The US State Department has announced a partial evacuation of the massive US Embassy in Iraq today, as the security situation in Baghdad worsens and the nation’s war grows.
Officials declined to say how many staff were to be evacuated, but insisted a “substantial majority” would remain. An estimated 5,300 employees work at the embassy, the largest on the planet.
The employees will be moved to US consulates in safer parts of Iraq, or to the US Embassy in Amman, Jordan. The State Department also issued an admonition to avoid travel to Iraq.
The Pentagon has also confirmed that it is sending more troops to guard the embassy grounds. Details are scant on this as well, but speculation is that it will be around 100 additional troops.
If I was running US policy, I'd flee from Iraq entirely. Why leave more hostages to be seized and traded for more Guantanamo Bay prisoners? Of course, Obama may consider that a useful and politically innocuous way of getting rid of them!!
Hostages? I think not. They would be prisoners of war, and besides isn't that what the hazardous duty pay is supposed to cover?
Technically, absent a Declaration of War from Congress, they would be hostages. As for the "hazardous duty pay" – I never could figure out why it existed except to pad the paycheck and make you or your loved ones at home feel better about…something. In any case, it amounts to a pittance and really does nothing since as a soldier, it's YOUR JOB to go fight and maybe get killed.
You forget that others can declare war on the FedGov.
Maybe we need a repeat of the helicopter evacuation from the Saigon embassy in 1974. That might end the US war mongering once and for all.
The USG learned nothing from that experience except to have tighter control of the press in future wars.
Peace Ever After, good point.
BTW, there is a certain irony in the name of the Navy Guided Missile Cruiser that accompanied the carrier George H. W. Bush to the Persian Gulf.
The US Global Empire that has invaded and caused all the wars in the Middle East for control and profit in that area of the world is of course correctly termed 'imperialism" — much as the supposedly short period of America's "Age of Imperialism" inaccurately described in all High School American History textbooks —- thus the name of the Navy Cruiser, the 'USS Philippine Sea' is more than 'ironic' as the ship guarding the helicopter evacuation of what might be the last imperialist troops in Iraq!
Also, of course, if the USS George H W Bush were to come to any untoward end, the Empire-contrived battle cry for more imperialist intervention might well be a variation of the first US imperialist war in Cuba, "Remember the Bush" instead of "Remember the Maine"
The only thing that accomplished was to end the draft. Since the pentagon can get by without that, now, nothing will change.
Here is an enigma. Our embassy in Baghdad was supposed to be a super-duper center for gathering intelligence on the Middle East including Iraq. Why is it that our administration was apparently caught "napping" when ISIS and other fighters took Mosul and Kirkuk? Why defend/protect what appears to be a useless but gigantic piece of office space filled with useless spies?
:…apparently caught "napping"…"
Because it wasn't safe to venture outside the walls of the Green Zone, the contractors employed stayed safely inside relying on their "friends" and those they paid (cheaply most likely) to gather the intel for them.
"…Why defend/protect what appears to be a useless but gigantic piece of office space…"
Image is everything. Why does Congress continue to pay for installations and buildings the Pentagon has identified as not being needed and are probably not even being used? Because some Congresscritter has deemed it important for his/her image that a base closing in his district not show up on their record when re-election comes around.