Real Investigations or Déjà Vu All Over Again: Will the Army Get to the Bottom of all this Iraq Fraud?
Last Wednesday, in the middle of the Larry Craig scandal and close to the upcoming Labor Day weekend, the Army announced two investigative initiatives concerning contractor spending on the Iraq war. This announcement happened just days after it was reported in the Washington Post that the DOD planned to ask the Congress for another $50 billion for the war on top of the existing $147 billion request before the Congress.
To stop the immediate bleeding of money from the Army contracts, Secretary of the Army Pete Geren plans to have the Army examine around $3 billion worth of contracts that were in Kuwait because there has been fraud found in the letting of contacts in that area. There have been 20 military and civilian Army employees indicted for contract fraud. It sounds like a very large review but keep in mind that KBR alone has had more than $20 billion in contracts since the war began.
In the longer term, the Army has set up a Special Commission on Army Contracting which will report in 45 days to see if the Army can "ensure future contracting operations are more effective, efficient and transparent." The Commission will be headed up by Jacques Gansler, a former DOD official who has been revolving in and out of the Pentagon since the 1970s.
This sounds like welcome help considering the contracting disasters of the Iraq war. As I exposed in my book, Betraying Our Troops: The Destructive Results of Privatizing War, this massive outsourcing of the war to contractors has drained the US Treasury while not providing the soldiers what they need to fight this war. I am concerned that this new war service industry will continue to bedevil the DOD and the troops even after this war is over.
However, the Pentagon archives are full of commission and task force reports that were supposed to bring change. Sometimes these commissions were set up merely to deflect criticism during a rash of scandals or to appease an upset Congress. Some of these commissions really had good intentions but institutional pressures made sure that their reports gathered dust with little or no change. I would like to hope that the Army's actions are more than a Kabuki dance to ward off more biting Congressional investigations and not just to get their next $200 billion money fix.
Dr. Gansler has his work cut out for him. He currently runs the University of Maryland's new Center for Public Policy and Private Enterprise, which, according to the university, "fosters collaboration among the public, private and nonprofit sectors to promote mutually beneficial public and private interests."
Hmmm....I guess I am worried about this because I see too cozy of a relationship between the Army and their private contractors in Iraq. The Army has allowed the contractors to walk all over them, bill outrageous sums and even threaten work stoppages in a war zone to get paid. Since there are now more contractors in Iraq than troops, we have to wonder if this new war service industry "collaboration" with the Army needs to be fostered or whether the Army has to stand up to the contractors despite the politics. The Army needs to insist that the contractors fulfill their duties and finally give the troops what they need. This will require criminal and civil prosecutions beyond going after some of the small time crooks and going after the systemic fraudulent practices of the big and politically connected contractors.
Will the Army reform itself during this war? The odds are against it. Most effective reforms of military contracting have come only because the Congress has passed laws insisting on it. Congressional and media exposes of fraud and waste helped pass reform laws in the Congress during the 1980s (most of these reforms have been wiped out in the past 20 years) and the Truman Commission in World War II actually did indict large defense contractors in a war and even jailed a general. I will be watching the Army very carefully in the next 45 days to see if they really get a handle on this unprecedented yet underreported scandal. The Congress could help these investigations along by putting in their own reforms to "help" the Army to do the right thing.
History is against any meaningful reform but our troops deserve no less. They are putting their lives on the line and the Congress and the Army must give them what they need, not what the contractors need to make a profit.
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Dina Rasor: Real Investigations or Déjà Vu All Over Again: Will the Army Get to the Bottom of all this Iraq Fraud?
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Rhetorical questions R us, eh?
What can I say? After over 25 years of this, I have to be the eternal optimist to keep going...I still believe that with enough pressure, we can put a dent in the system. Otherwise, the bad guys will have total control.
Two memories spring to mind, one visual and one written. The visual image is that scene in Fahrenheit 9/11 where we see/hear the Halliburton guy telling the "haves and have-mores," Dubya's "base," as Dubya himself identified them, saying that "There's a lot of money to made in Iraq. A *lot*!"
That money was to be made through fraud and no-bid contracts, of course. And so it has!
The other memory derives from a written article. The gist was that the Army was paying KBR whatever they asked for meals they were providing. Surely KBR would have to document the number of meals so the Army could ascertain whether they were being fairly charged, right? Wrong. KBR maintained that the number of meals they were serving was a trade secret!
