More Contractors in Iraq?

An article in the Washington Post today revealed that the US Army is planning to hire contractors to take on the job of training the Iraqi Army. Teams of 10-12 contractors would be trained in the United States. The plan is for them to go to Iraq under the command of a serving officer and for them to live with the Iraqi units they will be training. The Army is resorting to this expedient due to a critical shortage of mid-level officers such as captains and majors who are resigning their commissions after repeated long deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan.

In a related development highlighting, or perhaps lowlighting is a better word, the shortcomings and failures of privatization in a war zone, Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-ND) held hearings of the Senate Democratic Policy Committee on Monday, April 28 into contractor waste, fraud abuse in Iraq. The testimony was as depressing as ever. One of those testifying was Philip E. Coyle III, Senior Advisor to the Center for Defense Information, who reported that $10 billion from 2003 funds is still unaccounted for.

Bunnatine Greenhouse, the highest-ranking civilian in the Army Corps of Engineers, stated of the Restore Iraqi Oil contract awarded to Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg-Brown-Root, "In 12 years I never saw anything approaching the arrogant and egregious ways in which the Corps treated Halliburton's competitors and violated federal laws and regulations to ensure KBR kept its RIO work." Under this no-bid, sole source contract, KBR was issued "a waiver absolving KBR of its need to provide cost and pricing data." "The Pentagon claimed Halliburton was best qualified because it extinguished 320 oil fires in Kuwait, but as pointed out, it was Bechtel, not Halliburton, who managed the entire 650 oil well firefighting efforts and the entire oil field reconstruction effort" following the 1991 Gulf War. Vice President Dick Cheney is the former Chairman of Halliburton and still draws bonuses from the corporation into his blind trust.

There was other testimony from Halliburton employees concerning the firm's failure to chlorinate the water supplies at army bases and then falsifying the records to show it had done so, the delivery of expired and spoiled food to army troops, their repeated billing for services and supplies not rendered or at vastly inflated prices, and their practice of gathering up leftovers from US Army bases and taking them to feed Turkish and Filipino workers, rather than providing them with meals according to their national customs as required by their contract. Employees who complained were threatened with or assigned to ride with truck convoys into areas known to be under insurgent attack. Jeffrey Jones, former Director of the Defense Energy Support Center, reported that Halliburton profited from these missions by charging the DESC seven times its cost of delivering fuel supplies.

Testimony about Blackwater, the private security firm, said that the company sent its guards into dangerous areas without armored vehicles, body armor, adequate intelligence or sometimes even a map. An e-mail from the Baghdad office to Blackwater corporate headquarters complained the company was sending men out without, "body armor, hard cars, weapons and ammo they needed," and putting on a "smoke and mirrors show doing just enough to sustain the appearance of operational capability," while giving false reports that, "did not reflect the appalling truth on the ground."

Former Coalition Provisonal Authority contractor Robert Isaakson testified that construction contracting firm Custer Battles, "asked me three times to assist in preparing fake invoices and leases they could then submit to the government." He went on, "As a result of my continuing refusals to cooperate in their fraud, they pointed machine guns at us, stole our weapons and seized our identification. While our brave men and women in uniform were fighting and dying for our safety and liberty in Iraq, these former U.S. Army Rangers and CIA officers were accosting witnesses to their proposed fraud, forcing them to be held at gunpoint, disarming them so they could be killed in Iraq by the insurgents. Custer Battles left us to fend for ourselves in the streets of Baghdad."

These are but a small part of the kinds of reports the committee has received. The profit motive seems to be an uneasy bedfellow to the effective conduct of operations in a war zone. When oversight is difficult and crony-driven contracts are cost plus, it is often the case that unsafe and dishonest practices are more lucrative than doing right by the troops. It is all too clear what such temptations can lead to-degrading the combat readiness of our troops, getting more of them killed, and wasting untold billions of the American people's dollars.