U.S. rebuilt Iraq projects are crumbling.
By on Apr 28th, 2007 at 3:31 pm
U.S. rebuilt Iraq projects are crumbling.
“In a troubling sign for the American-financed rebuilding program in Iraq, inspectors for a federal oversight agency have found that in a sampling of eight projects that the United States had declared successes, seven were no longer operating as designed because of plumbing and electrical failures, lack of proper maintenance, apparent looting and expensive equipment that lay idle.”
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Private contractors at their best!
April 28th, 2007 at 3:41 pmThis is the “foreign aid” spending that was overseen by Tobias?
Hookergate is coming untangled. I’ll bet Cunningham would have valuable info, like where some of that missing $7 billion went. They should offer him a deal for testimony.
April 28th, 2007 at 3:48 pm“expensive equipment that lay idle”
Sounds alot like Jake, except for the expensive…and maybe the idle part…he is,however, a perfect tool.
April 28th, 2007 at 3:48 pmSo to sum up, conservative business as usual.
April 28th, 2007 at 3:51 pmbefore you build its best to read the “three little pigs” first
followed by a Bob The Builder DVD
followed by “My Pet Goat”
steadily leading up to bigger books like The New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions About the Bush Administration and 9/11 by David Ray Griffin and Michael Meacher MP
April 28th, 2007 at 3:52 pmThere’s no business like the war business. You make billions as you destroy a country and you make billions more when you rebuild what you destroyed.
Of course, building to some high specification or standard would defeat the purpose and that would be really stupid.
April 28th, 2007 at 4:00 pmU.S. announces 8 troop deaths in Iraq – 3 minutes ago – Yahoo
the U.S. military announced the deaths of eight American troops, including three killed Saturday in a single roadside bombing outside Baghdad.
April 28th, 2007 at 4:05 pmNone of us should be surprised by this kind of news. It’s the way this administration has constantly operated. And frankly, that they weren’t impeached following the catastrophic handing of Katrina still amazes me. These are the people claiming that they, and only they, are best at protecting the American people.
April 28th, 2007 at 4:08 pmThere are 6000 year-old buildings that have been at the floor of the Black Sea for the last 5600 years which are in better shape than these and then they say that too much water used in cleaning has deteriorated the floors of these multimillion dollar edifices to greed? Were the floors made of unbaked adobe? Jell-O? Quicksand? I doubt that too much cleaning water is an issue – there’s a shortage of the stuff in Iraq.
April 28th, 2007 at 4:12 pmJust paint it again. Everything looks better with a new coat of paint. Even a failed strategy.
April 28th, 2007 at 4:20 pm#7
Thanks for pointing out the news, man that is sad.
April 28th, 2007 at 4:21 pmWhen will America wake up?
The Justice Dept. should cut loose with some of their whitewash and ship it to Iraq.
-GSD
April 28th, 2007 at 4:22 pmHeckofajob, Halliburton!
April 28th, 2007 at 5:05 pmRebuilding Iraq – Just another “hole into which to pour our money!~”
April 28th, 2007 at 5:12 pmAnother fraud of this administration.
I don’t see how you can blame this on America. Maintenance is ultimately the responsibility of the Iraqis, and for whatever reason, the Iraqis do not presently have the culture required in order to adequately maintain technical equipment.
But that is hardly unusual in developing nations. Another case in point is that of the Palestinian government, that has let a desalinisation plant become unusable, and also allowed a major aquifer to become polluted, seriously harming the water supply to the Gaza Strip.
April 28th, 2007 at 5:20 pmMarkk, I read somewhere that Israel had cut the fund’s and power to much of Palestine and Lebanon as well as the fighting still going on there, is that part of the problem,?….Blessings
April 28th, 2007 at 5:37 pm#
I don’t see how you can blame this on America. Maintenance is ultimately the responsibility of the Iraqis, and for whatever reason, the Iraqis do not presently have the culture required in order to adequately maintain technical equipment.
But that is hardly unusual in developing nations. Another case in point is that of the Palestinian government, that has let a desalinisation plant become unusable, and also allowed a major aquifer to become polluted, seriously harming the water supply to the Gaza Strip.
Comment by Markk — April 28, 2007 @ 5:20 pm
This string is about American rebuilding of Iraq…NOT the Palestinian Government. Perhaps you could shelve the attempt at deflection. It only works on the -30% that still support this administration. This is not MAINTENENCE here…this is buildings falling apart after 6 months. In the U.S., if we bought a house and it fell apart, I guess we’d be suing the developers, wouldn’t we?
April 28th, 2007 at 5:40 pmMarkk, how are the troop’s or Iraq suposto maintain something that was poorly built, over charged and bombed to shit by us….Hummmm I wonder…Blessings
April 28th, 2007 at 5:52 pmYou want I should use NAILS and MORTAR to hold the stuff I build together?!? Nails cost MONEY! Those expenses come straight out of PROFITS, I’ll have you know.
April 28th, 2007 at 6:00 pmI don’t see how you can blame this on America. Maintenance is ultimately the responsibility of the Iraqis, and for whatever reason, the Iraqis do not presently have the culture required in order to adequately maintain technical equipment.
