Your tax dollars at work!!!
Construction Woes Add to Fears at Embassy in Iraq
By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, July 5, 2007; A01U.S. diplomats in Iraq, increasingly fearful over their personal safety after recent mortar attacks inside the Green Zone, are pointing to new delays and mistakes in the U.S. Embassy construction project in Baghdad as signs that their vulnerability could grow in the months ahead.
A toughly worded cable sent from the embassy to State Department headquarters on May 29 highlights a cascade of building and safety blunders in a new facility to house the security guards protecting the embassy. The guards' base, which remains unopened today, is just a small part of a $592 million project to build the largest U.S. embassy in the world.
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The first signs of trouble, according to the cable, emerged when the kitchen staff tried to cook the inaugural meal in the new guard base on May 15. Some appliances did not work. Workers began to get electric shocks. Then a burning smell enveloped the kitchen as the wiring began to melt.
All the food from the old guard camp -- a collection of tents -- had been carted to the new facility, in the expectation that the 1,200 guards would begin moving in the next day. But according to the cable, the electrical meltdown was just the first problem in a series of construction mistakes that soon left the base uninhabitable, including wiring problems, fuel leaks and noxious fumes in the sleeping trailers. "Poor quality construction . . . life safety issues . . . left
with no recourse but to shut the camp down, in spite of the blistering heat in Baghdad," the May 29 cable informed Washington.
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/04/AR2007070401685_pf.html