The most enraging thing about the billions of dollars private contractors have been squandering with their profitable contracts in Iraq (and other places), is how there are so many reports piling up that they are not even providing the very services required under the contract, or worse, doing such a piss-poor job that it is putting our military men and women in even greater danger.
Here is just one example that is again back in the news:
Thousands of buildings at U.S. bases in Iraq and Afghanistan have such poorly installed wiring that American troops face life-threatening risks, a top inspector for the Army says.
“It was horrible — some of the worst electrical work I’ve ever seen,” said Jim Childs, a master electrician and the top civilian expert in an Army safety survey. Childs told CNN that “with the buildings the way they are, we’re playing Russian roulette.”[snip]
He said problems are “everywhere” in Iraq, where 18 U.S. troops have died by electrocution since 2003. All deaths occurred in different circumstances and different locations, but many happened on U.S. bases being managed by various military contractors.
Most have heard some of the stories about the war profiteers who suddenly appeared to take their place at the public pig-trough of multi-million (and billion) dollar defense contracts at the beginning of the Iraq War- for example, the case of the young American arms dealer who was being paid tens of millions of dollars to provide the military with old, crappy, dangerous, illegally obtained munitions from China only to have them either not work or worse, malfunction when it mattered most. Luckily, the feds caught up with him.
The stories of fraud, abuse and outright theft on the part of some of the contractors are just to numerous to mention here but I think all of us can agree that during a time of economic crisis such as we have now, the last thing the government needs is to be paying out billions of funds to corporations which never should have received contracts to begin with.
It goes without saying that not all defense contractors provide shoddy services but what has become problematic is how the government seems totally unable to ensure any sort of accountability for quality of services and products, not to mention cost.
Stumble It!
3 responses so far ↓
1 tehehehe // Apr 8, 2009 at 10:44 am
When contractors do a poor job, that is shameful. It wastes government money, and puts people at risk. It should not happen!
But the contractors that built the levee’s around NOLA also did a poor job. And many contractors do a job that is “less than superior”. They try to maximize their profit. Such waste occurs in most governments, and even in the private industry, and occurs frequently when something has to be done “quickly”.
Let’s condemn it all!
Now, in Iraq, rightly, but most probably “wrongly”, part of our contracting was for services or construction done by local contractors (Iraq companies with Iraqi workers) designed to provide jobs and pump money into the economy. That was done. And some (most?) of such contracts were “shoddy” because the workers were less than skilled (who wants to go to Iraq to do wiring unless the pay is about $250 K per year?). The result was very poor workmanship, but it did help the economy, and workers probably got better, and will be better, as a result of the experience (they largely learned “on the job”).
This points out two things: What will result from “massive infrastructure spending” to stimulate the economy and create jobs by hiring contractors? (roughly equivalent to what we did in Iraq) And, if we put government in charge of companies to improve efficiency, should we expect serious improvements in workmanship?
Just asking.
2 tehehehe // Apr 8, 2009 at 11:11 am
The same government people who wrote the “contracts” for the builders, are probably the ones who hired the “economist” to testify on legislation.
http://michellemalkin.com/2009/04/07/trendy-oregon-democrats-economist-doesnt-read-bills-before-testifying/
3 tehehehe // Apr 9, 2009 at 1:31 pm
Here is more money we “misspent”:
http://hotair.com/archives/2009/04/09/pollution-controls-caused-arctic-ice-melt-nasa/
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