| Submit your comments on this article |
| Iraq |
| Reconstruction Waste |
| 2008-07-28 |
| ...north of Baghdad sits a prison with no prisoners. It holds something else: a chronicle of U.S. government waste, misguided planning and construction shortcuts costing $40 million and stretching back to Saddam Hussein. "It's a bit of a monument in the desert right now because it's not going to be used as a prison," said Stuart Bowen, the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, whose office plans to release a report Monday detailing the litany of problems at the vacant detention center in Khan Bani Saad. The pages also add another narrative to the wider probes into the billions lost so far on scrubbed or substandard projects in Iraq and one of the main contractors accused of failing to deliver, the Parsons construction group of Pasadena, Calif. Failed to deliver? Was the contract awarded before the MSM inspired insurgency? Details, details! "This is $40 million invested in a project with very little return," Bowen told The Associated Press in Washington. "A couple of buildings are useful. Other than that, it's a failure." Bowen estimated up to 20 percent "waste" - or more than $4 billion - from the $21 billion spent so far in the U.S.-bankrolled Iraq Relief and Reconstruction Fund. It's just one piece of a recovery effort that swelled beyond $112 billion in U.S., Iraqi and international contributions. Can we have this guy investigate Congress and the Government? The idea for the modern-style prison began with the Coalition Provisional Authority running Iraq after Saddam's fall. On behalf of the authority, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers awarded a $40 million contract in March 2004 to global construction and engineering firm Parsons to design and build an 1,800-inmate lockup to include educational and vocational facilities. Work was set to begin May 2004 and finish November 2005. Nothing went right from the start, the report says. The Sunni insurgency was catching fire. The U.S. was under pressure to improve prison conditions following the abuses exposed at Abu Ghraib. Anybody else tie the waste to Congress and the MSM? Washington's focus shifted quickly from rebuilding to just holding its ground. The prison project got started six months late and continued to fall behind - until Parsons asked to push the completion date to late 2008, the report said. The U.S. government pulled the plug in June 2006, citing "continued schedule slips and ... massive cost overruns." But they hadn't abandoned the hope of finishing the project - awarding three more contracts to other companies in a doomed effort. And now that security is improving? The waste was made more egregious by the fact that Diyala badly needs more prisons to handle a growing inmate population. Bowen's team was told that about 600 inmates are crowded into an existing Diyala prison designed for 250 inmates and that the overcrowding and health conditions are so grave that several inmates have died, the report says. |
| Posted by:Bobby |
| #4 we have branches of both here in San Diego, and every time I hear "Parsons", I ask which one... |
| Posted by: Frank G 2008-07-28 15:30 |
| #3 bigjim - Parsons Corp. is derived from Ralph M. Parsons out of Caliphfornia. Parsons Brinkerhoff Quade & Douglas is out of New York City. |
| Posted by: Bobby 2008-07-28 12:36 |
| #2 Only 20% waste? That's a pretty good record. I'd guess most government agencies' activities are 50% waste, and some are 100% waste. |
| Posted by: Elmavirong Johnson3058 2008-07-28 09:24 |
| #1 Parsons Construction Group? Is that part of Parsons Brinckerhoff?! They are one of the big dogs in the engineering biz. |
| Posted by: bigjim-ky 2008-07-28 09:02 |