This is no surprise to me, I saw the same thing in Saudi in 1990,91. As civies then, we had our passports taken to the Saudi Embassy, so as I said, nothing new, where do you think USA got the idea, their Saudi brothers.

Perfect. The architects of the Iraq war won't show the architecture of thier new Iraq embassy.

The email said MJ still had pictures off the largest embassy in the world now being built in Bhagdad. I notice from this site there are no pictures. Any thought that we're getting out of Iraq is a fool - why else would we be building the biggest embassy in the world in an occupied country? Why else would Congress allocate money for "bomb proof" hummers? Think they'll be ready for September 2007? Think again. We're there to control the oil and won't leave until we either blow ourselves up or we get it. Exxon Mobile will reap obscene profits and you and I will pay for it with our tax dollars and our lives. What a great deal!

I've seen the pictures, It's like a corporate vatican fortress. They didn't have all the constanina wire up yet to make it seem more like an enormous prison - well I guess that would be the guardhouse zone and Iraq would be the prison - but I digress. The thing is a monstrosity, and is the clearest signal that we don't intend to ever leave. Oh wait I know - we could abandon it and give it as a gift to the Iraqi people as a gesture of good faith for destroying their capital and every other working thing in their country. Then if democratically elected someone like Mossedeq in the future he might be safe from the CIA and any other would be Kermit Roosevelts.

I can't speak for the conditions of workers on the Baghdad embassy project, but I can tell you that third party nationals on many of the military posts are often working under conditions that are not much better. I was deployed twice to LSA Anaconda which has huge numbers of third party national workers. I also had the opportunity to speak to many of the US civilian foreman who managed them, and some Soldiers who had oversight of them as well. Quarters were incredibly crowded. It was not unusual to see a dozen men in one trailer. Some of the trailers were not equipped with air conditioning. I remember one US foreman telling me how his workers were given the same meal--rice and somewhat old chicken--at every meal, every day for weeks on end. Several of the workers actually stopped eating for about a week because they found the food inedible. The foreman (who seemed like a good guy) had started stealing food from the chow halls to make sure his workers got a decent meal. An NCO who was in charge of the VIP quarters (rooms that visiting senior officers and dignitaries stayed in) told me that her female third party national workers were in constant danger of being sexually assaulted, but that the US military police did not have the resources to either properly protect those workers or investigate incidents of abuse. But at least all the drinking water at LSA Anaconda was clean.

I do want to point out that there seemed to be a certain hierarchy to how well workers would be treated, based both on job skill and national origin. Many Filipinos were skilled workers such as welders, generator mechanics, or materials handling specialists. They got to eat in the chow hall with the troops, so most of them were doing fine. Turks were probably in the best shape of all, as they were there as subcontractors essentially running their own operations. The guys who made our concrete blast walls were all Turks. Nepalis who worked in the chow halls at least ate well, and also had more visibility from US soldiers as we ate in those chow halls every day. But a lot of construction laborers had it very tough, and I heard some pretty scary things about what happened to some of the laundry workers.

There really seemed to be very little oversight or even basic concern for the third party nationals who preformed a lot of the essential labor on post. I have to say also, there didn't seem to be a lot of oversight on where these third party national workers were coming from. Many of them were part of a vast international labor pool subcontracted at least two removes from the main contract holder. I seriously doubt we had a good idea of the loyalties, ideologies, or possible hostile intent of all those workers.

Oh its even great!!$592 million US embassy keep on hitting in the headlines,First for the money involved in the project,then for swimming pool and volleyball court now for mistreat the workers..Good!!keep going guys..
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I can't speak for the American army but this seems to be the standard in other Gulf countries; in UAE for instance "cheap" Pakistani labour is used for all major construction projects (and there are hundreds of these in Dubai and Abu Dhabi). While living there we drove past the camps where the workers were held (their foremen hold their passports so they are in fact held). Not much better than Abu Ghraib. Kind of puts a tarnish on that seven-star hotel, hmm?

From what I understand, KBR, Halliburton, et al. simply hired many of those cheap laborers by using labor subcontractors who are already present in country. I know, for example, that the chow hall in Taji was staffed by Filipinos, but that the company holding that contract was actually a Kuwaiti company. We didn't bring in a brand new labor pool so much as fall in on the one that was already in place to be used, or used up as it may be.