Report: Empty prison in Iraq a $40M 'failure'.Ah. The A (w/ t) P. Always eager to tarnish any silver lining.
BAGHDAD (AP) - In the flatlands north of Baghdad sits a prison with no prisoners. It holds something else: a chronicle of U.S. government waste, misguided planning and construction shortcuts costing $40 million and stretching back to the American overseers who replaced Saddam Hussein.
The unfinished prison is located in the city of Khan Bani Saad, 30 miles North of Bahgdad. Construction for this non-starter of a prison was started in 2004, during the heaviest, and bloodiest fighting. The U.S. govt. pulled the plug on the project in 2006.
Inconvenient war. Always getting in the way of progress.
You know what's located due West of Bahgdad, don't you? Abu Ghraib prison. In 2004, the Bush Administration was eager to distance itself from the Abu Ghraib scandal, and my guess is this non-starter of a prison in Khan Bani Saad was a money pit response to show some forward thinking to address the problems in Abu Ghraib.
But the political and military landscape has much improved from those days of the Associated Press' chicken s#1t proclaimation of 'quagmire!'.
What little forward thinking and planning that the Bush Administration did manage to cobble together in response to the Abu Ghraib scandal is now wire service fodder for ridicule.
And the obvious good news of the U.S. Military not having to house a mass of war prisoners is lost on the AP.
Inconvenient war. Damned if you do; damned if you don't.
