United States Army departed from Iraq, But money

[Shelley]

* United States Army departed from Iraq .. But money is still flowing

JUNE 30TH, 2012

Plan and the U.S. State Department to spend up to $ 115 million to modernize and develop the building the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, which is already the largest and most expensive in the world, according to the Specifications, published this month.

States that have passed three years and a half since the transfer of U.S. diplomats to place this building over 104 acres at a cost of $ 700 million, and after just four months from the hadeeth of State Department officials in February to try to reduce the U.S. presence there.

And the Office of Foreign Buildings Operations of the U.S. State Department issued a statement last Wednesday, he refers to the start of a new plan after it was determined the need for “a greater number of staff in the building of the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, to enhance the facilities and real estate private diplomacy broadcasting space around Baghdad.” The statement added “the process of strengthening diplomatic reduce total real estate in Baghdad by a third, but it does increase the number of working and staying at the embassy.” The embassy building is located in the heart of the International Zone in Baghdad and includes 1.350 U.S. government employee working under the leadership of the ambassador.

And began the Subcommittee on National Security, National Defense and Foreign Operations of the House of Representatives yesterday, the first file transfers from the Iraq military mission a private army to the task of civilian private Foreign Ministry.

It will appear on the surface questions about past and current expenditures in Iraq, including the cost of the embassy. A member of the Committee without Tierney (Democrat of Massachusetts) that he had “concerns for a long time about the impact of the prominent of the system the U.S. in Iraq,” and looks forward to the continuation of the Committee in monitoring the “shift in Iraq and the dollars deducted from the taxpayers to spend in that State.”

Last month, Foreign sharply reduced what it is supposed that extension is estimated to cost billions of dollars for Iraqi police training program of the U.S. Army. While the initial proposal request from the Foreign Ministry to provide 400 instructors, the number of trainers in the last month 100 trainers. Because the program is not supported by senior Iraqi, the trainers, and most of them senior police officials of Americans, living under the protection of security guards contracted, at the base of military operations advanced U.S. earlier, which is officially attached to a building in Baghdad Police College. The United States has spent about $ 100 million to establish a police academy.

Still projects that cost millions of dollars, which have been implemented in recent years when it was American money flowing freely, following in Iraq, in the 17 June last, issued a U.S. Embassy to Iraq, a press statement meant that the grand opening of the “center rivers for Strategic Studies, “which was created with funding from the U.S. Embassy in Iraq. Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, the new center as “an important step in the process of state building,” but according to the novel and the official news agency in Iraq, did not show any reference to the role played by the United States in financing the construction of the center.

In spite of that the time for the full exit from Iraq is not yet, the Congress a significant reduction of the request the administration to allocate $ 2.26 billion of the Iraqi in the fiscal year 2013, where the “Appropriations Committee in the U.S. Senate” to allocate $ 1.1 billion only, deduct $ 850 million, which was supposed to be paid to the training program for Iraqi police.

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