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 Veterans of America, sketched for me the apocalypse to come. Should Baghdad implode, our contractors, not having to answer to the military chain of command, can simply "drop their guns and go home." Vulnerable American troops could be deserted by those "who deliver their bullets and beans."
(Note: Hat tip to fellow Huffington Post blogger Paul Rieckhoff for filling in Frank Rich on this subject. In full disclosure, Paul's IAVA was the preliminary fiscal sponsor for my Follow the Money Project and several of the soldiers in his organization were profiled in my book.)
Anyone who has been reading my blog posts for the past few months knows that I have been pounding away on this problem that goes way beyond Blackwater. It is also the premise for my book, Betraying Our Troops: The Destructive Results of Privatizing War. In the book, I follow 11 soldiers and contactor employees through the buildup of the war, the war, and the occupation to illustrate how the contractors hurt the mission of our troops by not doing their full job and how our soldiers did without while contractor billings hit new heights.
Paul rightly talks about a potential problem if Iraq gets hairy and the contractors just leave and don't supply the logistics for the troops. I call it the "Just Say No" problem that could become catastrophic for the US Army and Marines if Iraq melts down.
What the media and the Congress need to understand now is that the problem of the contractors not doing the work that the troops need has been going on, in a rolling way, since even before the invasion. It has been weakening our military and their mission way beyond what Blackwater and the other private security contractors have done, especially since the US Army has now basically turned their supply lines and logistics over to private companies. There is also much more money involved...Blackwater has billed over a billion dollars since the war started but KBR, the main supplier of logistics, has billed over $26 billion dollars, averaging around a half a billion a month in billings.
My book is full of these examples. Probably the most egregious examples is that KBR and other companies, have refused to consistently go beyond the safe bases to supply the troops in the field with food, water, logistics and the other necessities of war. KBR's contract with the Army requires them to supply food and logistics within 400 KM of major bases. Recently, there was a piece on NPR about a US soldier who was killed in Mosul. After his parents spoke about their anguish, they said that they were very upset that they had to send him basic supplies, even as mundane as underwear. They were also concerned about the other troops who did not have family who could send them regular supplies and the fact that they had to do without.
Even on the bases, KBR and other contractors find ways not to do the work but get paid for it. Here is a letter from a soldier who wrote about his frustrations with KBR in Stars and Stripes in 2005:
At Forward Operating Base Speicher, we have experienced similar issues with KBR. You drive by hundreds of air-conditioning units sitting idle, yet if you place a work order to have an A/C unit installed, it is denied. "There's no money for new installations," you are told by a man wearing a T-shirt and shorts inside a nicely cooled building. So you go back to your oven.
Then two of the three A/C units in your barracks unit break down due to an electrical problem at the breaker box. After attempts to get it fixed, you finally get an "emergency" work order response from KBR -- a week after it happened. The gentleman tells you that it's not an emergency (nothing is on fire) so there isn't a thing he can (or will) do. But he does call the safety inspector because of the poor condition of the breaker box. The inspector calls "Facilities" and, next thing you know, there are six KBR employees standing around saying they can't fix it. For them to fix it, they would have to install a breaker box, which is not authorized because it would be a "new" installation.
I agree the employees are not at fault. I have little doubt that, given the green light, they would have repaired, replaced, installed as necessary to help us out. Their hands are tied. If they do work they aren't supposed to, they lose their job. I doubt they envisioned things being the way they are when they took the job.
It seems KBR, at the administrative level, has found a way to get paid for doing a job without ever actually having to do it. (For his sake, I have left out the name of the soldier, even though it is public.)
Just this weekend, a former KBR manager told me that in his area of logistics, at least two thirds of the KBR employees did not have anything to do. Keep in mind that KBR is having their employees record twelve hours a day, seven days a week on their timecards. I am not just relying on anecdotal stories. The GAO and the DCAA have written reports, even before the war, warning about these problems. My website has a list of them at www.followthemoneyproject.org.
Thanks Mr. Rich for understanding this problem and trying to bring it to the public. Now the Congress has to take the initiative to do something about this before it becomes a catastrophic problem. Using these contractors for logistics in a war zone has become the new normal for the US Army and our troops will be left in the lurch as long as the contractors and their employees can just say no.