This isn't really all that new, it's probably been around since Pharaoh's time, which is why militaries usually rely on uniformed engineering battallions like the Seabees to do their construction work for them. Now that we are outsourcing a lot of this work to private industry, in order to give ourselves the illusion of having a cheap military. It's inevitable that some unscrupulous players are milking the cash cow for all it's worth. and since we are passing the projects off mostly to our companies, not Iraqi ones, it''s in everyone's self-interest to look the other way.

You also have to keep in mind that the enemy is doing everything it cn to frustrate these construction projects, and that it is difficult, as well as dangerous to keep them going. You can't blame the contractors for that, but you can blame the government for covering up the lack of progress to hide the fact that their security measures are just not working.