On Priorities

Updated below @ 1820, 9/29

The American political scene will never be accused of being held captive by perspective. When even something as basic as "which of these numbers is larger?" can't be harnessed by the blathering press and political leaders, one can hardly expect to find the ability for relative comparisons running rampant. Two disparate issues stand out for me as cases-in-point: election fraud vis Iran and Afghanistan, and the Defund ACORN Act.

Everyone knows about the election fraud in Iran. It was on every channel for nearly a month, demonstrating the journalistic acumen of the American media (re: Bringing you the news in 140 characters or less!), and proving once and for all Iranian leaders are the evilest of all evil-doers the world has ever seen. Granted, said leaders are not great ambassadors for democracy (no one would make such a claim), but the elections were in the news for a reason. The same reason the brutal Egyptian and Saudi regimes don't make the news.

Compare that coverage with that of electoral fraud in Afghanistan. It's okay if you haven't heard of it. Not many have. Why would you? The person accused of fraud is our guy. That's enough to keep him under wraps. If electoral shenanigans were mentioned, it was only to point out Taliban violence. CNN did not do wall-to-wall coverage on things like this:

The shaky footage shows two election monitors inspecting a book of 100 ballot papers that are still stitched together, as they were intended to arrive at the polling station in rural Afghanistan. But something is wrong; instead of being pristine, ready for the voter to make his or her mark, each paper bears a large blue tick next to the name of one candidate: Hamid Karzai.

As the monitors flick through the pad, the back of the ballots clearly show the authorisation stamp of election monitors, validating them as votes ready to be put in the ballot box and counted.

"We found it the day after the elections," one of the monitors in the footage told me. "They were trying to put it in one of the [ballot] boxes but didn't have time, so we took it home and filmed it. If we had given it back to the election committee they would have used it again, so we burned it, but filmed it to protect ourselves if they come and threaten us."

Or this:

The Afghan elections, already tainted by widespread accusations of misconduct and fraud, received another body blow Wednesday when the head of the European Union's election-monitoring commission said that as many as 1.1 million votes cast in the vote were "suspect."

The latest dark cloud over the Aug. 20 election came as Afghanistan's election commission released a preliminary vote tally Wednesday showing President Hamid Karzai with 54.6 percent of the votes cast – enough to avoid a runoff if the total stands up to one official recount already launched and to mounting doubts like those from the EU.

The EU's general depiction of fraud was bad enough. But even more damaging to the Western-backed government of President Karzai was the finding by Phillippe Morillon, head of the EU monitor, that more than one-third of the votes Mr. Karzai received in his reelection bid – 1.1 million of about 3 million votes for Karzai – could be fraudulent and must be investigated.

None of this minimizes Taliban violence, but it does clearly indicate that American views on the world are guided more by a commitment to its allies and stock assumptions than democracy, despite public claims. President Obama has parlayed his campaign speeches into an Afghanistan policy still riding the opinion of Afghanistan as the good war. Meanwhile, the world's beacon of democracy has attached itself to the falling star of a loose coalition of corrupt warlords, most of whom are politicians in name alone. Any lingering notion that the Afghan government holds its own people in any due regard would have fallen away if such fraud was reported with the same fervency as it was regarding Iran.

The furor surrounding ACORN is better covered, mainly because it fits the tabloid model of American journalism. ACORN has always been a target of Republicans, but who would have thought the end would come with a topic so dear to their hearts: prostitution. David Vitter is surely proud.

Consider the thought process here. The defunding act would have no chance were it not for two random ACORN staffers doling out some helpful information on how to get in the flesh business. Okay, but consider the implication here. If followed to its logical conclusion, this would mean that any company that had any employee commit a federal offense would soon be off the government roll. Like these companies, for instance.

While we await that action with baited breath, let's consider a few of these offenses which might rise a little higher on the immorality of the scale. Maybe electrocuting US soldiers.

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.

One study called electrocution "the most urgent noncombat safety hazard for soldiers in Iraq." And what bastion of liberalism made such a claim? The US Army. Nearly every facility constructed in Iraq by KBR/Halliburton contained dangerous electrical wiring. But, rest assured, putting American soldiers in mortal danger has not hurt the company's bottom line. Nor has the fact that its employees engaged in the gang rape and imprisonment of a female employee.

Then there's Blackwater. In the past months, Blackwater's compound has been raided by the ATF for illegal weapons trafficking, been accused of tax evasion through offshore havens, employed young Iraqi girls for oral sex, and had employees indicted on manslaughter. Yet, 90 percent of its income continues to come from the government.

So let's not kid ourselves as to the magnitude of these crimes here. If the actions of random employees loses a organization government funding, it's only fair to ask when rampant corruption and misdeeds will have their day in the self-aggrandizing Congressional theater. The bill itself states that the organization must be involved in elections, but surely the Republicans leading the charge don't intend for us to consider funneling millions into campaign coffers fitting the bill. But occasionally we may have to accept English at face value, rather than waiting for the political/media filter to deliver it to us.


Update:

The US has decided that Karzai will remain president regardless of final results.

The White House has ended weeks of hesitation over how to respond to the Afghan election by accepting President Karzai as the winner despite evidence that up to 20 per cent of ballots cast may have been fraudulent.

Abandoning its previous policy of not prejudging investigations of vote rigging, the Obama Administration has conceded that Mr Karzai will be President for another five years on the basis that even if he were forced into a second round of voting he would almost certainly win it.

The decision will increase pressure on President Obama to justify further US troop deployments to Afghanistan to prop up a regime now regarded as systemically corrupt.

[...]

Mrs Clinton told Rangin Dadfar Spanta, the Afghan Foreign Minister, that...Mr Karzai would remain President even if investigations now under way cut his share of the first-round vote to below 50 per cent.

Better get something to wash that democracy down with, Afghanistan. It's a bit bitter.


Related:

Supporting the Troops Through No-Bid Contracts May 6, 2008
When You Were Here Before...Couldn't Look You in the Eye August 9, 2009

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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