Electrical Risks Worse Than Previously Admitted

Back in May, I wrote about the electrical risks posed to American soldiers by the shoddy (sub)contracting work done by Vice-Presidential-Favorite-Son KBR, former subsidiary of Halliburton, noting that the company had been warned of the risk of death as far back as 2004. In spite of the warnings, KBR did nothing to improve conditions and thus cost the lives of several American soldiers.

As was standard practice with most contracts subsidized by the tax payers in Iraq, the work was contracted out to imported, low-wage laborers from the Philippines and elsewhere. The practice, in addition to depriving several soldiers of their lives, avoided employing Iraqis and thus fueled economic unrest and by extension added to the insurgency. That KBR was directly responsible for the deaths of Americans, was warned of the danger for several years, and has not faced any repercussions other than still more contracts is infuriating enough, but now comes word that the extent of the danger was grossly understated.

Shoddy electrical work by private contractors on United States military bases in Iraq is widespread and dangerous, causing more deaths and injuries from fires and shocks than the Pentagon has acknowledged, according to internal Army documents.

During just one six-month period — August 2006 through January 2007 — at least 283 electrical fires destroyed or damaged American military facilities in Iraq, including the military’s largest dining hall in the country, documents obtained by The New York Times show. Two soldiers died in an electrical fire at their base near Tikrit in 2006, the records note, while another was injured while jumping from a burning guard tower in May 2007.

And while the Pentagon has previously reported that 13 Americans have been electrocuted in Iraq, many more have been injured, some seriously, by shocks, according to the documents. A log compiled earlier this year at one building complex in Baghdad disclosed that soldiers complained of receiving electrical shocks in their living quarters on an almost daily basis.

The shoddy work was "the most urgent noncombat safety hazard for soldiers in Iraq, according to an Army survey issued in February 2007." Despite posing the greatest noncombat risk to soldiers, KBR remains at large, so to speak, free to continue not only below-mediocre work but to continue bilking tax payers and harboring its money and personnel in offshore tax havens.

The situation is not one that can be dismissed in "everyone makes mistakes" fashion. Rather, the failure to supply adequate wiring is a systematic problem for KBR, one which stems directly from its habit of hiring poorly-trained, cheap laborers and endemic refusal to respond to warnings about the threats posed by its work. If the US is searching out all those with American blood on their hands, it might start with KBR.


Related:

KBR Was Warned About Electrical Danger in 2004, May 6

Sphere: Related Content

Miami Arms Dealer Had a Checkered History

Back in April, I wrote about the 22-year old arms dealer who was granted a $300 million contract to supply arms to Afghan forces and ended up dealing damaged and aged Soviet-era ammo which didn't work. Last week, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee held a hearing aimed at determining how such a bungle was possible.

A Congressional committee revealed Tuesday that by the time the Army awarded the bid, State and Defense Department officials had canceled or delayed at least six earlier contracts with the company, AEY Inc., for poor quality or late deliveries.

But that record, including a botched $5.6 million order for 10,000 Beretta pistols for Iraq’s security forces, was either ignored or omitted from databases that American military contracting officials have used to weed out companies suspected of involvement in suspect arms deals.

You see, the State and Defense Departments have a database of contractors with poor past results, but AEY's past was either "ignored or omitted." AEY was awarded the contract, which had as many as ten companies contesting, despite failing the government several times before and being included on a list of contractors believed to be engaged in illegal arms sales. AEY also had help from within the government, in the form of Ambassador to Albania John Withers II, in covering up the illegal Chinese origins of the defective ammo it was supplying to US allies in Afghanistan.

In a startling example of government incompetence, the contract appears to have been superfluous from the start.

Congressional investigators also determined that the Afghanistan ammunition contract, which the company is also accused of mishandling, may have been unnecessary: Bosnia, Bulgaria, Hungary and Albania, the Eastern European countries from which AEY bought its ammunition, had offered to donate the type of Soviet-style rifle and machine-gun cartridges that the Afghan Army and police forces use.

The mind reels.

US: Hey, we need some arms for our Afghani friends.

Eastern Europe: Sure, take these.