Comment by Markk
Partially correct. After the projects are handed over to Iraqis, maintenance is their responsibility. However, the US was responsible for the capacity-building in order to establish the organizational culture and technical skills needed to perform this maintenance, as well as maintaining a security environment that can allow it to function. The CPA had to build the institutional capacity from scratch since, thanks to their de-Ba’athification policies, plant employees from the Hussein regime who actually did have technical skills were barred from employment.
In the case of Iraq, this capacity-building consisted of training about 250 individuals nationwide in executive management, power plant management, combustion and thermal power plant operations, instrument calibration, boiler chemistry, safety, and other topics.
Most of this training was not “train-the-trainer” training, just one-time training of power and watsan plant employees. When these individual employees leave the job, say, after receiving death threats for working with the Americans, they take their knowledge with them. Add to this the chaotic lawless anarchy that is the security environment in much of Iraq, thanks in part to some other wonderful decisions by Jerry Bremer, and you’ll find it’s a little difficult for Iraqis to get spare parts.
April 28th, 2007 at 6:07 pmThis is the Republican idea of how to run government like a business. If these dipsh*ts were running a legitimate commercial enterprise they would be busted down to janitor for severe idiocy, thrown in prison for white collar crime, or thrown out of the job when the business collapsed.
April 28th, 2007 at 6:12 pmMarkk, these clowns screw up their contracts this badly even when operating in the U.S. Many cases of gross failure to perform on federal contracts have been documented here in the U.S.. The response of the Bush administration has been to continue to reward these same failed contractors with more no-bid contracts, and to punish any government auditors who dare report it. It amounts to tens of billions of dollars in money stolen from the U.S. taxpayer, and it has little to do with conditions in Iraq.
April 28th, 2007 at 6:16 pmVerbalKint – Bechtel was not a no-bid contract, just FYI.
April 28th, 2007 at 6:22 pmIf the Democratic Congress allows Halliburton to leave the country…
…for Dubai…
…without FORCING them to return the money they’ve STOLEN…
…THEN FINING their EXECUTIVES and co-conspirators in the White House…
…by freezing (and confiscating) ALL of their personal assets…
…then THE Democratic Congress should be IMPEACHED!
…I want my DAMN MONEY!
…by ANY means neccessary…
April 28th, 2007 at 6:46 pmI want my DAMN MONEY!
settle down pops, calm minds travel the farthest.
April 28th, 2007 at 7:45 pmImagine, pops, a calm sea before you, a sky of the purest blue, softly the tide ebbs and the winds shift course, sandpipers chase tiny shrimp, and the world turns, I see calm, I am calm. It has to be. I am as the earth and the galaxy forever moving, never does my mind rest even as I sleep, always are we in motion. Always.
God, dear God, please help us as a planet for we are ill and require some help. We confuse war with peace and materialism as wisdom, we see hate before love and we hold grudges on simple words, we judge by reflections of light, and yet hide our guilt in lightless closets.
April 28th, 2007 at 7:55 pmIt’s not about the building projects or even the whole fake war.These are all excuses for money dumps.
April 28th, 2007 at 9:12 pmThis has been set-up over 30 years by the same criminal element that has no interest in anything but draining the entire economy.
This is all a plan for pointing huge amounts of cash directly into pre-arranged holes.
They barely have to pretend they are doing what they say.The media makes up the difference.The results do not even need to look decent because there are media “experts” who beck up the stories.
This has been 30 years in making and is doing better then expected.This is why all the people receiving all the cash are happy and say the same thing.
They are winning.Their game is being played well.They take ALL the money and the media sings and dances over on the side.
It’s all a distraction.All of it.Even the media events when someone gets in trouble.It’s just one of their men going down.They are there to protect the draining of the loot.And this is not only all the money in the US,it is all the money everywhere they are.Look who is directing traffic at the world bank.Same guy who plans fake wars.
How does that happen?
Anyway,don’t get me started.
It is very clear they want it all and have known how to get it.This took years to get everything in place but they are doing it.The small legal problems are nothing.They are doing it.It’s getting done.
Hey,they went after the biggest chunk of loose change there is,the social security fund.
This is just like a thug lifting us all up-side-down and shaking until all the money is finished falling from our pockets.Them making it unlikely we can put any back in our pockets.
The buildings in Iraq?Hah!That’s a movie set.
I am still amazed why when this little know man was gathering hundreds of millions back in late 90’s to run for office this was not looked at more closely.The media reported this as a good thing.
Why no one looked to see who wanted this guy placed in office?And the “search” for VP is too funny.
Anyway I think we spend too much time trying to figure who will win idol and why bratney has an identity crisis.But then again the media provides the distractions……did I say that?
Remember the fake doctors with their white coats in the adds saying “trust us we’re experts”?That was 30 years ago and only an add.Now this has progressed to the entire network programming.
Trust us we’re experts…..hahahaha….at what?
