How do these companies stay in business with such sorry results? What I find disturbing here is that they have not be sacked due to incompetence and sued for ripping off taxpayers but I guess when you splash around contributions to everyone, you can get away with just about anything. While the companies actions are bad, I think that it is just too easy to blame them for everything because isn't Congress supposed to be doing something to oversee such critical programs? Congress is supposed to be involved here but it looks like they had more important tasks such as protecting the flag, bashing gays, stripping the Constitution and supporting torture.
In a House hearing on what has gone wrong with reconstruction contracts in Iraq, Parsons Corp. quickly became the focus, taking bipartisan heat for its record of falling short on critical projects. The Pasadena, Calif., firm was supposed to build facilities at the heart of the $21 billion U.S.-led reconstruction program, including fire stations, border forts and health-care centers. But inspectors have found a litany of flaws in the firm's work. The one project reviewed by auditors that was being constructed correctly, a prison, was taken away from Parsons before its completion because of escalating costs.In a report released yesterday, inspectors found that the Baghdad Police College posed a health risk after feces and urine leaked through the ceilings of student barracks. The facility, part of which will need to be demolished, also featured floors that heaved inches off the ground and a room where water dripped so heavily that it was known as "the rain forest."
The academy was intended as a showcase for U.S. efforts to train Iraqi recruits who eventually are expected to take control of the nation's security from the U.S. military. But lawmakers said yesterday they feared it will become a symbol of a different sort.
"This is the lens through which Iraqis will now see America," Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) said. "Incompetence. Profiteering. Arrogance. And human waste oozing out of ceilings as a result."
Yep, this surely is how Iraqis see America and I might add that this is pretty much how the American public sees the GOP-run Congress, who continue to have approval ratings in the mid twenties. Just throwing money at everything without any oversight and just hoping that somehow things will just miraculously work out. What a brilliant strategy for success. Surprise, surprise...it's not working.
