Some of Army's Civilian Contractors Are No-Shows in Iraq

[starroute]

http://www.newhousenews.com/archive/wood080103.html


U.S. troops in Iraq suffered through months of unnecessarily poor living conditions because some civilian contractors hired by the Army for logistics support failed to show up, Army officers said.

Months after American combat troops settled into occupation duty, they were camped out in primitive, dust-blown shelters without windows or air conditioning. The Army has invested heavily in modular barracks, showers, bathroom facilities and field kitchens, but troops in Iraq were using ramshackle plywood latrines and living without fresh food or regular access to showers and telephones.

<snip>

Last fall the Army hired Kellogg Brown & Root, a Houston-based contractor, to draw up a plan for supporting U.S. troops in Iraq, covering everything from handling the dead to managing airports. KBR, as it's known, eventually received contracts to perform some of the jobs, and it and other contractors began assembling in Kuwait for the war.

But as the conflict approached, insurance rates for civilians skyrocketed -- to 300 percent to 400 percent above normal, according to Mike Klein, president of MMG Agency Inc., a New York insurance firm. Soldiers are insured through the military and rates don't rise in wartime.

It got "harder and harder to get (civilian contractors) to go in harm's way," said Mahan, the Army logistics chief.

[soothsayer]

1. gee, you mean privatizing all those jobs is actually less efficient?

shocker

what a bunch of dumbasses

No one's going into a war zone unless you order them to.

[Lithos]

2. More managerial incompetance

First rule of outsourcing is that you keep key, strategic functions in house.

But more importantly, this is just more proof that you can't run the Government like a corporation. Who was behind this incompetence? Looks like Rumsfeld who was obviously trying to provide some money back to Cheney's Halliburton (of which KBR is a subsidiary).

L-

[Gloria]

3. Two, 2-liter bottles of water a day.....for EVERYTHING.....

How's that for supplying the troops!!! And Japan's expertise in water
treatment won't be there for months, if it ever gets there at all. They're just going now to survey Iraq for "safety" before they send anybody in.....

[Frances]

4. So the Halliburton subsidiary gets the contract, pays Bush

a kickback in the form of campaign contributions and then fails to deliver the housing so the soldiers live in mud.

This is called supporting our troops.

<<The Army had $8 million in contracts for troop housing in Iraq sitting idle, Mahan said. "Our ability to move (away) from living in the mud is based on an expectation that we would have been able to go to more contractor logistical support early on," Mahan said.>>