US: No, thanks, we'd rather buy them through a third party. Good thought, though.

Related:

AEY bungles contract, April 15

Sphere: Related Content

KBR Loses Its Monopoly

After nearly two years of wrangling, the Army has finally broken up the monopoly held by KBR for work in Kuwait, Iraq and Afghanistan. The positive signs stop there, though.

Yet even as the Pentagon begins to pull apart the enormous KBR contract, critics warn that the new three-company deal could actually result in higher costs for American taxpayers and weak oversight by the military. In fact, under the new deal, KBR and the two other companies could actually make more than three times as much as KBR has been paid each year since the war began.

Although every single past undertaking within the framework of the two theaters has seen enormous cost overruns and mismanagement, the Army would like to assure voters that they have everything under control. That proposal seems laughable when considering that if the contract managed to come in under the projection it would be the first such instance.

Critics also say they doubt that the new contract will result in significant cost savings or better services for soldiers in Iraq. The Army has built into the deal the potential for larger profits for the contractors than existed under the prior contract, and it plans to outsource much of the management and oversight of the contractors to yet another company, Serco Inc., for $59 million.

Incredibly, despite the long trail of cost overruns, corruption and mismanagement, the Army contract has outsourced the oversight of the contract, making oversight that much harder, spending another $60 million, and ensuring that any past problems involving the contractors will continue unabated.

KBR, though sure the most (in)famous of the three--KBR, Fluor, and DynCorp--it is not alone in its shortcomings.

Like KBR, DynCorp, based in Falls Church, Va., has had serious problems in past contracting work, including allegations that its employees engaged in sex trafficking in Bosnia while working on a police training contract there in the late 1990s. In addition, government auditors concluded last year that the State Department’s $1.2 billion contract with DynCorp for police training in Iraq was so badly managed that they could not determine exactly what was done for the money.

In addition to the run-of-the-mill payments for phantom services, DynCorp manages to throw in the added sex trafficking to up the ante.

A large part of cost overruns revolve around the cost-plus nature of these contracts, which stipulate "all...costs are reimbursed by the Army, as long as the compan[ies] can convince the government that they are reasonable." Invariably, "reasonable" wins, even if there's no product, as has recently been shown.

Tack-on fees are also sure to boost the costs of the contract, despite the promises. While KBR received fees up to 3 percent on top of the contract price under the previous arrangement, the new contract includes fees of up to 10 percent for the three companies. Bloated fees, cost-plus pricing, and two additional work forces are sure to add to money management issues. Issues that will receive even less scrutiny now that the task has been delivered to a British subsidiary.

Though admirable that the Army has finally broken a no-bid monopoly after 5 years, it has managed in the process to ensure, rather than prevent, further corruption and overspending. War is expensive, but paying for phantom services and placing the pricing in the hands of those doing the work is not a necessary part of the spending. To proactively structure a contract so as to all-but-guarantee that those problems will worsen instead of improving on an already-broken system is disturbing, no less so simply because it is par for the course.

Sphere: Related Content

Pay First, Ask Questions Later

The US military's reliance on private contractors to perform most functions of the Iraq occupation, including combat, is well-documented, as is the favored status of KBR, a company with ties to Dick Cheney. The program is far from a success, with embarassing revelations ranging from the inane to the outrageous. Despite the obvious violations of logic and competency, the Bush administration had tried to slip wording into legislation that would have granted immunity to contractors committing fraud in the performance of overseas contracts.

Now, a recently-concluded Pentagon audit of roughly $8 billion spent on contractors in Iraq found that "none of the payments followed federal rules and...in some cases, contracts worth millions of dollars were paid for despite little or no record of what, if anything, was received."

In one case, according to documents displayed by Pentagon auditors at the hearing before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, a cash payment of $320.8 million in Iraqi money was authorized on the basis of a single signature and the words “Iraqi Salary Payment” on an invoice. In another, $11.1 million of taxpayer money was paid to IAP, an American contractor, on the basis of a voucher with no indication of what was delivered.

It was hard to comprehend paying a 22-year-old for Cold War-era, degraded ammunition to supply the Afghans. It is much harder to comprehend that money is being given to anyone with a hastily-written IOU in their hands and asking nothing more.

