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| Iraq | ||
| Construction Woes Add to Fears at Embassy in Iraq | ||
| 2007-07-05 | ||
Must've been a slow news day yesterday, since this is front-page WaPo hand-wringing. Nice title, eh? I couldn't beat it. Woes and fears and Iraq all in the headline.
44 words in the first sentence. That ought to catch your eye, unless you fell asleep reading it. A toughly worded cable sent from the embassy to State Department headquarters on May 29 highlights a cascade of building and safety blunders in a new facility to house the security guards protecting the embassy. The guards' base, which remains unopened today, is just a small part of a $592 million project to build the largest U.S. embassy in the world. The main builder of the sprawling, 21-building embassy is First Kuwaiti General Trade and Contracting Co., a Middle Eastern firm that is already under Justice Department scrutiny over alleged labor abuses. First Kuwaiti also erected the guard base, prompting some State Department officials in Washington and Baghdad to worry that the problems exposed in the camp suggest trouble lurking ahead for the rest of the embassy complex. The first signs of trouble, according to the cable, emerged when the kitchen staff tried to cook the inaugural meal in the new guard base on May 15. Some appliances did not work. Workers began to get electric shocks. Then a burning smell enveloped the kitchen as the wiring began to melt. All the food from the old guard camp -- a collection of tents -- had been carted to the new facility, in the expectation that the 1,200 guards would begin moving in the next day. But according to the cable, the electrical meltdown was just the first problem in a series of construction mistakes that soon left the base uninhabitable, including wiring problems, fuel leaks and noxious fumes in the sleeping trailers. "Poor quality construction . . . life safety issues . . . left [the embassy] with no recourse but to shut the camp down, in spite of the blistering heat in Baghdad," the May 29 cable informed Washington. Such challenges with construction contracts inside the fortified enclave known as the Green Zone reflect the broader problems that have thwarted reconstruction efforts throughout war-torn Iraq. More quagmire at link... | ||
| Posted by:Bobby |
| #3 Why are diplomats still using cables? You'd think they could afford to use some kind of secure e-mail by now. |
| Posted by: Nimble Spemble 2007-07-05 14:33 |
| #2 Indeed. The primary reason for Kellog Brown Root getting the original no-compete task order in Iraq in the first place (2003) was that they had the world wide contract for embassy security construction and Halliburton the parent co had the current 5 year world wide logistical support contract to which task orders could be added. As a side effect, they also had a lot of personnel w/ security clearances. |
| Posted by: lotp 2007-07-05 14:23 |
| #1 Shoulda let Halliburton do it. That would have raised a different stink than an electrical fire, though... |
| Posted by: M. Murcek 2007-07-05 14:00 |