Want to Vacation in the Green Zone?

[Nephissa]

Just when you thought the Iraq situation couldn't get stranger.

 

This, perhaps, is the strangest one. Initially, I thought it was a joke.

 

BAGHDAD - Forget rocket attacks, concrete blast walls and no sewer system and try picturing luxury hotels, a shopping center and even condos in the heart of Baghdad.

 

It’s all part of an ambitious five-year development “dream list” to transform the U.S.-protected Green Zone from a walled fortress into a gleaming centerpiece for Baghdad’s future.

 

The $5 billion plan has Pentagon backing and apparently the interest of leading hotel developers, said Navy Capt. Thomas Karnowski, who led the team that created the development plan.

 

Washington wants to create a “zone of influence” around the new $700 million U.S. Embassy to serve as a high-end buffer for the compound, whose total price tag will reach about $1 billion after all the workers and offices are relocated over the next year.

 

“When you have $1 billion hanging out there and 1,000 employees lying around, you kind of want to know who your neighbors are. You want to influence what happens in your neighborhood over time,” said Karnowski.

 

Karnowski said a deal was already completed for Marriott International Inc. to build a hotel in the Green Zone.

source

 

It gets better or worse, it depends on your viewpoint.

 

Baghdad to get ‘Disneyland’ style amusement park.

 

At the cost of nearly $500 million, a Los Angeles-based company is “developing the Baghdad Zoo and Entertainment Experience, a massive American-style amusement park that will feature a skateboard park, rides, a concert theatre and a museum.” The park “is being designed by the firm that developed Disneyland.” The company’s owner says “the time is ripe” for profit and entertainment to collide in Iraq:

 

Mr Werner, who has been sold a 50-year lease on the site by the Mayor of Baghdad for an undisclosed sum, says that the time is ripe for the amusement park. “I think people will embrace it. They’ll see it as an opportunity for their children regardless if they’re Shia or Sunni. They’ll say their kids deserve a place to play and they’ll leave it alone.”

 

“I wouldn’t be doing this if I wasn’t making money” he said. “I also have this wonderful sense that we’re doing the right thing – we’re going to employ thousands of Iraqis. But mostly everything here is for profit.”

 

A Pentagon official has said that Gen. David Petraeus is a “big supporter” of the project.

[Geel_jire]

cajiib

[Nephissa]

Very surreal indeed! Nice to know they can go skateboarding this summer, and keep their minds off of being hungry/thirsty.

[STOIC]

I gotta say this is the funniest story I read today.Is this another sort of pervasive fallacy implicit in every aspect of America war on terror? Where are the terrorist if we are building five star hotels and amusement parks so we can cash more money? All the Marriott rooms should be decorated as a torture chambers then.

 

One of my college buddy-International affair kinds of guy- is stationed in green zone by an American company. He always wanted to work for the State government until he found heaven in the companies that are operating in the green zone. While Bush administration manipulates congress into action in Iraq someone somewhere is heavily benefiting from this war.

 

PS By the way my freind shot Baghdad for Obama videos on Youtube