Middle Class Leaving Iraq Without Stopping In to Visit The Shiny New U.S. Embassy

[Leigh Meyers <leighcmeyers@xxxxxxxxx>]

*CSM & K-R

> Baghdad may have little potable water and only a few hours of 
electricity a day, but the embassy complex will have its own water 
treatment facilities and electricity generator.
>
>     First Kuwaiti General Trading and Contracting, a subcontractor of 
Halliburtonâs Kellogg, Brown and Root, was granted the $592 million 
construction contract. By December it had already been paid about $483 
million.



> In the last 10 months, the state has issued new passports to 1.85 
million Iraqis, 7 percent of the population and a quarter of the 
countryâs estimated middle class. The school system offers another clue: 
Since 2004, the Ministry of Education has issued 39,554 letters 
permitting parents to take their childrenâs academic records abroad. The 
number of such letters issued in 2005 was double that in 2004, according 
to the director of the ministryâs examination department. Iraqi 
officials and international organizations put the number of Iraqis in 
Jordan at close to a million. Syrian cities also have growing Iraqi 
populations.
*
http://leighm.net/blog/2006/05/22/middlclass_embass_csmkr/