Contractor failure: not just for Halliburton anymore

My title should have been a lot more generalized-- the story of reconstruction in Iraq is one of colossal incompetence and corruption across the board. The administration's chief qualification for installing Americans to work with the Coalition Provisional Authority was solid right-wing credentials, and contracts went to cronies. It was a recipe for disaster, and that's just what we've got. Beyond the theft of American tax dollars by partisan hacks and corrupt businessmen, it's undoubtedly enraged the population of Iraq and fueled the insurgency. Yet it's barely made the news and Congress has abandoned oversight.

The latest flame-out comes courtesy of an outfit called Parsons Corporation:

A few weeks ago evidence of Parsons’s incompetence was its failure to successfully complete a $243 million contract it had for construction of 150 health clinics in Iraq. In the fall of 2005, Parsons had assured the Army Corps of Engineers that was supervising the project, that 114 units would be completed before the end of the year. Instead, only 20 were completed. Parsons spent $60 million of the $243 million on its own management and administration. Health clinics was not its only failure.

Parsons had a contract for $99.1 million to build the Khan Bani Saad Correctional Facility North of Baghdad. The prison was to have been completed in June 2006. It was not. According to a spokesman for the Corps of Engineers, Parsons said the project could not be completed before September 2008 and would cost $13.5 million more than the $91 million for which the contract had been awarded. The contract was cancelled.

Now the Washington Post reports on their latest failure:

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."