I'm constantly amazed at the resourcefulness of the Gizar community for spotting the strange and unusual story, and this is one of those cases. When the story first came in, I read it, shrugged my shoulders, and thought, "well, that's interesting but hardly blog material." The story kept coming in in various articles that people were sending, and so I thought, "wait a minute, there's something going on and they're spotting it and I'm not." Now before we get to what finally made me consider this story, I'd better tell you what the story is about; it's about the new, and apparently, very large US Embassy in Baghdad, which, as embassies go, is not only huge, and hugely staffed, but apparently the hub of some sort of vast transportation enterprise:

The Secret Logistics of America’s Global Deep State

Now, I rarely count how many versions of an article people send me, but this time I did, and the total number of people who sent in some version of this story were around 23, as far as I can tell. Considering that I get an average of about 100-150 emails a day (best guesstimate), that places this story near the all-time high for people noticing it and bringing it to my attention. So what caught people's attention? This:

The world's largest embassy is situated in the Green Zone and fortified by three walls, another barrier of concrete slabs, followed by barbed wire fences and a wall of sandbags. It covers an area of 104 acres, six times larger than UN headquarters in New York and ten times larger than the new embassy Washington is building in Beijing – which is just 10 acres. [Editor's' Note: The ten-acre US Embassy in Beijing is the second largest overseas construction project in the history of the Department of State — and the 104-acre US Embassy in Iraq is the largest.] So, America's largest diplomatic mission is surrounded by high concrete walls, is painted in black, brown and grey and is completely isolated from its environment. … The United States announced several months ago that between diplomats and employees, its embassy would include 16,000 people after the pullout of US forces. (Emphases in the original)

But wait. That's not all:

More than a million kilograms of cargo were shipped from Baghdad to different parts of the world, reveals US embassies procurement documents. Mysterious cargo shipments from the US Embassy in Baghdad to other American embassies and consulates around the world have been revealed on a Wikileaks' database. Procurement orders of US embassies are public documents, but Wikileaks put them in a searchable database making it easier to analyse. The database displaying worldwide US embassy orders of goods and services reveals Baghdad as a postal and shipping centre for tonnes of freight.

So, we have a 104 acre embassy, with apparently over 16,000 employees, and it's a "post office" shipping things to just about everywhere apparently. In fact, over a million kilograms gives a whole new meaning to the immunity of a "diplomatic pouch" I suppose. And under the cover of the "diplomatic pouch" one could smuggle, I mean, ship...well, just about anything. We'll get back to that, because it's part of today's high octane speculation. As the article itself notes, the shipments include "containers" and, it argues, weapons. And all this, let us remember, under the aegis, apparently, of the US Department of State:

On 2 July 2017, the great investigative reporter Dilyana Gaytandzhieva headlined "350 Flights Carry Weapons Diplomatic for Terrorists”, and provided documentation of the US CIA’s intricate global network, which secretly “sends $1 billion worth of weapons” through many countries to jihadists in Syria to take down Syria’s Government. Iraq was mentioned 6 times in the original publication of her article, and is mentioned 9 times in the 29 April 2018 updated version. That secret US supply of weapons to jihadist groups to overthrow Bashar al-Assad and his secular, non-sectarian, Baathist Party, is a secret operation, just like the US State Department’s Baghdad Embassy’s operations are, and that Embassy could even be this particular operation’s headquarters.

Then, Mr. S.D. weighed in on the whole affair, and sent along another article:

The U.S. art market for stolen antiquities from Yemen must be shut down

Mr. S.D. wondered, as did a few others who sent along the story, if in fact part of those "containers" contained not weapons, but antiquities. Some even included articles about British Petroleum's recent discovery of yet another vast pool of oil beneath the Gulf of Mexico, putting to rest, they speculated, the narrative that the USA needed Middle East oil: if the USA is awash in oil, why is it still in the Middle East? Well, most regular readers here are aware of my own high octane speculation that the whole "weapons of mass destruction" and "we need to secure the oil" explanation was a bit of a cover story, to gain permanent access and control over the antiquities of the region. Dr. Heather Lynn has speculated that oil, and oil companies, were the cover for a similar "antiquities acquisition" scheme in Syria. So, Mr. S.D. wondered, is the war in Yemen really about the same thing?

But there are other possibilities, though I remain persuaded that antiquities is at least part of the agenda, after all, the US-sponsored Arab spring occurred in countries laden with antiquities, Lybia, Egypt, and of course, "their" sights have also focused on Iran, and Turkey, recent victim of a coup plot which Sultan Erdogan has always maintained was an American attempt to overthrow his regime, also has antiquities. Think only of Gobekli Tepi. And the allegations that antiquities trafficking was in part the funding mechanism for terrorist activity is fairly certain. But antiquities are probably only part of a wider agenda. A few months ago, stories began to circulate from the former Soviet republic of Georgia that local American consulates were also involved in covert bio-weapons programs and testing. Again, "shipments" were observed going in and out of the facilities, and the Georgian and Russian journalists covering the story speculated that bioweapons were being positioned for an eventual war with Russia. And all of it, again, under the aegis of the Department of State.

So what's going on? I suspect the speculation of the article, and of all the people sending the story, is true: some sort of vast logistics operation is under way using embassies. Literally anything could be being shipped, from weapons, antiquities, to more salacious cargoes, including drugs and humans, engraving plates for currencies, securities, you name it.

There's more to this story, I'm sure, and I don't know about you, but I suspect we'll be hearing more about it. The only problem is, this story is of such a nature that it will require a careful eye for connecting dots.

See you on the flip side...