‘This is the most essential civil security project in the country — and it’s a failure’

September 28, 2006

In 2004, the Coalition Provisional Authority (run by unqualified Bush lackeys) hired Parsons Corp., the U.S. construction giant, to rebuild and revitalize the Baghdad Police College. The WaPo described the old academy as “a ramshackle collection of 1930s buildings,” which Parsons would transform into a functioning, modern facility, equipped to train thousands of Iraqi police officers, which not incidentally, has been a key part of the U.S. mission in Iraq.

Indeed, as the Post added, top U.S. military commanders declared 2006 “the year of the police,” in an acknowledgment of their critical role in allowing for any withdrawal of American troops. The Baghdad Police College was touted as a success story by administration officials.

They couldn’t have been more wrong.

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.”

While most of the fraud, waste, and abuse in Iraq is disheartening, this disaster is particularly painful. Those security forces are needed desperately in Iraq, and instead of getting trained, these would-be Iraqi officers were forced to stay in unimaginable conditions.

After substandard plumbing led to toilets that would to cascade throughout the building, waste eventually threatened the integrity of load-bearing slabs. “When we walked down the halls, the Iraqis came running up and said, ‘Please help us. Please do something about this,’ ” Bowen recalled.

And if the Parsons Corp. name sounds familiar, there’s a good reason.

It’s the same company that screwed up the reconstruction of Iraq’s public health care system.

A reconstruction contract for the building of 142 primary health centers across Iraq is running out of money, after two years and roughly $200 million, with no more than 20 clinics now expected to be completed, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers says.

The contract, awarded to U.S. construction giant Parsons Inc. in the flush, early days of reconstruction in Iraq, was expected to lay the foundation of a modern health care system for the country, putting quality medical care within reach of all Iraqis.

Parsons, according to the Corps, will walk away from more than 120 clinics that on average are two-thirds finished. Auditors say the project serves as a warning for other U.S. reconstruction efforts due to be completed this year.

And while we’re at it, Kevin Drum reminds us that Parsons screwed up Iraqi prison projects as well.

As for the Baghdad Police College, Parsons’ contract totaled at least $75 million, and despite the company’s “work,” the company was never fired.

Remember, the Bush administration considers itself reliable and trustworthy on handling the future of Iraq. I know, I don’t understand it either.

September 28, 2006 at 12:43 pm

What better way to show what Shrub really thinks of the Iraqi people than to dump shit on their heads?

Reading this, I think of the “logic” prevalent during slavery in the US. It was OK to keep the slaves in shacks, dress them in rags and feed them the bits of the pig no one else could stand because their inate inferiority meant such conditions were, to them, the same as the nice big house massa lived in.

Wouldn’t it be funny if the cretins responsible for this mess were held as enemy combatants? I don’t think it would be too much of a stretch to say that because of their actions there are fewer police to fight the terrorrists. No wait! The longer the country is in chaos the longer they can stay and work on “projects.”

This is so close to the actual heart of why we are in Iraq than anyone cares to mention. Parson’s is a company that should be mentioned in the same sentence as Bechtel and Haliburton. The whole idea of this invasion was to funnel Federal US dollars through the CPA to the large military industrial complex companies in the USA. I will not ramble on about this because it starts to sound like tinfoil hat territory but I wholeheartedly believe this is the case and the Billions missing in Iraq are safely in the bank accounts of Bush Friendly American companies.

It really show you how greedy these people are when they don’t even do a decent job on the building. Reminds me of the Simpsons episode where they replace the concrete in the dam project to save money…

It’s Clinton’s fault.

This is why they hate us. This is why we lost, and why we always loose, because everything is seen as another profit center for amerikan bidness. Vietnam, Balkans, Pentagon Procurement, it’s all about the Benji’s and NOTHING else. Government is just an excuse for this administration to rob the public. We are gonna have such scandal burnout in 3 years it will be ridiculous.

Wow, we really took that country and made it better. I hear they even have a few magazines and TV shows in some places.

All the Iraq War has been – and maybe all it was ever intended to be? – is a public works program for wealthy parasites. If you’re a friend of Dubya, you get tax cuts and tax dollars. It’s way past time for the Dems to go to town on this one.

And they won’t.

