A New Truman Commission: The Time is Now but Will the Senate Have the Guts to Do It?
The General Accountability Office, the DOD Inspector General, the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction and numerous other government investigative agencies have told us over and over again in reports that Iraq contracting is a mess. In the past three years of investigating the fraud and waste in Iraq for my book, troops have told me over and over again how they are not getting the equipment that they need while KBR is spending money for soft serve ice cream at the big bases (where the top military brass are) and are billing the government up to a half a billion dollars a month.
We have heard it all before and most Americans are angry about the waste and fraud but just wring their hands because the Congress seems paralyzed to do anything about it. Well, the Senate has a chance to now step up to the plate. Senator James Webb, Senator Claire McCaskill and others have reintroduced the bill to make a Commission on Wartime Contracting, patterned after the very successful Truman Committee during World War II, to have this Congress investigate this war while it is still going on. I have been researching the original Truman Commission which went from 1941-1948 and it was amazingly successful. However, most of its effective investigations and changes happened while World War II was still going. After the war, it lost steam because the public wanted to get past the war and move on.
We are losing billions of dollars to waste in Iraq and this waste comes at the expense of our troops. We are spending two billion dollars a week with little oversight and controls and the war service industry companies are taking advantage of this desperate war situation. The DOD and the Army are just barely beginning to look into accountability and they have enormous institutional pressures to not expose their own shortcomings and waste. They will want to defend the current system and not admit to the ongoing procurement disaster in Iraq.
It will take the Congress to establish a commission to start peel back the layers of fraud, fat and waste in this war and find out why the troops are still not getting what they need. The Senate has the chance in the next few days to really make a difference here. The Commission on Wartime Contracting Act may come up as soon as today. Will the Senate turn a deaf ear to the lobbying efforts of the contractors and their apologists and vote for the oversight that is so desperately needed? Take a look at Senator Webb's bill and show some guts. The troops and the taxpayers need some relief here and this Senate could make some positive history. If you are weary of hearing about the waste and fraud, call your Senator and tell them to buck up and vote for this oversight bill. Tell them that the bill is supported by good government groups such as the Project on Government Oversight (POGO), Government Accountability Project (GAP), OMBWatch, and Taxpayers for Common Sense. It is also being supported by the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, because the troops know that this waste and fraud is coming at their expense. Tell your Senator that this can be a vote that they can feel good about for years to come as the fraud scandals of this war begin to unfold.
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It is now known that during WW2 25% of the contracts was scalped (bribes, corruption,etc) In that conflict we imagine the world was a much more righteous, honest one and that War was "justified" which would seem to reduce the number of crooked enterprise. So fast forward today and with the region in which it is being prosecuted, I sure wouldn't be surprised if at least 60% of every dollar is inflated in the bid anmounts and corrupted on down from there. I would bet we as Taxpayers are only getting some 10 to 15% return (or the Iraqi civilians)on a dollar spent. What a travesty. Truman when VP closed Bush's Family (Harriman) Bank down, finally, in 1943, while they were still financing Hitler's Germany! Cheney is the VP today and his Company's are the main profiteers! It is so Disgusting, and really unbelieveable America has sunk so low..
Oversight is a good thing from the contractor perspective - good oversight and accountability rewards the better companies. The use of contractors has ensured that Iraq is the best supported, best supplied military operation in history, and we don't want to lose sight of that reality. So while we look into how the system and the oversight can be improved, Congress should make sure we do not throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Regards,
Doug Brooks
President
IPOA
Doug, why does IPOA, International Peace Operations Association, keep saying that "the use of contractors has ensured that Iraq is the best supported, best supplied military operation in history, " when media reports, government reports and books, including mine, say just the opposite?I interviewed generals in charge of logistics in this war who don't agree. Do your members, who are contractors in Iraq, just keep telling you this?
Glad you are for oversight because many of these contractors need some tough love to get straight.
We say "the best supported, best supplied military operation in history" because it is true.
I note that no one, in books or the media, has come up with an example that disproves the statement. The media focuses on problems and looks for the 'big lie', but the enormous success of the privately supported logistics and supply mission is the 'big truth' that gets ignored because it ain't a 'spicy' story.
Can you imagine a New York Times headline, "logistics in Iraq Works Great"? Boring! Better to focus on the bits that don't go right. The Washington Post actually had a story on soldiers becoming overweight because of too much good food . . . which I guess is a backhanded compliment to the private sector!
