STANDING ‘EM UP….Having failed to successfully complete its contracts in Iraq for building a prison ($99 million) and a network of health clinics ($243 million), today we learn that Parsons Corp. has crashed and burned on yet another project. The $75 million police academy they built in Baghdad is so substandard that parts of it will need to be demolished:
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.
….[Phillip] Galeoto noted that one entire building and five floors in others had to be shuttered for repairs, limiting the capacity of the college by up to 800 recruits. His memo, too, pointed out that the urine and feces flowed throughout the building and, sometimes, onto occupants of the barracks.
Another triumph for the Bush administration, this time on a project that the president has repeatedly told us is the cornerstone of our strategy in Iraq: training police so that we can stand down as they stand up. Unfortunately, it turns out that even the buildings can’t stand up, let alone the police.