If I were confronted with this situation, I would do three things: (a) terminate the contract with KBR, (b) take the case to court, (c) deploy undercover agents to count the number of meals and compare that number with the amount KBR was billing. And, (d) if it turned out KBR was defrauding American taxpayers, I'd have them in court.
Has any of this happened? Not that I've heard or read. Why? Yeah. That's the question, isn't it.
I am sure that there are qui tam False Claims Act whistleblower cases under consideration now with the DOJ that we don't know about because they are under seal until the DOJ decides whether to take the case or not. The DOJ and the Congress has to feel the heat from the public and the media to get serious about this problem before any movement will happen. All I know to do is to keep pushing it out there.
The Army? Bush owns the Army, the Air Force, the Navy-just as he owns the Supreme Court and the congress. Think about this--a man who avoided combat duty and his side kick who hid behind five deferments,--this man, with less than the usual IQ--now tells the entire military what to do--and if he does not like what they say, he fires them and finds someone to stand up for his insanity. This, ladies and gentlemen, is our military. Biggest in the world, commanded by a stupid man. Seems to me, the military is in a siamese twin situation with this idiot and are impotent to do anything about it.
So brave are they. We should be so proud to have Petraous on the winning side.
Go for it. Encourage your children to join the military and they too some day may become four star Generals saluting and obeying a fascist dictator.
Why the f#*k do we need to paying private companies all this money to do the military's job? Other than massive fraud and waste, with the attendant benfits to the political donor class, I see nothing beneficial to anyone about the privitization trend. In fact, I see Iraq as the model for why privitization of government functions is a bad, bad idea. This war/occupation talks like a money-making scam, walks like a money-making scam, and looks like a money-making scam? Any credible evidence it isn't?
The neocons still claim that the privatization is saving money but the Army has not been able to produce any evidence that privatization has saved any money. Quite the contrary, all information points to one of the largest scandals in our history, all at the expense of the troops.
How is it possible that it saves money, given the "need" for profit? Efficiency? But many contracts are cost-plus, which encourages inefficiency. Can someone explain how this is supposed to work?
baylaw,
Here's some info sorta specific to your request.
You probably have it already.
If it's a complete waste of your time, please accept my sincere apologies (at least the price is right):
http://ove
"More Dollars, Less Sense
Worsening Contracting Trends Under the Bush Administration"
Page includes a link to a database of government contracts.
Enjoy.
Ta! I have a natural aversion to going to government sources for info, so I didn't have this. Very good, though.
And we're here to learn from one another, thus you cannot waste my time, even if you repeat what I may already know.
Well wishes,
me
I have little faith that the Military will police itself when it comes to contractors. Far too many military personnel see themselves going into very lucrative civilian jobs with the same contractors they should be policing.
Sadly, I do not hold out much hope that the Democratic congress will find the guts to do anything either.
The Democratic Senate Freshmen, lead by Webb and McCaskill, have backed a bill to bring back a Truman style commission while the war is still going on. This is the only way we can get at the fraud before everyone says it is too late to get the money. I am working hard to expose these problems so the Democrats have the guts to do what is necessary to stop this madness. The media also needs to pay more attention to this...
dc,
I USED TO FEEL YOUR PAIN.
Then I started to monitor Henry Waxman's “Committee on Oversight and Government Reform” website.
Go to: http://ove
Things are definitely looking very promising here.
It started as basically one page. Now it’s a MONSTER! With TEETH!
We haven't heard much from Henry, but that's because he's WAY busy.
From (presumably) any page on the site, enter search criteria of "contractor".
The 384 hits represent ongoing ACTION, virtually all of it involving Iraq.
I also suggest you go to: http://ove
“More Dollars, Less Sense:
Worsening Contracting Trends Under the Bush Administration”
This page also includes a link to a database of all government contracts. If you want to see it, (presumably) it's there. (Perhaps some security issues. I haven't looked thoroughly
Henry takes his job VERY seriously. Watch this sight to see history in action!
He even went all the way back to the Cheney secret energy meetings issue, which preceded his placement on this committee by four years. 374 hits on that topic ALONE! (“ Cheney energy “) The man is a BULLDOG.
(At times, he’s just about my only ray of hope.)
PLEASE take a look.
THANK YOU!
As you can see from my book, Betraying Our Troops, Waxman has been working on this problem since even before the war started. I have been working with his committee for the past few years on Iraq war contracting fraud. You are right, his committee is working hard but there are so many scandals, they are backed up.
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Posted September 4, 2007 | 04:37 PM (EST)