The Associated Press wrote a story, posted this morning as one of the lead stories on Huffington Post, on the Army's efforts to appoint five new Army generals to overhaul and oversee the disastrous contracting problems, especially in Iraq. The OMB at the White House rejected the plan....

Charles Smith, former chief of the Field Support Contracting Division of the Army Field Support Command, was in charge of overseeing the KBR's contract work in Iraq . He went public Tuesday on the front page of the New York Times, saying that he tried to...

The co-author of my book, Betraying Our Troops: The Destructive Results of Privatizing War, has an interesting take on the DOD relying on contractors to report their own fraud. Robert Bauman is a former DCIS (Defense Criminal Investigative Service) investigator and is a Certified Fraud Examiner. Here is...

According to new estimates, we will soon be spending up to $12 billion a month on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and if current trends continue, this war effort will surpass the money spent in Vietnam. When I started looking at where the war money was going...

Senator Jim Webb has reintroduced an updated version of what he has dubbed "21st Century GI Bill" framed on the wildly successful GI Bill from World War II. With this war dragging on for six and one half years and our troops involuntary serving tour after tour, it is the...

Several weeks ago, I testified before a Senate subcommittee on the problems of Iraq contracting. The Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) and members of the Government Accountability Office (GAO) were also on the panel. Our testimony was followed by various officials from the DOD, State Department and USAID...

On Monday, Bush signed the 2008 Defense authorization bill into law. In it he singled out four of 2,887 sections for his now notorious signing statement. He said that these four provisions "purport to impose requirements that could inhibit the president's ability to carry out his constitutional obligations to...

Tomorrow we will find out how serious the reform bent Democratic Senators are in getting control of Iraq contractors. Tomorrow at 2:30 pm EST (you can live stream it here) the Subcommittee on Federal Financial Management, Government Information, Federal Services and International Security of the Committee on Homeland Security...

In response to Senator John McCain's flip comments of spending thousands of years in Iraq, President Bush gave the war service industry a big boost to their financial bottom line. He said that the US could "easily" spend ten more years in Iraq.

This is music...

By now, many know the story of how the US lost track of around $9 billion in Iraqi assets and how corruption by US contractors and the Iraqi government has prevented much of the meaningful rebuilding of the Iraqi infrastructure. Now, according to a story in the

Today, the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security will hold hearings on the alleged gang rape of former KBR employee Jamie Leigh Jones by her fellow KBR employees in Iraq. If true, this young woman's rape case is twice the tragedy: first the rape and...

Right now, Iraq's parliament is considering removing immunity from U.S. security contractors or possibly all U.S. contractor personnel. Some contractor employees have told the Los Angeles Times that they would stay and work anyway. Want to bet our troops lives on it? After the Iraqi police throw the first...

Today, the DOD Inspector General released a report showing that the military has lost track of about a billion dollars of equipment that they supplied to the Iraqi Security Forces. Here is another outrage on the war and even the most optimistic of people will agree that some of...

The President and the Congress are having a boxing match on the Iraq war money. Bush just went on television today with a grim face saying that if the Congress does not fund his $196 billion request for next year, the Pentagon will have to start laying...

Just a few hours ago, Rep. Louise Slaughter posted a blog here about the company that let the troops down by not getting body armor to the troops fast enough and having problems with the quality and the money spent. I am glad that she has brought this...

In my book, I examine a new industry that has exploded in size to support the Iraq war. This new industry is not like the old familiar Military Industrial Complex, especially since they don't usually manufacture anything; they supply service - armed security or logistics. I dubbed...

In his column yesterday, New York Times columnist Frank Rich was writing about the various problems with our mess in Iraq. But I was excited when I came across this section of this column:

Last week Paul Rieckhoff, an Iraq war combat veteran who directs Iraq and Afghanistan...

Another day, another story about an out of control private security contractor shooting. This time it is an Australian run company, Unity Resources Group, was returning from escorting a USAID subcontractor convoy. They shot two women in a car. The Washington Post reports, "'A vehicle got close to them...

In the past few days, there has been a buzz of activity surrounding the questions that the Blackwater incidents have raised. The House of Representatives has passed a bill putting contractors in Iraq under U.S criminal law and the Senate has introduced a similar measure. The White House says...

Tomorrow, Representative Henry Waxman, chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Governmental Reform, will hold hearings on Blackwater, the largest of the private security firms in Iraq. There will be many issues discussed and debated. The committee recently issued a report on the failures of the company when...