[lbo-talk] WP: Incompetence on stilts

Michael Pollak mpollak at panix.com
Thu Sep 28 08:20:21 PDT 2006


Just when you think you couldn't possibly be stunned anymore by how incompetent we are, shit rains from the sky and literally threatens to collapse the ceiling:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/27/AR2006092702134.html

Heralded Iraq Police Academy a 'Disaster'

By Amit R. Paley

Washington Post Staff Writer

Thursday, September 28, 2006; A01

BAGHDAD, Sept. 27 -- 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."

<snip>

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.

<end excerpt>

Full at:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/27/AR2006092702134.html



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