File Under: “Aaaah-OOO-gah!”
So the Washington Post has an article up this morning called “Iraq Police Academy a ‘Disaster’.”
Yeah, that’s what I thought of at first too. But the actual article is a good deal funnier than the zany adventures of Mahoney, Hightower, Tackleberry and company (though the Iraqis have yet to find anyone who can do “bwah-ha-ha”-worthy sound effects like Michael Winslow could). Anyway, let’s check out the piece:
Heralded Iraq police academy a ‘disaster’
$75 million project so mismanaged that campus poses huge health risks
By Amit R. Paley
BAGHDAD – A $75 million project to build the largest police academy in Iraq has been so grossly mismanaged that the campus now poses health risks to recruits and might need to be partially demolished, U.S. investigators have found.
We’re only 30 seconds into this movie and I’m laughin’ already!
The Baghdad Police College, hailed as crucial to U.S. efforts to prepare Iraqis to take control of the country’s security, was so poorly constructed that feces and urine rained from the ceilings in student barracks.
If that doesn’t toughen ’em up, I don’t know what will. (Say, d’ya think the Iraqi police cadets hang out at the Blue Oyster, just like their American counterparts did? … Yeah, me neither.)
Floors heaved inches off the ground and cracked apart. Water dripped so profusely in one room that it was dubbed “the rain forest.”
“This is the most essential civil security project in the country — and it’s a failure,” said Stuart W. Bowen Jr., the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, an independent office created by Congress. “The Baghdad police academy is a disaster.”
Sure, this is just more evidence that the Bush administration has criminally mismanaged our tax dollars while pouring them into appallingly planned reconstruction projects that lack even the most basic accountability. But hey, if we’d elected John Kerry, fags would be getting married right now. So I guess it’s an even trade off.
Anyway, let’s get back to the super-wacky stuff about poo and pee flowing all over the building:
The most serious problem was substandard plumbing that caused waste from toilets on the second and third floors to cascade throughout the building. A light fixture in one room stopped working because it was filled with urine and fecal matter. The waste threatened the integrity of load-bearing slabs, federal investigators concluded.
“When we walked down the halls, the Iraqis came running up and said, ‘Please help us. Please do something about this,’ ” Bowen recalled.
Pussies. They’ll never make it into the Iraq Police Squad with that attitude.
OK, let’s skip to the bottom line:
Inside the inspector general’s office in Baghdad on a recent blistering afternoon, several federal investigators expressed amazement that such construction blunders could be concentrated in one project. Even in Iraq, they said, failure on this magnitude is unusual. When asked how the problems at the police college compared with other projects they had inspected, the answers came swiftly.
“This is significant,” said Jon E. Novak, a senior adviser in the office.
“It’s catastrophic,” DeShurley added.
Bowen said: “It’s the worst.”
Bush said: “It’s hard work.”
*Use of the “AHOO-GAH” horn is a trademark and copyright of Gavin. But I couldn’t resist stealing his gag for this particular piece.
And as with everything else going wrong in Iraq, where is the accountability?
Had Enough?
Wonder how many of board of directors were Bush “Pioneers”
C’mon, man, who needs accountability when you have faith? Bush asked God is the reconstruction was going OK, and the Big Guy apparently gave him a thumbs up!
Jeebusâ„¢: Loves torture and bombing foreigners. Hates accountability.
Could you ask for a more apt life-as-metaphor situation? The headlines write themselves “Iraqi police academy collapses under weight of US shit” “Crap too much for training facility to bear” “Reconstruction programme is a shower of shit”
Is Gary going to drop by to attempt to defend this? Probably something about “Well, why don’t they fix it? Lazy SOBs.” And then we’d have to reply with something like “Well, Gary, they’re trying to learn to be cops, not carpenters.” And then he’d say something about how this is better than when they had Saddam (and electricity and clean water and all), and why do we hate America (to be defined as Bush), and freedom is, you know, on the march or whatever.
Though apparently from the article, freedom is actually somewhere up shit creek without a set of blueprints.
See, Gary? I just saved you some pointless typing in of utter bullshit that’s not going to ever change anybody’s mind anyway.
Out of curiosity, was it a, say, Halliburton company that got the contract to build?
http://www.ugo.com/channels/dvd/features/michaelwinslow/
The report serves as the latest indictment of Parsons Corp., the U.S. construction giant that was awarded about $1 billion for a variety of reconstruction projects across Iraq. After chronicling previous Parsons failures to properly build health clinics, prisons and hospitals, Bowen said he now plans to conduct an audit of every Parsons project.
“The truth needs to be told about what we didn’t get for our dollar from Parsons,” Bowen said.
Parsons Corp., one of five companies reaping the rewards of their close ties and campaign contributions to the Republican Party and the Bush administration.
Googling for this comment provided by I.F. Thunder, Esq.
It’s funny because we paid for it!
Hey, that’d be ideal… *if* you were attempting to recruit a police force comprised entirely of scat fetishists and golden-shower mavens. A normal, functional, hepatitis-free police? Um, no, not so much.
Brownie, you’re doing a heckuva job!
You too, Goldie.
Ewwwwwwwwwwwww!
Wonder which O’Bierne protegee was in charge of this one?
The thing I find most disturbing about the whole thing? The fact that a fictional bar from the Police Academy series has a Wikipedia entry.
