NYT: Series of Woes Mar Iraq Project Hailed as Model

[kskiska]

BAGHDAD, Iraq, July 27 — The United States is dropping Bechtel, the American construction giant, from a project to build a high-tech children’s hospital in the southern Iraqi city of Basra after the project fell nearly a year behind schedule and exceeded its expected cost by as much as 150 percent.

Called the Basra Children’s Hospital, the project has been consistently championed by the first lady, Laura Bush, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and was designed to house sophisticated equipment for treating childhood cancer.

Now it becomes the latest in a series of American taxpayer-financed health projects in Iraq to face overruns, delays and cancellations. Earlier this year, the Army Corps of Engineers canceled more than $300 million in contracts held by Parsons, another American contractor, to build and refurbish hospitals and clinics across Iraq.

American and Iraqi government officials described the move to drop Bechtel in interviews on Thursday, and Ammar al-Saffar, a deputy health minister in Baghdad, allowed a reporter to take notes on briefing papers on the subject he said he had recently been given by the State Department.

more…
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/28/world/middleeast/28basra.html?hp&ex=1154059200&en=53f65264023728bf&ei=5094&partner=homepage

[struggle4progress]

1. "Go on ... take the money and run!"

[OneBlueSky]

2. BushCo-enabled corporate larceny at its finest . . . n/t

.

[Robbien]

3. And if we had contracted with Iraqi companies directly it would be done

by now.

As the article says: Western engineers were seldom seen at the project, Mr. Saedi said, adding that it was simply mismanaged. Mr. Saffar, of the Health Ministry in Baghdad, and an Iraqi contractor in Basra both asserted that Bechtel’s use of a complicated chain of subcontractors was part of the problem.

[tanyev]

4. Now it's a model fiasco.

Thanks, George.

[DoYouEverWonder]

5. Nice to see Bechtel can't do shit right

Why didn't the US use Iraqis to build these projects? It's not like they didn't have a lot of experiences building all those palaces and mosques for Saddam. If they used Iraqis these projects would probably be done by now and there would be fewer insurgents out on the streets.