Swimming Pool Chemicals
A police training camp in Baghdad, with an Olympic-size swimming pool, that has never been used was yesterday highlighted as an example of waste by a congressional investigations team looking at billions spent on reconstruction in Iraq.
The team’s report, published yesterday, is the latest in a series of quarterly audits into $300bn (£150bn) allocated by the US for reconstruction in Iraq since 2003.
It comes as George Bush is seeking a further $1.2bn for reconstruction in his new strategy for Iraq unveiled last month.
Stuart Bowen, the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, who heads the team, said billions in US aid spent on security had had limited effect. The team, which was set up in January 2004 and reports quarterly, has 55 auditors and investigators in Iraq and 78 investigations under way into fraud, waste and abuse of funds.
Among many projects cited in the report is the residential camp at the Adnan palace in Baghdad for 1,040 police training staff and advisers. The original budget included $51.6m for the camp and $36.4m for equipment. It has never been used, the report says, on security grounds.
The work was awarded to DynCorp, a Virginia-based company that specialises in work in hostile environments, one of the top 25 recipients of federal contracts. The team recommends the government seek reimbursement from DynCorp. Its report says the state department paid about $43.8m “for manufacturing and temporary storage of a residential camp that has never been used, including $4.2m for unauthorised work associated with the residential camp”. The unauthorised work included the pool and 20 VIP trailers. The Iraqi interior ministry requested the work but the state department never approved it.
The report also says weapons may be missing. “DoS [state department] may have spent another $36.4m for weapons and equipment … that cannot be accounted for because invoices were vague and there was no back-up documentation or property book specific to items purchased.”
The audit cites “weak and sometimes non-existent contract administration”. It advises the American embassy in Baghdad to assess whether to use the camp.
Lee Hamilton and Edwin Meese III, members of the Iraq Study Group that advocated a phased withdrawal from Iraq in December, told a Senate investigation yesterday that the US had botched its training of Iraqi police. They said that giving the job to the state department and private contractors who “did not have the expertise or the manpower” and then to the defence department left Iraq with little if any law enforcement on the street.
Guardian News & Media 2008
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