Do you get kickbacks from the Drudge Report for all of your plugs on Slog?

Yeah, why are you helping Drudge, when you can get the same pics from Reuters, the Beeb (BBC), or AFP (Agence France Presse) ...

Why is this at all surprising, or warranting a smart ass remark from Dan Savage? If we're going to be in Iraq for the foreseeable future, it makes sense that we make the living quarters for our nation's representatives A) pleasant enough for the folks who have to spend great portions of their lives in a prehistoric third world desert, and B) well-enough equipped that said individuals don't have to go outside and risk their lives against Islamic terror when they want to do something as simple as eat or work out.

Makes plenty of sense to me.

Where's "dan the savage warmonger"? This is prime material.

This is gonna make a great Presidential palace for Moqtada.

Does the mailbox out front still say "S. Hussein"?

Actually, only one - and it's reserved for Haliburton employees only...

Why is this at all surprising, or warranting a smart ass remark from Dan Savage?

I think probably because most Iraqis don't have the luxury you outlined here:

said individuals don't have to go outside and risk their lives against Islamic terror when they want to do something as simple as eat or work out.

The Iraqi people wouldn't be in this mess without us. Why should we have what we aren't willing to give them now that we've, uh, "liberated" them? Get a world view. Go to Iraq, then come back and be all pro-Bush/pro-US/rah-rah-embassy.

I bet you can't. I couldn't.

Okay, sure, we don't want to put our Embassy employees up in a hostel, or a Motel 6.

But this will be the largest, most expensive embassy on the planet. For us or for anyone else. It's bigger than the Vatican. It is an abso-fucking-lutely obscene waste of taxpayer money.

Meanwhile, our economy is going to shit, and Bush is giving the wealthy tax breaks. Makes sense.

given the success of the surge, we'll be leaving iraq soon, at which point they can turn that enormous complex into luxury condos for the iraqi elite. or are we going to take it apart like all those non-permanent military bases we're building?

I hope you don't mind, but I already sold it to pay for the War in Afghanistan ...