Wednesday, October 11, 2006

"The Rain Forest" of Iraq


[Image: Heralded Iraq Police Academy a 'Disaster', Washington Post, 2006.]

From the Free Internet Press: "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 firm responsible is Parsons, who had subcontracted it out to an Iraqi firm. However, the Washington Post mentions that "inspectors looked at 14 other projects Parsons was involved with in Iraq and found that 13 of those also did not meet standards. The only one that did was stopped because of cost over-runs."
Is this the penultimate symbol of Iraq right now?
Meanwhile, it was reported that nearly 665,000 Iraqis have died since the American occupation began, and thousands are fleeing their homes daily to seek refuge from the sectarian violence.

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