World

Iraq Rebuild: Your Tax $ At Work (Not)

April 29, 2007 / 9:35 AM EDT / CBS/AP

A severe lack of maintenance appears to be threatening the future usefulness of some of the facilities renovated during the effort to rebuild Iraq, says a new report from the U.S. inspector general monitoring reconstruction.

Inspectors from the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, which is charged with reviewing Iraqi reconstruction projects that are financed by the U.S., visited eight facilities throughout the country, to determine whether the buildings were operating at full capacity.

What the inspectors discovered is that, even though those facilities had been completed and declared to be successes, and subsequently met the stated "objectives" of reconstruction, they were not functioning properly.

Sites suffered from deterioration, poor or no maintenance, or were not even being used by the people for whom they were built, at a cost to U.S. taxpayers of approximately $150 million.

And these were sites that the United States had previously declared to be signs of Iraq's rebirth: police stations, a military base, a maternity hospital, a recruiting center.

While officials said the eight sampled projects could not be the basis for solely judging the success or merits of U.S.-backed reconstruction efforts in Iraq, the functionality of the facilities raised serious concerns about the rebuild effort, which to Washington has been almost as important as a military victory.

For example, at a recruiting center in Al Hilla, inspectors found bathrooms with floors buckled by what appeared to be sewage backups, makeshift electrical wiring, and sewage holding tanks that were never evacuated because concrete barriers blocked access to the rear of the building where the tanks are located. The inspectors concluded that the quality of the recruiting center's construction met objectives, but that the problems, if left unresolved, would significantly shorten the useful life of the facility.

At a maternity and pediatric hospital in Erbil, inspectors again found a sewer system that was occasionally clogged, possibly as a result of improper disposal of large amounts of medical wastes, and a water purification system that was not working.

During the site visits there, inspectors saw needles, bandages and other examples of medical wastes in the sewer system's traps and septic tank. A new incinerator was not in use because those initially trained in running it were no longer employed. Also, workers were using an excessive amount of water to clean floors, leading to considerable amounts of water being absorbed into the walls.

The inspections were more positive for two police stations that were reviewed, both in Mosul. Each appeared to be able to operate at full capacity, the inspector general said.

At the Gaugli-Asher station, in particular, inspectors said that "full capacity operations over the long term will likely result" if Iraqi police continue to properly use and maintain the building and its equipment.

However, the review of a second station showed that some of the contractor work did not meet requirements; razor wire was secured by sand bags; and no one knew how to fix or run the generator providing electricity.

"As a result, the new generator system, which cost $79,000, is not being used and the repaired and upgraded electrical system and components have been degraded," inspectors said.

At Baghdad International Airport, $11.8 million worth of new electrical generators had been installed. The inspectors found that $8.6 million worth were no longer working.

"These first inspections indicate that the concerns that we and others have had about the Iraqis sustaining our investments in these projects are valid," Stuart W. Bowen Jr., who leads the office of the special inspector general, told The New York Times for an article published Sunday.

The inspector general's quarterly report on Iraq reconstruction is being released Monday. Reports dealing with specific aspects of the reconstruction were released over the last few days.

In Other Developments:

A British soldier was killed Sunday by small arms fire in southern Iraq, the Ministry of Defense said. The soldier was shot during a patrol in the Al-Ashar district of Basra, Iraq's second city. The death brings to 146 the number of British troops killed in Iraq since the 2003 invasion — 12 of them this month.

The death toll from Saturday's car bomb which exploded near the Imam Hussein Shiite holy shrine has been raised to 68 people. 178 others were injured.

Gunmen seriously wounded one of Iraq's best-known radio and television presenters near her home in Baghdad on Sunday, police said. The attackers were waiting in parked cars and opened fire just as Amal al-Moudares left her house at 7:45 am in the western neighborhood of Khadra, police said. Al-Moudares, who is in her 60s, began working for state-run television in 1962. Her work has included the daily program "Studio 10," which allows people to complain about the many problems they now face with city services such as electricity and sewage. Since the start of the war, 100 journalists have been killed in Iraq, 79 of whom were Iraqis, according to figures compiled by the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists.

Iran agreed Sunday to attend a major regional conference on Iraq set for this week in Egypt — a major break as Iraq seeks support from its neighbors in quelling its sectarian violence. The meeting, which will include both Iran's foreign ministry and Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, raised the possibility of a rare direct encounter between high-level U.S. and Iranian officials. Arab countries also are expected to demand that al-Maliki's government do more to reach out to disgruntled Sunni Arabs before they pledge substantial aid to the country.

U.S. forces fired an artillery barrage in southern Baghdad Sunday morning, rocking the capital with loud explosions. In a brief statement to The Associated Press, the U.S. military said it fired the artillery from a forward operating base near Iraq's Rasheed military base southeast of Baghdad, but provided no other details.

American troops also detained 72 suspected insurgents and seized nitric acid and other bomb-making materials during raids on Sunday targeting al-Qaida in Iraq in Anbar province, a Sunni insurgent stronghold west of the capital, and Salahuddin province, a volatile Sunni area northwest of the capital, the U.S. military said.

Authorities in northern Iraq imposed an indefinite curfew in the Sunni stronghold of Samarra after leaflets signed by rival insurgent groups threatened policemen if they did not quit their jobs and promised to target any oil company that wants to explore in the area. The warnings to the policemen were signed by al-Qaida in Iraq and threatened to destroy their houses if they didn't comply. Leaflets signed by a separate insurgent umbrella group calling itself the Mujahedeen of Samarra warned against oil exploration in the area and were posted on the walls of mosques in central Samarra, 60 miles north of Baghdad.

In the Anbar province city of Karmah, 50 miles west of Baghdad, American forces found 20 five-gallon drums of nitric acid and other bomb-making materials, the statement said.

Two roadside bombs exploded in separate areas of a predominantly Shiite area in southeastern Baghdad, killing three civilians and wounding nine, police said.

An employee at a communications center in the northern city of Mosul was killed in a drive-by shooting, police said.

A sniper shot to death an Iraqi woman near a market in western Baghdad, police said.

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