| Page 4 of 4 < |
Troops Confront Waste In Iraq Reconstruction
Maj. Craig Whiteside
(Sudarsan Raghavan - The Washington Post)
TOOLBOX
   Resize
COMMENT
 Discussion Policy
 CLOSE
Comments that include profanity or personal attacks or other inappropriate comments or material will be removed from the site. Additionally, entries that are unsigned or contain "signatures" by someone other than the actual author will be removed. Finally, we will take steps to block users who violate any of our posting standards, terms of use or privacy policies or any other policies governing this site. Please review the full rules governing commentaries and discussions. You are fully responsible for the content that you post.
Who's Blogging  |
Whiteside told him that civil affairs teams had been to the complex 10 times and demanded to know why Abbas hadn't complained to them.
Whiteside, speaking to a delegation of U.S. aid officials and a reporter, blamed the school director. "When there are no students and nothing going on, what was he doing? What are the 149 employees doing? What are they doing when the floor is falling apart? The answer to all of these questions is nothing."
"It's everybody's problem. It's the only way things are going to work here."
As the convoy left the school, Whiteside declared: "Like everything state-owned, it's fully manned, and not operational. If they are spending their own money, they would care."
'He Was in a Hurry'
The following day, Whiteside said that Cawley's final inspection of the school wasn't done properly. "He just screwed up. He was in a hurry," Whiteside said, adding that Cawley was facing pressure from his superiors to finish projects.
But Whiteside added that Cawley, who was on his second Iraq tour, was experienced. So much that he was promoted last month and now oversees a company of civil affairs soldiers. Whiteside said that he and his commander, Lt. Col. Robert Balcavage, also bore responsibility for what happened because they assigned Cawley to the school project and had to sign off on the final payment.
In a telephone interview, Cawley said he could not remember the last time he had visited the school, but said he felt he had done a good job. "I was able to get him to complete more than the scope of the work," Cawley said of the contractor. He declined to comment further.
Barnes's team has created a "continuity book" that lists all its projects with all the receipts -- to help the next team. But it still has to deal with past mistakes. On Aug. 10, Barnes met the contractor at the school and informed him that he needed to fix his shoddy work. Initially reluctant, the contractor agreed. As the convoy left the school, an explosively formed penetrator -- a sophisticated roadside bomb -- struck Barnes's Humvee, ripping it apart and wounding another soldier. Barnes survived.
