The cost of Empire: new Pakistan embassy to cost 736 million

While back in the US states such as California are sending out IOU's because they are broke the federal government has lots of money to spend on items such as this. The US is obviously going to stay in Pakistan for some time. There is never a recession in the military-industrial complex!


The entire article can be found at atimes.


Baseless expenditures
By Chalmers Johnson
The United States empire of bases - at US$102 billion a year already the world's costliest military enterprise - just got a good deal more expensive. As a start, on May 27, the State Department announced it will build a new "embassy" in Islamabad, Pakistan, which at $736 million will be the second priciest ever constructed. It will cost only $4 million less, if cost overruns don't occur, than the Vatican-City-sized one the George W Bush administration put up in Baghdad. The State Department was also reportedly planning to buy the five-star Pearl Continental Hotel (complete with pool) in Peshawar, near the border with Afghanistan, to use as a consulate and living quarters for its staff there. Unfortunately for such plans, on June 9, Pakistani militants rammed a truck filled with explosives into the hotel, killing 18 occupants, wounding at least 55, and collapsing one entire wing of the structure. There has been no news since about whether the State Department is still going ahead with the purchase. Whatever the costs turn out to be, they will not be included in the US's already bloated military budget, even though none of these structures is designed to be a true embassy - a place, that is, where local people come for visas and American officials represent the commercial and diplomatic interests of their country. Instead these so-called embassies will actually be walled compounds, akin to medieval fortresses, where American spies, soldiers, intelligence officials, and diplomats try to keep an eye on hostile populations in a region at war. .......