The Pentagon report covered the money of the US tax payers, but the government proved equally adept and proficient at wasting the Iraqis' money, too.

The disclosure that $1.8 billion in Iraqi assets was mishandled comes on top of an earlier finding by an independent federal oversight agency, the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, that United States occupation authorities early in the conflict could not account for the disbursement of $8.8 billion in Iraqi oil money and seized assets.

That $1.8 billion consisted of seized Iraqi assets and is currently unaccounted for. Doled out in cash, but to where nobody knows.

Sphere: Related Content

KBR Profits From Providing Insurance to Employees

As if allowing American soldiers to be electrocuted, refusing to fix the faulty wiring responsible, and avoiding the payment of payroll taxes by harboring its employees in shell companies weren't enough, now it appears that KBR, everyone's favorite Halliburton spin-off, has been profiting off paying workers' insurance claims at taxpayers' expense.

A poorly run Pentagon program for providing workman's compensation for civilian employees in Iraq and Afghanistan has allowed defense contractors and insurance companies to gouge American taxpayers, a House committee said Thursday.

Insurance companies alone have collected nearly $600 million in excessive profits over the past five years, says a Democratic staff report from the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, but the Defense Department refuses to adjust its approach for managing the program.

Of the $284 million paid by tax payers for KBR employees' claims, just $114 million went to expenses incurred by AIG, the provider, garnering the company about $100 million in pure profit. On top of that, KBR, because of the cost-plus nature of its contract, garnered from $3 to $8 million for its troubles. What exactly were those troubles? Not sure, but paperwork's hard these days.

The report also said "Army auditors also raised concerns about the cost-plus nature of these charges. As the auditors stated, 'because the LOGCAP contract is primarily a cost-reimbursable contract, the cost of this insurance is ultimately passed on to the government. Of course, by government, they mean tax payers.

At any rate, I'm sure that both KBR and AIG are doing everything they can to keep cost overruns down:

The Army Audit Agency concluded that AIG's rates appear "unreasonably high" and "excessive," warning of an "increased risk that the Army could be overcharged." The audit report found that there is "a high risk that the contractor may have been paying more than necessary for this insurance" and that "[s]ignificant annual increases insurance companies made to DBA insurance rates don't appear to be consistent with the risk.

Then again, since neither stand to lose anything regardless of cost, maybe not.

The fleecing continues. Surely the excessive cost of employing KBR--along with the clear and present danger posed to American soldiers by short-prone, haphazard electrical work installed by cheap foreign labor--should be part of the discussion next time the "high cost of freedom" gets slapped on a bumper-sticker and bandied about the Capitol.

Sphere: Related Content

Supporting the Troops Through No-Bid Contracts

Previously, I've discussed the government's commitment to supporting the troops by failing to test their body armor and equipment. Now comes more indication that, not only was the wiring in some US facilities in Iraq and Afghanistan an electrocution risk, but the government was informed of the risk and did nothing.

James Risen writes that as early as 2004, the Army warned its commanders that soldiers were at risk of electric shock due to faulty wiring installed by everyone's favorite Halliburton spin-off, KBR, which, of course, was granted no-bid contracts to do the work. Of equal clarity is that its being a subsidiary of Dick Cheney's old company is pure coincidence and the contract was awarded on merit alone. Without competition.

"We've had several shocks in showers and near misses here in Baghdad, as well as in other parts of the country," Frank Trent, an expert with the Army Corps of Engineers, wrote in the bulletin [entitled "The Unexpected Killer," {and} issued after the deaths of two soldiers.] "As we install temporary and permanent power on our projects, we must ensure that we require contractors to properly ground electrical systems."

Since that warning, at least two American soldiers have been electrocuted in similar incidents. In all, at least a dozen American military personnel have been electrocuted in Iraq, according to the Pentagon and congressional investigators.

KBR has had no shortage of warnings regarding its death traps:

American electricians who worked for KBR, the Houston-based defense contractor that is responsible for maintaining American bases in Iraq and Afghanistan, said they repeatedly warned company managers and military officials about unsafe electrical work, which often was performed by poorly trained Iraqis and Afghans paid just a few dollars a day.

