Facade

I had an opportunity to go into one of Saddam's many palaces, this one in Tikrit. It is being used by the Army as a headquarters building. Looks very impressive from the outside, and the inside has many details, marble, tile, and expensive appointments.

Upon a closer look, the workmanship ship is shoddy. Tile is not aligned, mortar is sloppy, marble is roughly cut and poorly installed, the crystal chandeliers are made of plastic, and the electrics are abysmal. Like so much of what I see here, it is, I guess not surprisingly, third world.

I had thought the American workers were always in a hurry, and cut corners, and did shoddy work. That may be sometimes, but compared to here the work I see in America is outstanding.

They just don't seem to have a desire to construct things nicely, at least, as I perceive them. They're OK with cheesy work. Perhaps it's the "God Willing" attitude. If God meant it to be better, it would be better. It's cheesy, so God meant it to be cheesy, so who am I to complain. Or, maybe they're just used to cheesy and don't expect anything better. This is a poor country, and I guess they're not used to affording nice stuff. But, when they can afford it, like Saddam, it just looks nice.

I was told that part of the problem with the Palaces is that Saddam was impatient. Make me a palace by next week, or something unreasonable like that. So, upon pain of death, the workers would throw the thing up to meet the deadline, and of course, didn't have the time to do nice work. I have seen some nice work, just not much of it.