And Speaking of Palaces....

In case this didn't make it across your desks or coffee tables already, this one is worth a read....

Bye-Bye bidets! US troops leaving Saddam palaces

By REBECCA SANTANA, Associated Press 

BAGHDAD (AP) — Available soon: nine palaces in lakeside complex frequented by visiting kings and dictators, beautiful molded ceilings and light fixtures, many bidets, Saddam Hussein mural and former prison cell. As is, with Tomahawk missile damage. Contact: U.S. Army.

Thus might read a real estate ad for the Victory Base Complex, one of the many properties the U.S. military is vacating as the Dec. 31 deadline for its withdrawal from Iraq approaches. It will leave behind probably some of the most elaborate, some would say tacky, office spaces ever used by American soldiers, sailors or Marines.

The U.S. military has been headquartered in the complex near Baghdad International Airport almost since GIs reached Baghdad in 2003. Countless U.S. dignitaries have passed through.

It Is an odd place to work, surrounded by so much Saddam history and grandiosity.

By the time the dictator was toppled, he had built about 75 palaces and VIP complexes nationwide. That is according to the then U.S. military historian's report on the Victory Base Complex written last year.

Touring the complex is a bit like touring Saddam's mind.

There is the Victory over Iran palace, commemorating the 1980-1988 war he started that ended in stalemate and half a million dead. And the Victory over America palace commemorating the 1991 Gulf War in which a U.S.-led coalition drove Saddam's invading forces out of Kuwait.

"Any war that Saddam survived was a victory," said Col. Les Melnyk, the current U.S. military historian in Iraq.

Now the Iraqi government must figure out what to do with all this square footage.

It already is turning a palace complex in the southern city of Basra into a museum. A palace near the ruins of Babylon may become a hotel......

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hq793uIPk-C1pp7ioYFA2KXz49Tw?docId=859b938f6a864b1fbc77bbb3bd106745