So where has McCain been when this was collapsing? Iraq is his pet project, so let's hear what he's been doing to protect American taxpayers and make sure that our money is spent wisely in Iraq. The Republicans can't stop telling everyone how well they run the economy but the facts say something radically different. Their friends fail to meet the terms and conditions of contracts and yet they're still paid. Everyone else should be so lucky.
The pages also add another narrative to the wider probes into the billions lost so far on scrubbed or substandard projects in Iraq and one of the main contractors accused of failing to deliver, the Parsons construction group of Pasadena, Calif.
"This is $40 million invested in a project with very little return," Bowen told The Associated Press in Washington. "A couple of buildings are useful. Other than that, it's a failure."
In the pecking order of corruption in Iraq, the dead-end prison project at Khan Bani Saad is nowhere near the biggest or most tangled.
Bowen estimated up to 20 percent "waste" — or more than $4 billion — from the $21 billion spent so far in the U.S.-bankrolled Iraq Relief and Reconstruction Fund. It's just one piece of a recovery effort that swelled beyond $112 billion in U.S., Iraqi and international contributions.
But the empty prison compound — in the shadows of more than two dozen watchtowers now dotted by birds' nests — is an open sore for both American watchdogs and local Iraqi politicians who had counted on the prison as an economic boost.
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