One electrician warned his KBR bosses in his 2005 letter of resignation that unsafe electrical work was "a disaster waiting to happen."

Another said he witnessed an American soldier in Afghanistan receiving a potentially lethal shock. A third provided e-mail messages and other documents showing he had complained to KBR and the government that logs were created to make it appear that nonexistent electrical safety systems were properly functioning.

KBR's commitment to under-paying its laborers and accepting shoddy work as a trade-off is nothing new, having avoided nearly $500 million dollars in payroll taxes by hiring its employees through shell companies. But who needs shell companies when there's ample cheap labor and no regulations in Iraq and Afghanistan?

And lest we think that the warnings were just the work of a few disgruntled ex-employees:

KBR itself told the Pentagon in early 2007 about unsafe electrical wiring at a base near the Baghdad airport, but no repairs were made. Less than a year later, a soldier was electrocuted in a shower there.

So, if you're keeping up with the timeline, KBR and army commanders were aware of a problem by late 2004 (at least), it took until early 2007 for them to admit it, and having done nothing to rectify the problem allow another soldier to die.

Aside from the fraudulent, no-bid contracts granted to a company connected to the Vice President, contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan are only minimally accountable to the US government. Or any government, for that matter. Essentially, they answer to no one, as proven by Blackwater's seeming immunity, even in the face of massacring innocent, unarmed civilians.

As in the case of sending untested body armor to combat troops, allowing work that is known to be faulty and dangerous to go un-rectified does not mesh with the mantra of 'supporting the troops.' Rhetorical flourish aside, when it comes time to perform a duty to protect American soldiers from harm, and you fail, you no longer can hide behind the flag. KBR was warned, did nothing, and soldiers continued to die. KBR executives can slap a yellow ribbon on--or a flag pin--but it won't wash American blood off their hands.

Sphere: Related Content

Contraction Retraction

Back in March, I wrote about a loophole in an anti-fraud bill that would have excluded contracts enacted overseas (where our nation-building goes on) from having that law applied to them.

On April 3, Rep. Peter Welch (D-VT) introduced legislation to close the loophole and the administration has since closed it on their own.

Although, they could have kept the reasoning to themselves:

A Bush administration official on Monday called the loophole "a drafting error" that happened when policy writers merely cut and pasted a 20-year-old Defense Department regulation into the contracting crackdown. As required under government guidelines, the updated draft calls for public comment about the new effort to close the loophole.

That's how you write a term paper, not a legal document. But, either way, a positive development and they deserve sarcastic golf claps all around.

Sphere: Related Content

While You Were Out, April 15

Drug Makers Near Old Goal: A Legal Shield

In keeping with the theme of 'if we say it's okay, it is,' the Bush administration is pushing for a policy known as 'pre-emption' which would declare that pharmaceutical companies could not be sued over drugs that had been approved by the FDA.

The Bush administration has argued strongly in favor of the doctrine, which holds that the F.D.A. is the only agency with enough expertise to regulate drug makers and that its decisions should not be second-guessed by courts. The Supreme Court is to rule on a case next term that could make pre-emption a legal standard for drug cases. The court already ruled in February that many suits against the makers of medical devices like pacemakers are pre-empted.

This theory, or course, works off the assumption that if the FDA has investigated a drug and approved it and its label, the courts are in no position to rule in opposition to the medical experts of the federal agency. But that relies on the FDA being provided with all of the facts and studies of the pill, something that drug companies are demonstrably opposed to complying with.

Consider Ortho Evra, the birth control patch made by Johnson & Johnson, around which this article is centered:

Documents and e-mail messages from Johnson & Johnson, made public as part of the lawsuits against the company, show that even before the drug agency approved the product in 2001, the company’s own researchers found that the patch delivered far more estrogen each day than low-dose pills. When it reported the results publicly, the company reduced the numbers by 40 percent.

