WP: Heralded Iraq Police Academy a 'Disaster' (Bad News #1)

[grytpype]

Lots of bad news from Iraq this morning from the damn liberal Washington Post.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/27/AR2006092702134.html

Heralded Iraq Police Academy a 'Disaster'

By Amit R. Paley
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, September 28, 2006; A01

BAGHDAD, Sept. 27 -- A $75 million project to build the largest police academy in Iraq has been so grossly mismanaged that the campus now poses health risks to recruits and might need to be partially demolished, U.S. investigators have found.

The Baghdad Police College, hailed as crucial to U.S. efforts to prepare Iraqis to take control of the country's security, was so poorly constructed that feces and urine rained from the ceilings in student barracks. Floors heaved inches off the ground and cracked apart. Water dripped so profusely in one room that it was dubbed "the rain forest."

"This is the most essential civil security project in the country -- and it's a failure," said Stuart W. Bowen Jr., the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, an independent office created by Congress. "The Baghdad police academy is a disaster."

...

Even in a $21 billion reconstruction effort that has been marred by cases of corruption and fraud, failures in training and housing Iraq's security forces are particularly significant because of their effect on what the U.S. military has called its primary mission here: to prepare Iraqi police and soldiers so that Americans can depart.

Federal investigators said the inspector general's findings raise serious questions about whether the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has failed to exercise effective oversight over the Baghdad Police College or reconstruction programs across Iraq, despite charging taxpayers management fees of at least 4.5 percent of total project costs. The Corps of Engineers said Wednesday that it has initiated a wide-ranging investigation of the police academy project.

...

[grytpype]

1. Well, it was only $75 million.

A mere drop in the bucket of $300+ billion that has been wasted on this war.

[Erika]

2. Yeah, only 75 mil of our taxes

but the corporatists weren't hurt. W knows his priorities.

[rodeodance]

3. a finger is not going to hold back the dike water pretty soon

[truthisfreedom]

4. built to fail. just like the whole war. one great big chaotic disaster

right from the start. the biggest economic and foreign policy disaster in the history of our once-great nation!

[DoYouEverWonder]

9. The Bush men are all professional bankrupters

Over and over they have repeated the same pattern. They go into a business, suck it dry of all its assets and then walk away.

From Day 1 of his Residency, Bush always chooses the worst and most destructive path.

In business this is called fraud. When you are the ruling power it is called treason.

[radfringe]

5. business as usual

http://www.bangornews.com/news/t/viewpoints.aspx?articleid=140220&zoneid=36

Monday, September 11, 2006 - Bangor Daily News LTTE
---snip--

"War is a Racket," by Gen. Smedley Butler, our country's most decorated soldier, is a must read for supporters of George W. Bush, Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins and the war in Iraq.

Concerns expressed by Butler about military profiteering during World War I were voiced, during the 1950s, by President Dwight Eisenhower. More recently, Lewis Lapham in September's issue of Harpers reported that since the bombing of the twin towers, Congress has, like puppets on strings, appropriated $300 billion to the Bush and Cheney worldwide war on terror; a war without end and a bottomless tax trough for giant defense contractors.

One billion five-hundred million a week, much of which, as Lapham explains, flows into no-bid cost-plus contracts immune from audit. In cold hard numbers at least $12.3 billion seeped into the coffers of Halliburton - Cheney's baby

$5.3 billion for Parsons Corp.; $3.7 billion for Fluor Corp.; $3,100,000,000 for Washington Group International; $2.8 billion for Bechtel Corp.

[muriel_volestrangler]

6. Use this as publicity to ruin Parsons

If they are going to get handed huge contracts by the government, let the world know what a bunch of incompetent idiots they are.

The Parsons contract, which eventually totaled at least $75 million, was terminated May 31 "due to cost overruns, schedule slippage, and sub-standard quality," according to a Sept. 4 internal military memo. But rather than fire the Pasadena, Calif.-based company for cause, the contract was halted for "the government's convenience."
...
Inside the inspector general's office in Baghdad on a recent blistering afternoon, several federal investigators expressed amazement that such construction blunders could be concentrated in one project. Even in Iraq, they said, failure on this magnitude is unusual. When asked how the problems at the police college compared with other projects they had inspected, the answers came swiftly.

"This is significant," said Jon E. Novak, a senior adviser in the office.

"It's catastrophic," DeShurley added.

Bowen said: "It's the worst."

[Vinca]

7. So they screw up the construction the first time - they get paid.

The place needs to be torn down - new contract - paid again. Another police academy is built - another new contract - more pay. By the time this is over every American taxpayer will have a sore bum from being screwed so often.

[Lochloosa]

8. A little more info on Parsons Corp. track history in Iraq.

And who will go to jail. :shrug:
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Parsons_Corporation


Contracts Update: June 2006
The Army Corps of Engineers announced June 19, 2006, "that it had canceled a $99.1 million contract with Parsons, one of the largest companies working in Iraq, to build a prison north of Baghdad after the firm fell more than two years behind schedule, threatened to go millions of dollars over budget and essentially abandoned the construction site," James Glanz, reported (http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=13757) June 20, 2006, in the New York Times.