There is a Washington Monthly from 94-95 with a copy of a internal memo ( from 72-73 ) from a major tobacco company talking about the crisis they faced losing the younger smoker because the marlboro smokers were growing up.They needed a plan to attack the youth.Guess what came from that?? Joe Camel! That’s what your “experts” give you. But more scary in this memo was a chart that showed exactly the stages of smoking addiction and how to get the kids to “learn to smoke and look cool while not gagging on the smoke but making sure they get enough nicotine to become addicted”.Something like that only in much more detail.
These are the same people who swear they never knew about addiction and never have targeted kids.
Sorry,I think everyone knows all this stuff.Just amazing we still let them use whatever tools they want to steal.Call it war,call it oil exploration, call it disease prevention, call it whatever sounds like something presentable and build the pr/promo campaign and swing away.Who cares what anyone thinks.If they don’t like us,so what?
This is who is holding the doors to the vault open.And they are winning.
When people are stealing they say anything to distract.Guess what you see and hear now.
BANKRUPTCY…
…coming to communities NATIONWIDE…
…while the Bushites abscond…
…with their war profits…
April 28th, 2007 at 10:05 pmyou know what i’d like to see? …
i’d like to see a bunch of BEFORE pictures of iraq…
when someone refers to iraq as “developing nation”,
i worry that it’s not understood how modern and
“developed” iraq actually was… or tried to be…
they built their own friggin’ country, eons ago…
who the hell do we think we are?…
i sometimes think that geography and social studies
were dropped from school curriculum to make sure
people were dumb enough to go along with these plans…
maybe i really WAS lucky to get a NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC
April 28th, 2007 at 10:08 pmsubscription for christmas each year since high school…
(tho i admit to letting it lapse a few years ago…)
…
Comment by katy #29
I remember reading that Iraq (pre-sanctions) boasted the highest educated populace in the ME…
…more doctors and advanced degree exchange students…
…than any other ME country at one time…
…It saddens me tremendously to see what the right wing racist/Zionists (and their lackeys in the UN) have done…
…to an industrious people…
April 28th, 2007 at 10:19 pmOur govt. and the warmongers would like us to believe that Iraq stayed behind in the 9th century – when a little research in something like a jr. high school geography textbook – just to show us how Halliburton and the other contractors are “bringing the country up to date.”
April 28th, 2007 at 10:28 pmAncient Persia/Mesopotamia saw the earliest language, earliest writing; the first glassworks, metal works, weaving of cloth. They developed irrigation systems, developed math and were the first astronomers. Somehow, portraying that they are a backward people is disingenuous at best.
They dress funny compared to western dress, they are a strange culture, but our ignorance shows when we insult them.
We built shoddy structures with bloated invoices to the American taxpayer. That is disgraceful on so many points.
Sorry for the clumsy sentence – a little reading of a junior high georgrphy book would show us that we were given false impressions of Iraq and its people.
April 28th, 2007 at 10:31 pmWould this be the “good news” coming our of Iraq? Seems that the righties like hearing about schools being painted and police stations being “maintained”. How many right-wingers does it take to screw in a lightbulb? 0, they really can’t do anything positive.
April 28th, 2007 at 11:05 pmLeave it to Halliburton to build the cheapest, crappiest buildings for as low a cost as possible, and pocket the rest of the money.
Why on earth would they do anything else?
April 28th, 2007 at 11:24 pmOversight? Pffftt…
#33 Privatization is king.
April 28th, 2007 at 11:29 pmMarkk is another one of the Bush cultist 30%er who come to ThinkProgress to defend their father figure against any criticism without bothering to do as much as read the article.
Funny how Iraqis were deemed to be capable plenty of having the “culture required in order to adequately maintain technical equipment” before the invasion by these rightwingers.
How else would Iraqis develop and maintain those WMD that were a threat to the US and the world, if Iraq was devoid of the “culture required in order to adequately maintain technical equipment”?
Stupid, racist, arrogant, self-absorbed rightwingers.
April 29th, 2007 at 1:22 am>How many right-wingers does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
five
one to say that terrorists will come get us if we let the light burn out,
one not to screw in it,
one to blame clinton for not screwing it in also,
one to charge the government 1000$ to do it,
and one to pay his buddy another 2000$ of government money not to do it.
April 29th, 2007 at 9:03 amI do not understand most of it. Example from the article. A Special Forces barracks is constructed in Baghdad in Sept 05′. It is now found to be falling apart.
Questions; Who built it? US, Iraq, contractors etc. If non-US military personnel, who is the rocket scientist that made this decision? Regardless of where you fall on the subject does it make any sense whatsoever to allow anyone but US military to build a SPECIAL FORCES barracks!
My head hurts!
April 29th, 2007 at 10:21 amHo
It may take 5 republicans to screw in the light bulb, but only because there are a bunch of liberals around shouting: “Don’t screw in that light bulb, you’re killing the planet!” or “Who are we to impose our desire for light on everyone else?” or “Haliburton supplied the light bulb and they are profiting from our dependance on artificial light.” and “Impeach Bush Now – Restore darkness, now and forever!”
April 29th, 2007 at 9:47 pm