ACCUMULATING PERIPHERALS

Terrific story from the AP’s Anne Gearan on the new 21-building, $592 million US Embassy in Baghdad, slated to open in September – the biggest and most expensive embassy ever built.

Rice’s senior adviser on Iraq, David Satterfield, said the embassy is not disproportionately expensive and will serve U.S. interests for years. The second-most expensive embassy is the smaller $434 million U.S. mission being built in Beijing.

Maybe in a couple of years, after the pullout, we can sell some of those 21 buildings to the Chinese for 5 cents on the dollar. I just hope they’ve made the roofs big enough to land a decent-sized helicopter on. That situation in Saigon was a mess.