Feces and urine rain on police cadets as Bush "reconstructs" Iraq

lambert's picture

Thank the God of Your Choice that we in the blogosphere can say Shit! Beccause this story demands it!

Scat, Republicans! Scat! Scat!:

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."

The most serious problem was substandard plumbing that caused waste from toilets on the second and third floors to cascade throughout the building. A light fixture in one room stopped working because it was filled with urine and fecal matter. The waste threatened the integrity of load-bearing slabs, federal investigators concluded.

You know? That's a lot of shit!

Translation: Mission failure.

Remember how training the Iraqis was so important? And especially training the police, so the Iraqis could deal with the death squads and the looters and the insurgents and all the rest of the Iraqis who are throwing roses at each other and us?

"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."

No, this one's not Halliburton. It's Parsons.

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."

Which is pretty funny, actually, though not for the Iraqis, since "convenience" is a British euphemism for "Water Closet" which is a euphemism for "shithouse."

Naturally, because Republicans can't govern, there was no oversight:

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.

You know, somehow... Shit raining down on the heads of Iraqis because the Bush administration can't govern... It just seems like a good metaphor... Or something....

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