Allowing for the FDA to be the final voice on all things pharmaceutical is based on the presumption that there is no pertinent information withheld. Clearly that isn't the case. Johnson & Johnson is not the first drug maker to be outed as having held back information, and they won't be the last. The makers of OxyContin actually marketed their drug (an opiate) as non-addictive, a laughable proposition for a drug of its sort, but approved as such by the FDA nonetheless.

If we expect the FDA to act as the only oversight arm of the entire drug business, we have to be assured that its acting well-informed and as an operative of the public. That isn't happening, and if lawsuits are a vehicle toward achieving an end better suited to the needs and expectations of American citizens then pre-emption is a disastrous precedent to set.

But pharmaceuticals aren't the only area where the protective arm of pre-emption is being extended, as this AP story details.

If you think the prescription drug you took for headaches caused your heart attack, the Food and Drug Administration says you can't sue the maker for injury if it met agency standards.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission says you can't sue a mattress maker if your mattress bursts into flame despite meeting commission standards. Companies making sport utility vehicles would get similar protection from suits brought by people injured or the families of those killed in rollovers under National Highway Traffic Safety Administration proposals for stronger roofs.

Plaintiffs' attorneys call it "silent tort reform."

Tort reform has been a platform for the Republican Party in recent years, and certainly supported by Bush. But for all its clamoring about judicial activism and laws made by fiat instead of legislation, the Party seems to be quietly utilizing that very same method to achieve its own ends. Obviously, its not activist judges they're worried about, its judges who aren't activist in their direction.

Surely frivolous lawsuits abound in the United States, but eliminating them altogether removes just one more bullet in the arsenal of consumer protection in the midst of a continual volley by the Bush administration.


Supplier Under Scrutiny on Arms for Afghans

Sure, fighting terrorism costs a lot of money, but what's the price of freedom, smart guy?

If you're a 22-year old arms dealer with a massuer for VP, about $300 million.

But to arm the Afghan forces that it hopes will lead this fight, the American military has relied since early last year on a fledgling company led by a 22-year-old man whose vice president was a licensed masseur.

With the award last January of a federal contract worth as much as nearly $300 million, the company, AEY Inc., which operates out of an unmarked office in Miami Beach, became the main supplier of munitions to Afghanistan’s army and police forces.

Since then, the company has provided ammunition that is more than 40 years old and in decomposing packaging [sic]. Much of the ammunition comes from the aging stockpiles of the old Communist bloc, including stockpiles that the State Department and NATO have determined to be unreliable and obsolete, and have spent millions of dollars to have destroyed.

The ends of eliminating terrorism (however much a fantasy that may be) has always been held to justify the means of its incredible expense in the eyes of those that would have the United States police the world. Whether or not that is the case, shouldn't that expenditure come attached to a bit of research?

If it's not granting no-bid contracts to former employers of the Vice President, the Defense Department is shelling out money to a man just old enough to have finished college for worn-out arms made in China between 1962 and 1974.

The Soviet Union, which designed the ammunition that AEY bought, developed similar tests, which are still in use. But when the Army wrote its Afghan contract, it did not enforce either NATO or Russian standards. It told bidders only that the munitions must be “serviceable and issuable to all units without qualification.”

What this meant was not defined. An official at the Army Sustainment Command said that because the ammunition was for foreign weapons, and considered “nonstandard,” it only had to fit in weapons it was intended for.

“There is no specific testing request, and there is no age limit,” said Michael Hutchison, the command’s deputy director for acquisition.

In purchasing munitions, the contractor has also worked with middlemen and a shell company on a federal list of entities suspected of illegal arms trafficking.

Bang-up job, fellas. Another case that screams out for the elimination of anyone watching how the government conducts its business.


Judge dismisses challenge to lobbying disclosure law

The National Association of Manufacturers suffered a major blow Friday in its legal battle against the new ethics and lobbying law.

Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly of the U.S. District Court dismissed the group’s challenge to a key provision of the law. The group took issue with the clause that would require disclosure of the member companies of “stealth lobbying” coalitions.

Part of the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act, the measure would require public disclosure of members of such coalitions who gave at least $5,000 every quarter to the group and participated actively in lobbying campaigns.

On what grounds would lobbyists oppose transparency of this sort? Why, free speech protection, of course.

