While President Bush insists that sovereignty was returned to Iraq three months ago, 10-square-kilometers in the heart of the Iraqi capital along the banks of the Tigris river - the site of several Saddam Hussein-era palace complexes and some of the city's finest real estate - remains U.S. territory.
..."It's a world within a world," said a Western diplomat who has only left the Green Zone twice in three months. "I imagine there are some people here who never meet Iraqis."
Seattle Post-Intelligencer article..."It's a world within a world," said a Western diplomat who has only left the Green Zone twice in three months. "I imagine there are some people here who never meet Iraqis."
Sure, take the best.
While car bombings, kidnappings and gunfights rage across the capital, life behind the blast walls resembles suburban America: women in shorts jog along tree-lined avenues, off-duty soldiers lounge by the pool and the Green Zone Cafe and two Chinese restaurants are packed in the evenings. Everything from pornographic movies to mobile phone accessories are on sale at the local bazaar.
So now we know where those pictures of all the happy Iraqi entrepeneurs come from. In fact, as I understand it, journalists don't even leave the Green Zone these days. Green. As in American dollars, I guess. And, it's not safe there any more, either.
U.S. authorities raised a security alert in the Green Zone after an improvised bomb was found in front of a restaurant there on Tuesday....
A mortar shell exploded in the Green Zone on Thursday.
...The Green Zone also suffers an average of three mortar attacks a day.
...In September, a U.S. government employee was beaten in the parking lot of the U.S. Embassy by two men who muttered something in Arabic before running away....
The American planners who drew the Green Zone perimeter had to include hundreds of middle class homes because they were located near important government buildings that couldn't be left out.
"There are young men crawling all over perimeter and nobody knows whose side they are really on," the security official said.
...[E]ven the thousands of normal Iraqis whose homes wound up in the U.S.-occupied Green Zone want the Americans to move out and the fortress dismantled.
A mortar shell exploded in the Green Zone on Thursday.
...The Green Zone also suffers an average of three mortar attacks a day.
...In September, a U.S. government employee was beaten in the parking lot of the U.S. Embassy by two men who muttered something in Arabic before running away....
The American planners who drew the Green Zone perimeter had to include hundreds of middle class homes because they were located near important government buildings that couldn't be left out.
"There are young men crawling all over perimeter and nobody knows whose side they are really on," the security official said.
...[E]ven the thousands of normal Iraqis whose homes wound up in the U.S.-occupied Green Zone want the Americans to move out and the fortress dismantled.
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