"The move is another harsh rebuke for Parsons, only weeks after the corps canceled more than $300 million of the company's contracts to build and refurbish hospitals and clinics across Iraq. A federal oversight office had found that some of the clinics were little more than empty shells and that only 20 of 150 called for in the contract would be completed without new financing," Glanz wrote.

Maj. Gen. William H. McCoy Jr., commander of the corps' Gulf Region Division, said that the "loss of business for Parsons in Iraq may not be over a broad review of Parsons' work in Iraq had turned up problems in sector after sector. According to news releases on the Parsons Web site, the company has received contracts worth as much as $4 billion in Iraq ... for building and refurbishing scores of police stations, border forts, fire stations, courthouses, prisons and Iraqi government buildings. 'We found overruns in almost every case,' General McCoy said.

"Corps officials also said that they had asked the company to explain delays and overruns on another prison project, south of Nasiriya, for which it has an $82.7 million contract," Glanz wrote.

A "pair of scathing reports" on "the $243 million program to build 150 clinics" showed that Parsons "would complete only 20 unless new financing were found. ... In some cases, the reports found, the clinics were little more than empty shells of uneven bricks and concrete that were already crumbling into dust. But those reports focused much of their criticism on what they called the failure of the corps to exercise proper oversight of the work.

"Shortly after those reports were issued, General McCoy canceled the clinics contract, and shortly thereafter voided a $70 million Parsons project to refurbish 20 hospitals in Iraq." McCoy said that "he had found $62 million in his budget to finish the remaining clinics by letting construction contracts directly to Iraqi companies," Glanz wrote.

[habitual]

10. i guess the friends of *co don't know how to build too well

just take the money.

[Amonester]

11. And the Crook-in-Chief's 'numbers' are "up" (!?!)

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x2534139

Maybe "they don't know" :crazy:

(or "they don't pay any" taxes...) :shrug:
(or/and "they don't have" kids???) :wtf:

[Supersedeas]

15. polling results are easy when Pundits only regurgitate * propoganda

speeches and "appearances" -- reality it turns out is a different story.

[xchrom]

12. this can only heralded as ''ANOTHER bush failure''.

[valerief]

13. A Typhoid Epidemic coming?! n/t

[LouisianaLiberal]

14. An anecdote from Riverbend's blog, August 2003

Listen to this little anecdote. One of my cousins works in a prominent engineering company in Baghdad- we’ll call the company H. This company is well-known for designing and building bridges all over Iraq. My cousin, a structural engineer, is a bridge freak. He spends hours talking about pillars and trusses and steel structures to anyone who’ll listen.

As May was drawing to a close, his manager told him that someone from the CPA wanted the company to estimate the building costs of replacing the New Diyala Bridge on the South East end of Baghdad. He got his team together, they went out and assessed the damage, decided it wasn’t too extensive, but it would be costly. They did the necessary tests and analyses (mumblings about soil composition and water depth, expansion joints and girders) and came up with a number they tentatively put forward- $300,000. This included new plans and designs, raw materials (quite cheap in Iraq), labor, contractors, travel expenses, etc.

Let’s pretend my cousin is a dolt. Let’s pretend he hasn’t been working with bridges for over 17 years. Let’s pretend he didn’t work on replacing at least 20 of the 133 bridges damaged during the first Gulf War. Let’s pretend he’s wrong and the cost of rebuilding this bridge is four times the number they estimated- let’s pretend it will actually cost $1,200,000. Let’s just use our imagination.

A week later, the New Diyala Bridge contract was given to an American company. This particular company estimated the cost of rebuilding the bridge would be around- brace yourselves- $50,000,000 !!

Something you should know about Iraq: we have over 130,000 engineers. More than half of these engineers are structural engineers and architects. Thousands of them were trained outside of Iraq in Germany, Japan, America, Britain and other countries. Thousands of others worked with some of the foreign companies that built various bridges, buildings and highways in Iraq. The majority of them are more than proficient- some of them are brilliant.

Iraqi engineers had to rebuild Iraq after the first Gulf War in 1991 when the ‘Coalition of the Willing’ was composed of over 30 countries actively participating in bombing Baghdad beyond recognition. They had to cope with rebuilding bridges and buildings that were originally built by foreign companies, they had to get around a lack of raw materials that we used to import from abroad, they had to work around a vicious blockade designed to damage whatever infrastructure was left after the war… they truly had to rebuild Iraq. And everything had to be made sturdy, because, well, we were always under the threat of war.

http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/2003_08_01_riverbendblog_archive.html

[0007]

16. OMFG! Will this raise junior's poll number even higher?

Are Americans stupid or what? Just goes to show 'ya how powerful the media is plus trotting that little cocksucker out every day to say the same stupid shit!!

[Barrett808]

17. k & r n/t

[RamboLiberal]

18. K&R - now this one truly stinks and is a lot of crap literally!

Dems need to make a commercial of this and the other blunders that sent our tax dollars in to the giant black hole of Repuke cronies. Not to mention all the killed and wounded both American, allies and Iraqis.