The NAM argued the provision was constitutionally vague, hindering protections for free association and speech, and could lead to harassment of its member companies.

Yet again we are faced with an argument centered on free speech centered not on the ability to express yourself, but rather on the ability of others to respond to that expression. The First Amendment doesn't say anything about no one being able to react to free speech, but that's essentially the position the NAM has taken here.

In regards to free association, the new law--effective April 21--again says nothing about lobbyists not being able to associate or give money. It just says people have the right to know to whom and by whom.

That there is opposition to that premise illustrates the need for it by virtue of its very existence.

Sphere: Related Content

While You Were Out, March 22

A recurring section dealing with the news that happens while the media occupies itself with the horse race.

Meeting Quotas

Street vendor Israel Rodriguez went fishing last month and never came back. Two days later, his family found his body buried in a plastic bag, classified by the Colombian army as a guerrilla fighter killed in battle.

Human rights activists say the Feb. 17 death is part of a deadly phenomenon called "false positives" in which the armed forces allegedly kill civilians, usually peasants or unemployed youths, and brand them as leftist guerrillas.

A macabre facet of a general increase in "extrajudicial killings" by the military, "false positives" are a result of intense pressure to show progress in Colombia's U.S.-funded war against leftist insurgents, the activists say.

Colombia and its President, Alvaro Uribe, are supported by billions of dollars in United States military aid in its ongoing battle with leftist guerrilla group, FARC. And it is in an effort to maintain that support the Uribe government seems to be meeting (intangible) quotas through rather dubious means.

Activists in the US claim that the US is not "doing enough, as required by law, to bar US funding to Colombian military units that have drawn allegations of the killings and other human rights violations."

Sabotaging Anti-Fraud Legislation:

Last May, facing growing cases of fraud and increasing spending overseas, the Justice Department introduced plans to force companies to notify the government about evidence of contract abuse worth $5 million or more. Currently, contractors report evidence of abuse on a voluntary basis, and the number of company-reported fraud cases has declined steadily over the past 15 years.

By November, after it left the Justice Department and was published in the Federal Register, the proposed rule specifically exempted "contracts to be performed outside the United States."

The Justice Department and the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction have asked the exemption be eliminated before the rule becomes law. Additionally, Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, has threatened to block the loophole in the federal budget if the administration does not do away with it.

OMB's Office of Federal Procurement Policy has repeatedly declined to comment on the loophole or how it was added to the overall fraud crackdown.

That's right, the administration managed to slip a statute exempting overseas contracting firms from reporting fraud into a bill that was specifically designed to do just the opposite. Ballsy. Do we need any more evidence that the United States as a country isn't the primary concern for this administration? If so, more will probably follow shortly.

Sphere: Related Content

Contracting Obama

For years, Blackwater USA, a private security company based in North Carolina, has been the target of wide-ranging criticism and a source of contention surrounding the flailing US effort to stabilize Iraq. The September 2007 killing of 17 civilians in al Nisour square in Baghdad is but one of the more recent and well-publicized incidents, but there have been plenty of others. These include standoffs with Iraqi police and shootings of Interior Ministry employees.

Yet, for all of their stirring things up, Blackwater remains completely unimpeded by any law or the slightest regulation. In fact there are no official statistics on the number of contractors currently in Iraq, what companies are there, or even what the use of the contractors is costing the government. Deaths of these contractors are not included in the official war casualty statistics, either.

While members of the US military are bound by US law (as well as International law depending on the administration at the time), private contractors like Blackwater, DynCorp, and Triple Canopy are not. Amidst the furor surrounding Nisour, when the Iraqi government threatened to ban Blackwater permanently, the State Department even saw fit to grant immunity to guards involved in the shootings, though its authority to do so was dubious at best.

WASHINGTON, Oct. 29 — State Department investigators offered Blackwater USA security guards immunity during an inquiry into last month’s deadly shooting of 17 Iraqis in Baghdad — a potentially serious investigative misstep that could complicate efforts to prosecute the company’s employees involved in the episode, government officials said Monday.

