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powerclown · 04-30-2007, 02:22 PM

It appears our efforts at reconstruction in Iraq have fallen under a system of checks and balances of a sort. What are the ramifications here? Do american taxpayers and shareholders have a say in reconstruction design and architectural style in, say, Ramadi, Iraq? Is a toilet intrinsically better than just goinging outside? Will there be effective gun control legislation? Will national parks and publics zoos soon follow? Will there be free wi-fi in Baghdad? Will Cadillac look to establish car dealerships for a growing demographic? Will Iraq be secular one day?

Quote:

Inspectors find rebuilt projects crumbling in Iraq
A sampling of eight projects declared successes by the U.S. discovers seven no longer operating as designed.

By James Glanz
THE NEW YORK TIMES
Sunday, April 29, 2007

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 the United States had declared successes, seven are no longer operating as designed because of plumbing and electrical failures, lack of proper maintenance, apparent looting and expensive equipment that lay idle.

The United States has previously admitted, sometimes under pressure from federal inspectors, that some of its reconstruction projects have been abandoned, delayed or poorly constructed. But this is the first time inspectors found that projects officially declared successes — in some cases, as little as six months before the latest inspections — were no longer working properly.

The inspections ranged geographically from northern to southern Iraq and covered projects as varied as a maternity hospital, barracks for an Iraqi special forces unit and a power station for Baghdad International Airport.

At the airport, crucial to the functioning of the country, inspectors found that though $11.8 million had been spent on new electrical generators, $8.6 million worth were no longer functioning.

At the maternity hospital in the northern city of Erbil, an incinerator for medical waste was padlocked — Iraqis at the hospital could not find the key when inspectors asked to see the equipment — and, partly as a result, medical waste, including syringes and empty drug vials, was clogging the sewage system and probably contaminating water.

A new water purification system was not functioning, either.

Officials at the oversight agency, the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, said that they had made an effort to sample different regions and various types of projects but that they were constrained from taking a true random sample in part because many projects were in areas too unsafe to visit.

So, they said, the initial set of eight projects — which cost a total of $150 million — cannot be seen as a true statistical measure of the thousands of projects in the $30 billion American rebuilding program.

But the officials said the initial findings raised serious new concerns about the effort.

The reconstruction effort was originally designed as nearly equal to the military push to stabilize Iraq, allow the government to function and business to flourish, and promote good will toward the United States.

"These first inspections indicate that the concerns that we and others have had about the Iraqis sustaining our investments in these projects are valid," said Stuart Bowen Jr., who leads the special inspector general's office.

The conclusions will be summarized in the latest quarterly report by Bowen's office on Monday.

Bowen said that because he suspected that completed projects were not being maintained, he had ordered a wider program of returning to examine projects that had been completed for at least six months.

Exactly who is to blame for the poor record on sustainment for the sample projects was not laid out in the report, but the reconstruction program has been repeatedly criticized for not including in its rebuilding budget enough of the costs for spare parts, training, stronger construction and other elements that would enable projects to continue to function.

The Iraqis themselves appear to share responsibility for the latest problems, which cropped up after the United States turned the projects over to the Iraqi government. Still, the findings show that the enormous American investment in the reconstruction program is at risk, Bowen said.

Besides the airport, hospital and special forces barracks, places where inspectors found serious problems were two projects at a military base near Nasiriyah and one at a military recruiting center in Hillah — both cities in the south — and a police station in Mosul, a northern city. A second police station in Mosul was found to be in good condition.

The dates projects were completed and deemed successful ranged from six months to almost a year and a half before the latest inspections.

Most of the problems seemed unrelated to sabotage but instead were the product of poor initial construction, petty looting, a lack of maintenance and simple neglect.

The new findings come after years of insistence by American officials in Baghdad that too much attention has been paid to the failures in Iraq and not enough to the successes.

Brig. Gen. Michael Walsh, commander of the Gulf Region Division of the Army Corps of Engineers, said at a news conference in Baghdad last month that with so much coverage of violence in Iraq "what you don't see are the successes in the reconstruction program, how reconstruction is making a difference in the lives of everyday Iraqi people."

And those declared successes are promoted by the U.S. government. A 2006 news release by the Army Corps, titled "Erbil Maternity and Pediatric Hospital — not just bricks and mortar!" praises both the new water purification system and the incinerator. The incinerator, the release said, would "keep medical waste from entering into the solid waste and water systems."

But when Bowen's office told the Army Corps that neither system was working at the struggling hospital and recommended a training program so that Iraqis could properly operate the equipment, Walsh tersely disagreed with the recommendation in a letter appended to the report, which also noted that the building had suffered damage because workers used excess amounts of water to clean the floors.

The bureau within the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad that oversees reconstruction in Iraq was even more dismissive, disagreeing with all four of the inspector general's recommendations, including those suggesting that the United States should lend advice on waste disposal and floor maintenance.

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