Why are Kidnapped Slaves Building the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad?

PLUS: Big surprise, Gonzo lies...Rove gets served...A death kitty knows when granny will die...The Dow goes down...Time to start printing out solar panels...Your drive is driving you to your doom...And green is dangerous in Baghdad. It’s July 27th, is this thing on?

Celebration Excuse

Remember the good old days when Presidents who broke the law were punished?

1586

Sir Walter Raleigh brings the first tobacco to England from Virginia.

1789

Congress establishes the Department of Foreign Affairs, which later becomes the State Department.

1909

Orville Wright tests the first U.S. Army airplane, and flies for an impressive 1 hour and 12 minutes.

1921

Researchers at the University of Toronto discover the hormone insulin.

1953

Armistice signed ending the Korean War.

1962

Martin Luther King, Jr. is jailed in Albany, Georgia.

1974

Justice begins for Tricky Dick…the House Judiciary Committee votes to recommend the first article of impeachment against Richard Nixon.

1990

Diva extraordinaire Zsa Zsa Gabor begins a 3 day jail sentence for slapping a cop.

Save us some cake

1824: TheThree Musketeers author Alexandre Dumas

1948: Figure skater Peggy Fleming

1975: Baseball stud Alex Rordriguez

1977: Irish hottie Jonathan Rhys-Meyers (Vanity Fair, Match Point,Mission: Impossible III)

Daybook

Check it out: CAP is on the Hill, telling Congress a sensible redeployment from Iraqis possible.

POTUS

2:00 PM

The President presents the 2005 and 2006 National Medals of Science and Technology (we’re guessing the winners aren’t stem cell researchers).

PEOPLE

10:00 AM

Vice President Dick Cheney makes some remarks at a retirement ceremony for Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Edmund Giambastiani.

STUMPIN’

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton makes a speech in in St. Louis, MO, then heads to Charleston, W.Va. for a fundraiser.

Senator Chris Dodd holds meetings around Iowa.

John Edwards speaks to the Urban League in St. Louis, Mo. then it’s his turn to address the College Democrats of America Convention in Columbia, S.C.

Rudy Giuliani raises campaign cash in Dallas, TX.

Gov. Mike Huckabee and Rep. Duncan Hunter speak at a forum in St. Louis, MO. As do Senator Barack Obama and Rep. Dennis Kucinich.

Fred Thompson looks for campaign cash in Pilly, PA.

ON THE HILL

9:00 AM

House Armed Services Committee hearing on Iraq Redeployment Strategy.

Watch for: Larry Korb, Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress, and Retired Army Gen. John Keane, former vice chief of staff.

9:30 AM

House Judiciary Committee hearing on Media Coverage in Federal Courts.

TV TIME

Watch at work

The View: John Travolta, Queen Latifah
Regis and Kelly: Catherine Zeta-Jones
Ellen DeGeneres: (Repeat) Wildman Jack Hanna

Stay up late

Letterman: Anne Hathaway
Leno: Kevin James, Katharine McPhee
Late Late Show: Big Boi, Amber Stevens
Conan: (Repeat) Don Cheadle, Neil Patrick Harris
Last Call: Andy Dick
Kimmel: (Repeat) Nick Lachey, Reggie Bush, Rich Boy

 

Eavesdrop

STEAL THIS AUDIO:

House Government Oversight Committee Hearing on Allegations of Waste, Fraud, and Abuse at the New U.S. Embassy in Iraq [Oversight and Government Reform]

What: The House Government Oversight hears testimony from witnesses alleging faulty construction and human trafficking in associated projects by First Kuwaiti, the firm in charge of building the U.S. Embassy in Iraq. The hearing is a follow up to a scathing Washington Post report that “U.S. diplomats in Iraq, increasingly fearful over their personal safety...are pointing to new delays and mistakes in the U.S. Embassy construction project in Baghdad as signs that their vulnerability could grow in the months ahead.” [Washington Post]

Why: The U.S. embassy in Iraq is the State Department’s largest construction project, costing over $590 million, and has been called “as big as Vatican City and makes the foreign embassies dotting the tree-lined streets of Washington, D.C., look like carriage houses.” As the base of American presence in Iraq, faulty construction and the usage of enslaved foreign workers, would be a terrible stain on our presence in the region (and trust us, it’s pretty stained as it is). [Fox]

Who: House Government Oversight Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA); National Security and Foreign Affairs Subcommittee Chairman John Tierney (D-MA); Karl Demming, Engineering and Construction Manager at KBR (who ran dining facilities in the kitchen built by First Kuwaiti); John Owens and Rory Mayberry, former employees of First Kuwaiti.

The problems with First Kuwaiti, the head contractor on the U.S. embassy project:

Shoddy electric wiring:

  • Regarding a kitchen built to feed workers at the Embassy site, Waxman and Demming reveal that when the kitchen was turned on “the wires began to melt,” “there was a burning smell” and “the staff received electrical shocks.” Says Demming: “it was a serious safety issue.”
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Dangerous construction sites:

  • Mayberry saw “guys without shoes, without gloves, without safety harnesses, and on scaffolding thirty feet off the ground, their toes wrapped around the rebar like a bunch of birds.”
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  • Owens describes working conditions as “deplorable, beyond even what a working man should tolerate” and tells stories of workers being “verbally and physically abused.”
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Kidnapped and trafficked workers:

  • Mayberry describes men he was surrounded by who “were kidnapped by First Kuwaiti to work at the US Embassy.”
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  • Says Congerssman Tierney, “This proposed beacon of freedom was built, quite literally, on the backs of workers from Nepal, the Phillipines, Pakistan, India, and Ghana.”
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Not responsive to congressional oversight:

  • Congressman Waxman notes that the company is “being paid a half a billion dollars in tax payer funds” but “acting as if it is unaccountable to Congress and the tax payer.”
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  • Says Congressman Tierney, “Being on-time and on budget does not mean the trampling of worker’s rights and dignity.”
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The State Department has turned a blind eye to these problems:

  • Says Congressman Tierney, “...when it came to the workers used to construct our flagship embassy in Iraq, some State Department officials may not have kept their eyes wide open.”
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  • In the words of Rory Mayberry, “I read the State Department’s Inspector General report on the construction of the embassy. Mr. Chairman, it’s not worth the paper it’s printed on.”
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Masthead

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Mic Check is produced every weekday by Christy Harvey, Sara Langhinrichs and Nicole Murphy, and is a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund. Read more about Mic Check.

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