The State Department investigators from the agency’s investigative arm, the Bureau of Diplomatic Security, offered the immunity grants even though they did not have the authority to do so, the officials said. Prosecutors at the Justice Department, who do have such authority, had no advance knowledge of the arrangement, they added.

-The New York Times

Enter Barack Obama. Fanfare, celestial choirs and all. For all of his emphasis on his opposition to the war and promise of a quick withdrawal, there has been very little discussion in the primaries about the specifics of one of the most prominent planks in his platform. (Scrutiny of policy has been lacking in general, really.) That is, until Jeremy Scahill released this article and subsequently discussed it on DemocracyNow! last week.

Obama, it seems, will more than likely keep a contingent force of private contractors in Iraq to protect US diplomats and the new embassy, which is expected to sustain upwards of 1500 personnel and be the largest embassy in history. As Scahill indicates, Obama's promise to quickly bring US military personnel home from Iraq or transfer them to Afghanistan does not eradicate the need to protect the diplomats and other personnel left behind in the Green Zone, and the void will almost certainly be filled with Blackwater and other private contractors employed by the State Department.

(Note: In Scahill's analysis, Clinton would have a similar policy, but she has since come out and said she would ban the use of contractors, most likely in reaction to the article in question. Also, Obama has staked out a foreign policy position he proposes is a large diversion from Clinton's, making his use of contractors more of a focal point.)

From Scahill's conversation with Amy Goodman, as he discusses Clinton's and Obama's policies:

And both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have a three-pronged approach to what they see as a longer-term presence in Iraq. They say that US personnel are going to remain in the country to protect diplomats and other US officials in the country...Number two is that they want to keep trainers in place that will train the Iraqi military. At present, there’s 10,000 to 20,000 US trainers, all of whom will require security, so that’s a substantial force. And then the third is that they’re saying that they want to keep a force in place to, quote, “strike at al-Qaeda,” in the words of Barack Obama’s Iraq plan.

When the Institute for Policy Studies did an analysis of what this would mean, they said it’s 20,000 to 60,000 troops, not including contractors. And right now we have a one-to-one ratio with contractors and troops in the country. 20,000 to 60,000 troops indefinitely in Iraq, this is something that over the course of ten years the Congressional Budget Office says could cost half-a-trillion dollars. This doesn’t include the fact that you have to have troops bringing supplies in and out of Iraq. It doesn’t include the troops that Obama and Clinton are going to keep in Kuwait, Qatar, Jordan and elsewhere. I mean, this is actually a pretty sustained indefinite occupation that’s going to be on the table if either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama are in office and take power.

Is Barack, then, taking a private stance which differs from his public canon? While it seems that way on the surface, there is an important facet to the situation which Scahill explored. One senior advisor told him that while he "can't rule out, [sic] won't rule out, private security contractors," he "will rule out private security contractors that are not accountable to US law." Accountability is the crux, then.

On this point, Obama far exceeds Hillary. In February 2007, Obama introduced legislation that would hold private security contractors accountable under US law as Defense Department contractors are. That legislation has yet to pass, and most likely never will, as it is vehemently opposed by President Bush. In September 2007, he attached much of the same to a Defense Department Authorization bill accepted by the Senate that called for a reporting of statistics regarding contractors within a period of 90 days.

In all likelihood, this legislation will not be in effect in January of 2009, leaving Obama in a situation where he may have to eat his words on this issue. Given the choice between no contractors in Iraq or unaccountable contractors in Iraq, it seems that given the logistics spelled out by Scahill, he would have to choose the latter. In doing so, he would swiftly create a perception of violating one of his major campaign promises and likely fuel critics of his foreign policy inexperience. Although, one must figure that given the lack of attention paid to this topic thus far he may escape any flare up as most people will be concerned only with bringing the American military home.

It should be noted that after Scahill's article was published in The Nation, Clinton came out in favor of a ban on the use of private contractors overseas. This baldly-transparent parry is not nearly enough to gloss over the fact that while Obama has fought for accountability-however unsuccessfully-for over a year, Hillary has waited until a few days before what may be the deciding round of primaries before offering us a bit of rhetorical legislation. That disparity cannot be ignored.

Sphere: Related Content