BAGHDAD, Iraq — 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, federal investigators have found.
The Baghdad Police College, hailed as crucial to U.S. efforts aimed at preparing 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 important 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."
| Even the fiercest defender of our efforts in Iraq, and I'm one of them, has to be outraged by this. Politics as usual doesn't work in a war zone; the Parsons people should be flogged and the Corps of Engineers personnel assigned to 'oversee' the construction should be fired. |
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