Donald Rumsfeld’s head: It’s Alive!

Last week I ended a post on the imminent (well, end of the year) withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq with a melodramatic flourish, comparing the U.S embassy in Iraq to an empty skull staring out across the desert sands with sightless eyes—the idea being that the embassy, built by the Bush Administration at the rather extravagant cost of $800 million to serve as headquarters for its projected Middle Eastern empire, would soon be largely abandoned now that U.S. troops were leaving Iraq.

Well, that’s what I get for waxing melodramatic. The embassy, far from shrinking, will double the size of its staff, to a more than substantial 16,000. How wrong can I get? About half of that 16,000 will be security forces, including about 5,000 mercenaries under the command of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Yep, Ozymandias dies hard.

Afterwords
Republicans are naturally whining that President Obama could have gotten the Iraqis to agree to new agreement that would allow U.S. troops to stay, the sticking point being that Iraq refused to give U.S. troops immunity from prosecution for any crimes they committed in Iraq. Juan Cole argues that the Iraqis were never going to accept this. Sounding distinctly like someone pretending to nail the barn door shut while propping it wide open, Sen. John Kerry recently warned James Jeffrey, U.S. ambassador to Iraq, to be careful about “replacing a military presence with a private security presence.” Since that’s exactly what’s going to happen, I don’t see that “being careful” about it is going to make any difference. It sounds to me like the Department of State has figured out that if you want to have clout with today’s Congress, you gotta hire a lotta guys, with a lotta guns. Then they’ll think you’re cool.