With the Swiss-watch-like precision of conservative judgment at the helm, of course this was going to turn out like this. They know a lot about policey-war kind of stuff.

Hey MNProgressive,

You are basically right. Why don’t you email Keith Olbermann about this “fleecing of America”–and Iraq? Maybe, Olbermann will give it some airtime before the November election.

Hmmm…I wonder if the Haliburton built detention camps in the US are as poorly constructed…

As quite a few people noted over at The Washington Monthly, what could be more symbolic of the Republican Regime & Bush than this? – feces and urine dripping from the ceilings and cascading down the stairs, the shiny new building needing to be demolished because it is shoddy through and through, tax breaks and sweetheart contracts with public money, corruption wedded to incompetence. It’s perfect, in a despairing sort of way.

What is happening in Iraq is a harbinger of what the U.S. will look like if Republicans retain control of our government. One of the primary goals of the Iraqi invasion was to implement a pure form of the “free market“, no government regulation, no unions, etc. Like everything else these delusional thugs come up with we’re starting to get solid evidence that this won’t work either.

Pity that it’s only human life involved in all these grand neocon experiments.

These stories keep rolling in, and quick as a flash – nothing happens. Nobody cares enough to do anything about it, perhaps the most powerful single factor ensuring Bush will continue to get his way and will never be punished for any wrongdoing.

Who’s district is Parsons’ headquarters in? I’d like to know who greased the palms (or whose palms got greased) in getting the various contracts signed.

Competence is vastly overrated.

I suspect that some of those billions that “disappeared” in Iraq have found their way into GOP slush funds and will be used to fund Republican black ops in the coming *decades*.

Will our opposition party campaign for war profiteering investigations? I would be surprised. There are no Trumans anymore; corporations own both sides of the isle: one can’t antagonize one’s donors.

Parsons is based in Pasadena, CA. And that’s California’s 29th district, which is held by a Democrat ( http://schiff.house.gov/HoR/CA29/The+29th+District/ ). During the Cold War, the Pasadena-Burbank-Glendale area was “a breadbasket” for aerospace and defense contractors. It has since changed.

I just might do that Skip Kid, thanks. KO might be able to do a pretty good editorial – good night and good luck!

Kvenlander #15 is on the trail as well. This country has been bought and sold. There are not magical GOP slush funds they are in fact the Bechtels and Haliburtons, and Parsons. It’s the military-industrial complex stupid.

The tools and techniques that used to be pointed overseas at Iran, Iraq, Panama, etc. that funeled money via contracts to these companies have been pointed inward. The same techniques used to draw world leaders into deep debt and ultimately servitude of the US goverment are used on politicians. They are bribed to do the bidding of the MI complex. Name one Ex-congressman , Ex-enator, or Ex-president who is not among the upper tier of wealth in this country. I wonder why?

Damn. My tinfoil hat won’t stay on properly.

What amazes me about the Rich Getting Richer Rapturists is that they should know they aren’t going to get into heaven.

This all began when Boy George II lied to the American people about not “having a plan on his desk” for the invasion of Iraq so that only companies with clearances could bid on the reconstruction work.

Sole Source Stupidity

When reading such stories, I find myself questioning assessments that suggest that we have trained nearly 300,000 Iraqi troops. Here’s the problem. If we began our occupation of Iraq with less than 200,000 American soldiers and no Iraqi security forces and we now have nearly 300,000 Iraqi troops along with over 140,000 U.S. soldiers, why can’t we seem to bring order to the country and why does the death toll continue to alarm? Perhaps this story about the police academy, coupled with other failures, provides the answer to my question.

The Bush administration, under the guidance of Donald Rumsfeld, continues to ignore the realities being voiced by numerous former military officers and countless other war critics. It takes minimal analysis to posit that the lack of sufficient forces in the region also translates into a lack of supervision and oversight which then leads to these colossal failures.

Look, the reality is obvious…we have an administration that has miscalculated and mismanaged the Iraq war from the outset. There were no WMD’s, we were not greeted as liberators, we didn’t have a plan for securing the country once Hussein was toppled, we didn’t have enough troops to achieve our objectives, we are in the midst of a civil war, and we are fomenting more extremism. Sadly, the only constant remains the unequivocal denial exhibited by our President and his assemblage of neocon associates.