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Parsons Cashed the Check, But Where are
the Hospitals?
The
Cronies' War
By CHRISTOPHER BRAUCHLI
Here's a surprise. Congressional hearings
can be enlightening, the caliber of the participants notwithstanding.
In mid-September a Senate Democratic
policy committee heard testimony from two truckers about what
happened to them while working for KBR. KBR, like Dick Cheney,
is a subsidiary of Halliburton. KBR has been in the news a lot
since the Iraq invasion began. The invasion did not take place
because Mr. Cheney as invasion enthusiast anticipated that his
former employer would get millions and millions in contracts
that it would incompetently perform. He thought the invading
forces would be greeted as liberators and there would be no need
for massive reconstruction. He was wrong. Mr. Bush destroyed
much of Iraq's infrastructure thus creating opportunity for Mr.
Cheney's former employer and proving that even though things
may not come out as you anticipate, they may nonetheless have
a happy outcome. The war has been a boon for KBR if less so for
the Iraqis.
Notwithstanding its great financial
good fortune early in the war, KBR suffered lots of bad press
because of its post war activities. It overcharged the military
by $27.4 million for meals. Two of its employees took kickbacks
from a Kuwaiti subcontractor who was providing services to troops
in Kuwait. Any relief Halliburton felt that its offspring had
stayed out of the headlines for a few months came to an end with
reports of the senate testimony of the two KBR truckers.
The truck drivers described
for the senators how KBR had sent them and an entire convoy of
fuel tankers stretching for many miles, into a known combat zone
with inadequately armored accompaniments notwithstanding warnings
from the truck drivers that the area was unsafe. The men's warnings
proved well founded. The convoy was attacked and seven civilian
drivers and two soldiers were killed. (The truck drivers sued
KBR saying KBR knew the proposed route was unsafe since a battle
was in progress. The drivers' suit was thrown out by a Texas
judge who said it was the military's responsibility to protect
the trucks and he couldn't second-guess its decision to send
the trucks into dangerous terrain. The lawyer for the truck drivers
says he will appeal.)
KBR was not the only company
up for an encore performance of incompetence. Parsons too, gave
an encore, albeit in a different venue.
Parsons' first failed performance
became public in May and June of 2006 and involved a $243 million
contract for construction of 150 health clinics in Iraq awarded
to Parsons. Though successful in spending the money, it completed
only 20 of the facilities. That proved to be no anomaly. Parsons
was given a $99.1 million contract to build the Khan Bani Saad
Correctional Facility North of Baghdad by June 2006. In that
month it was announced that it could not complete the project
before 2008 and the project would cost $13.5 million more than
the amount it bid. Its contract was canceled.
Commenting on those episodes
that looked to the outsider like incompetence run amuck, Erin
Kuhlman, a spokeswoman for Parsons said: " Parsons performed
our work in Iraq in conformance with the contract terms and the
directions given to us by the U.S. government. We're extremely
proud of our dedicated employees who have performed very well
under extremely difficult and dangerous circumstances."
If Ms. Kuhlman was proud of
Parsons in July, her buttons would have popped off after September
hearings before a House committee with the amusing name of House
Government Reform Committee. In that hearing it was disclosed
by a federal inspector that, including the foregoing examples,
13 of 14 major projects built by Parsons were substandard. (The
14th was the Correctional Facility described above.)
Parsons' greatest triumph among
the thirteen, if incompetence is the measure, was the $72 million
police college in Baghdad. After the building was completed it
turned out its occupants should not have flushed the toilets.
Here is how they found that out. After a few weeks of flushing,
the connections on the pipes came loose and urine and fecal matter
leaked from the ceilings into the student barracks. One part
of the barracks had such bad leaks it was called the "rain
forest" although what was dripping was not rain. According
to reports parts of the facility were irreparably damaged and
will have to be destroyed.
Earnest O. Robbins II, a Parsons
vice president was asked to explain how such massive failures
could occur. He said: "I have some conjectures and that's
all it would be, and that is, it took a while of use for this
to manifest itself, for the fittings to come loose or whatever."
To that a dispirited populace can only respond, "whatever".
Now
Available
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Against Israel
By Michael Neumann
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