Editorial: Reconstruction a nightmare

Friday, Sept. 29, 2006 | 7:32 a.m.

The centerpiece of President Bush's policy in Iraq is to train the country's citizens to secure their own futures. To this end the Pentagon handed Parsons Corp., a U.S. construction giant based in Pasadena, Calif., a $75 million contract to build the Baghdad Police College.

A 21-page report produced by the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, an office created by Congress, has concluded that the police college is a "disaster."

"This is the most essential civil security project in the country - and it is a failure," Stuart W. Bowen told The Washington Post. His report includes facts such as human waste dropping from the ceilings, water leaking so badly in one room that it was called "the rain forest" and floors so warped they no longer contact the foundation.

This isn't the first incidence of shoddy work by Parsons, which has been awarded more than $1 billion in Iraq contracts. Earlier this year the same inspector general reported that Parsons botched a 2004 contract worth $243 million to build 150 health care clinics. "This was the most important program in the health sector," Bowen wrote then. "It sought to ... get services to rural and remote poor in Iraq."

These incidents reflect a pattern in Iraq of big-money reconstruction projects going awry. The Army Corps of Engineers is charged with overseeing most of the projects, and comes in for heavy criticism in Bowen's reports.

Congress should hold hearings on the Iraq reconstruction program, which must succeed if the U.S. mission there is to prevail over the insurgents and terrorists. As the program stands now, it is representative of the administration's total failure to plan for the war's post-invasion phase.