Look, the real question is, why are they making another Police Academy movie? (Check Michael Winslow’s IMDB page.) Truly, that’s a greater injustice and crime against humanity than anything going on in Iraq.
Damn, I knew that serving in the Iraqi National Police Force was a shitty deal, but really, I had no idea how shitty…
mikey
“A light fixture in one room stopped working because it was filled with urine and fecal matter.”
I want to know if someone thought it would keep working.
“Well mam, right HERE’S your problem”.
Damn that liberal media for only reporting the negatives about Iraq.
You really couldn’t make this shit up. No one would believe half of it.
I want to know if someone thought it would keep working.
“Well mam, right HERE’S your problem�.
This was my thought exactly! You beat me to it, King Spirula.
Damn those insurgents and their asymmetric warfare! Will they stop at nothing?
I.F. Thunder, Esq.: Don’t you mean “I.T. Thunder”?
All you nay-sayers ignore the fact that the building has a beautiful paint job.
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0807571/bio
Bubba Smith: Officer Moses Hightower
Graduated from Michigan State University in 1966.
Three-time NCAA All-American at Michigan State.
Member of the College Football Hall of Fame.
Played in the 10-10 tie that gave Notre Dame the national championship in 1966 and is considered one of the greatest college football games.
Was selected by the Baltimore Colts as the No. 1 pick in the National Football Leagues’s 1967 college draft.
Played defensive end/defensive tackle for the National Football League’s Baltimore Colts (1967-1971), Oakland Raiders (1973-1974), and Houston Oilers (1975-1976)
They’ve got running water and a sewage sysem. What’s the beef?
Even in Iraq, they said, failure on this magnitude is unusual. When asked how the problems at the police college compared with other projects they had inspected, the answers came swiftly.
Can you say “embezzlement”?
I’ve always said we should be keeping a closer eye on Steve Guttenberg.
Where is he now? NO ONE KNOWS.
What makes this even sadder is that you replace “Iraqi Police Academy building” with “elementary school in East St. Louis” and no one can tell the difference.
Even Steve Guttenberg could have done a better job with this venture. Christ on a cracker, WTF is going on with our money, our people and our principles? Pioneers with no experience in anything dictating the future of an entire f’ing country, and other than the Green Zone the country’s in f’ing anarchy. Is there a press entity ANYWHERE with the balls and cache to expose this complete and utter bullshit? Yes, I’m shrill tonight, because the fate of an entire nation, which includes several disparate tribes of peoples hangs in the balance, and hardly anyone is letting us know what the goddamn hell is going on. I want to be snarky but I just can’t at the moment. This has gone beyond anything I nor anyone here can parody, if only because people are dying because of INCOMPETENCE. People die every day for principle, for political expedience, for the sake of pure evil taking it’s place in society. But at this point I’d take evil over incompetence; at least there’s a clearly defined motive besides stupidity, ’cause that’s the biggest evil of all.
recruting page, Heritage Foundation website, circa late 2003:
Opportunity in Iraqi reconstruction: rebuild Police Academy!
Required experience: worked on your right wing college newspaper, outed a gay person on campus, related to famous neo-conservative, believe everything you are told.
Don’t be: over 25, gay, to the left of the DLC, a contractor of any sort, someone who has ever built anything (yes, that includes erector sets), someone who understands plumbing (while this may seem odd, all will become clear after you speak with mr. paul bremer about some specifics of the project), an arabic speaker. and it goes without saying: iraqis of any stripe, whether ex-pats or natives, need not apply.
Please send all resumes to all 60 grit sandpaper snatches’ bitch, or learn more at http://www.wearegoingtofuckthisthinguprealbad.com
Your wish is my command, and evil wins, 65-34. I am so fucking proud , as the decent nations of the world can now look down on us openly, and our analogues are the very people we’ve sworn to destroy, like Iran. Fuck fuckity fuck.
Yeah, it’s almost as if the locals who built it secretly wanted to see the US to fail and just go home.
Paging Bernie Kerik. Mr. Bernie Kerik, please.
Inside the inspector general’s office in Baghdad on a recent blistering afternoon, several federal investigators expressed amazement that such construction blunders could be concentrated in one project. Even in Iraq, they said, failure on this magnitude is unusual.
Let me repeat that last bit:
Even in Iraq, they said, failure on this magnitude is unusual.
Federal inspectors — U.S. government employees, on the ground in Iraq, familiar with the way the Iraqi reconstruction is going — not only “expressed amazement” at how fucked up the police academy is, they came right out and admitted that Iraq in general is completely fucked up. “Even in a place as completely fucked up as Iraq” the police academy stands out as a shining beacon of fucked-upitude.
Interestingly, the Baghdad Police College project does not appear on the Parsons Corp. “Project of the Month” list, though two other projects (Taji Military Base Renovation (September 2004) and Modernize Ibn Al Baladi Maternity and Children’s Hospital (December 2004) did make the list.
[…] They’re building a $75 million police academy in Iraq. […]
[…] 1.) Sleazy black marketers: unlike the bums running the current Iraqi government, these guys actually know how to deliver goods and services to the people. Sure, putting them in charge of public works would likely result in large-scale corruption and a huge inflation of government expenses, but at least shit would get done. And really, I doubt they could do anything as bad as spending $75 million to build a police academy that rains poo and pee all over its cadets. […]