relic before the paint was dry on it,” Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), who chairs the Appropriations subcommittee on State Department expenditures, said of the 104-acre embassy compound, the largest and most costly U.S. diplomatic mission in the world.
Leahy is awaiting President Obama’s new budget request, due Monday, to see whether the administration shares his views. If not, he said, “I’m not sure Congress is going to go along with it much longer.”
Patrick F. Kennedy, the State Department’s long-serving undersecretary for management, said that the White House has not asked him to shrink the embassy, and he had no indication that the budget would be cut.
Officials in Baghdad and in Washington were already examining whether the mission was “right-sized,” Kennedy said. “We’re now in the fifth or sixth week since transition” following the final departure of U.S. military forces, and “we’re looking at the numbers.” He dismissed a report, posted Tuesday on the New York Times’ Web site, that the embassy was preparing cuts of up to 50 percent.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/us-evaluating-size-of-baghdad-embassy-officials-say/2012/02/07/gIQABP8axQ_story.html
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