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Date Posted: Monday, April 03, 07:17:23am
Author: Bear
Subject: $200 million and only 20 clinics

The Bush administration is caught in their lies again.

After repeaedly telling Americans that the media is lying over the lack of progress in Iraq, the numbers prove it.

$200 million dollars for 142 health clinics and after two years the money alloted has run out and only 20, that's right, only 20 health clinics have been built.

Story follows link below:

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2002906888_clinics03.html

With $200 million spent, few Iraq clinics finished

04/03/06 The Washington Post - Shahad Haidr, 11, second from right, talks to a friend at a Baghdad school last month. She nearly lost an arm during a mortar attack in October 2005. Security costs due to insurgent violence have eaten up as much half of the $18.4 billion in U.S. spending for Iraq reconstruction.

BAGHDAD, Iraq — A reconstruction contract for the building of 142 primary health centers across Iraq has run out of money, after two years and roughly $200 million, with no more than 20 clinics now expected to be completed, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers says.

The contract, awarded to U.S. construction giant Parsons in the flush, early days of reconstruction in Iraq, was expected to lay the foundation of a modern health-care system for the country, putting quality medical care within reach of all Iraqis.
Parsons, according to the Corps, will walk away from more than 120 clinics that on average are two-thirds finished. Auditors say its failure serves as a warning siren for other U.S. reconstruction efforts coming due this year.

Brig. Gen. William McCoy, the Corps of Engineers commander overseeing reconstruction in Iraq, said he still hoped to complete all 142 clinics as promised and was seeking emergency money from the U.S. military and foreign donors. "I'm fairly confident," McCoy said.

Coming with little public warning, the 86 percent shortfall of completions dismayed the World Health Organization (WHO) representative for Iraq. "That's not good. That's shocking," Naeema al-Gasseer said. "We're not sending the right message here. That's affecting people's expectations and people's trust, I must say."

At the end of 2006, the $18.4 billion that Washington has allocated for Iraq's reconstruction runs out. All remaining projects in the U.S. reconstruction program, including electricity, water, sewer, health care and the justice system, are due for completion. As a result, the next nine months are crunch time for the easy-terms contracts that were awarded to U.S. contractors early on, before surging violence drove up security costs and idled workers.

Stuart Bowen, the top U.S. auditor for reconstruction, warned that shortfalls similar to the one involving Parsons may be coming in other reconstruction efforts. "I've been consumed for a year with the fear we would run out of money to finish projects," said Bowen, the special inspector-general for reconstruction in Iraq.

The reconstruction campaign in Iraq is the largest such American undertaking since World War II. The rebuilding efforts have remained a point of pride for American troops and leaders as they struggle with an insurgency and now Shiite Muslim militias and escalating sectarian conflict.

The Corps of Engineers says the campaign has renovated or built 3,000 schools, upgraded 13 hospitals and created hundreds of border forts and police stations. Major projects during the summer, the Corps says, should noticeably improve basic services such as electricity, which have fallen below pre-war levels despite the billions of dollars that the United States has expended toward reconstruction.

Security eats up funding

Violence for which the United States failed to plan has consumed up to half the $18.4 billion through higher costs to guard project sites and workers and through direct shifts of billions of dollars to ramp up Iraq's police and military.

In January, Bowen's office calculated the American reconstruction effort would be able to finish only 300 of 425 promised electricity projects and 49 of 136 water and sanitation projects.

U.S. authorities say they made a special effort to preserve the more than $700 million of work for Iraq's health-care system, crippled by two decades of war and international sanctions.

Doctors in Baghdad's hospitals still cite dirty water as one of the major killers of infants. The city's hospitals place medically troubled newborns two to an incubator, when incubators work at all.

Early in the occupation, U.S. officials mapped out the construction of 300 primary-care clinics, said Gasseer, the WHO official. In addition to spreading health care beyond the major cities into small towns, the clinics were meant to provide training for Iraq's medical professionals. "Overall, they were considered vital," she said.

In April 2004, the project was awarded to Parsons of Pasadena, Calif., a leading construction firm in domestic and international markets. McCoy, the Corps of Engineers commander, sai

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