Lots of things can be improved, and my own Congressional testimony and numerous International Peace Operations Association articles and programs have focused on these issues – all of which is available on the IPOA web site for those interested in thorough research. Good oversight is good for good companies.
And getting it right is important not just to the Iraq and Afghanistan operations, but also to the other places where contractors play critical roles - the international peace operations in Darfur, Haiti, the Democratic Republic of Congo etc.
Fortunately my sources include not just contractors, but clients - military, UN, AU and others. And unlike too many pundits, I make it a point to understand all sides of a story.
Best regards,
Doug Brooks
President, IPOA
I'm hoping very soon that the 'contractor perspective' is a view through the iron bars of a prison cell, as I believe as a class they are among the greatest facilitators and the largest beneficiaries of corruption at all levels of government.
The propagandists statement "best supported, best supplied military operation" while fact is does nothing to descredit the evidence of its corrupt operation, the fraud, the theft, the irresponsible mismanagement, as well as the shortcomings of various stated equiptment's performance and capabilities, use, protection, or efficiency of the operations themselves. Just because the soldiers can get a steak served to them 24 hours a day, or have a cell phone that can quickly locate their dead or mangled bodies, doesn't equate to a humvee breaking down because the correct replacement parts ran out, so proper maintainence failed, and nobody signing for responsibility for $1,000,000 bundles of cash that is supposed to be utilized for civilian aid stations supplies that never got them, plus a host of accounting anomylies and charges. As an Veteran, Investigator, and ex-contractor who flatly refused to be part of this raping of America via War on Terror to be prosecuted in Iraq, and the murdering of innocents for profit, I say cut the BS. If this commission gets approved I fully intend to offer my service. After the end of Vietnam I witnessed the prosecution of Blackmailers, Drug Dealers, and Blackmarketeers. With the likes of the Contractors in Iraq, It will be easier, as they say, than shooting fish in a barrel..
It is obvious that a major reason for this war was to defraud the people of the United States out of the money they paid in over their lifetimes for social security and medicare. Bush and his allies will never want any investigations into the massive fraud that has "Enroned" our economy.
There are dark clouds on the horizon of the U.S. economy. After every great war there has been a great recession.
No. They won't. The contractors involved give money to members of both parties, and offer the possibility of more money to those they are not presently favoring in return for a blind eye and a kind word. Better please the donors or you get no re-election cash.
The best we can hope for is that a contractor is so intractably one-sided in his contributions to political parties that the ungifted party investigates the doings of that contractor once the ungifted party gets a majority in congress. Of course, there was a time when we might expect civil service folk to keep an eye on the doings of the contractors, but thanks to a concerted effort to scrub agencies clean of whistle-blowers and install industry-friendly party hacks, we can reasonably expect very little to arise from their activities on our behalf. Many of the civil service job-holders of today plan to work for the industries they monitor tomorrow.
That's how it is now that corporate fascism has become our chosen (by whom?)form of government. But what I want to know is: what's this got to do with Britany Spears?
No.
"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."
- Edmund Burke (1729-1797)
You know, I am tired of telling my representatives the obvious that any normal adult understands.
I believe we are beyond "engagement" thru the phone or email or in person.
This donkey needs a 2X4 right between the ears.
I have been doing this for over 25 years and also get frustrated with Congress and the rest of the system but I feel that I have to keep at it for the troops...they are really getting screwed. After I learned how bad it is when researching my book, Betraying Our Troops, I felt that I have to keep trying.
Thanks for the heads up Dina.
It is difficult to say the least to keep up with everything we "should" know about. We email, we call, we sign petitions, we march (which has become ineffective due to being shoved into "free speech zones" it just gets exhausting and overwhelming, except on the days when the rage is simmering on the surface and you are trying to keep your head from exploding.
I have taken to doing snail mail now and then. I have a theorie that it is too easy to ignore email... oops, deleted. Of course without thousands and thousands and more thousands sending in our stamped envelopes there is no impact.
Well, off to let them know once again they have a job to do.
I hope they can get a little courage up.
They need to convene such a commission NOW!
I agree! Try to get the media to pay attention to this....and let your Senators know that you want this...
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Posted September 21, 2007 | 12:20 PM (EST)