by David Phinney
Thursday March 28th 2024

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Private Soldiers Fuel Fijian Economy

by David Phinney Oct. 30, 2007 -- Here's the lead: "On the post-Sept. 11 battlefield, Fiji is marketing for hire its 3,500 active soldiers, 15,000 reservists and more than 20,000 unemployed former troops." According to Bloomberg's A. Craig Copetas, "Fiji is a martial culture with no problem in fashioning a gross domestic product that [...]

Embassy Contracts under Review

by David Phinney Oct. 26, 2007 -- Contracts won by Baghdad embassy builder First Kuwaiti General Trading and Contracting are "under review," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice revealed during a congressional hearing Thursday. Rice was answering questions from Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., about why the State Department awarded the Baghdad contract [...]

Just Business: Buying a US Embassy Contractor

Just Business: Buying a US Embassy Contractor

by David Phinney Oct. 25, 2007 -- An Update: Apparently, the sale of the Baghdad embassy contractor's US partner is a done deal -- or nearly a done deal. (Sorry about the earlier typos... I was typing in the dark in an SUV in the back country.) According to documents: Robert Farah, Paul Jureidini and Robert K. Kelley are the key players to [...]

Baghdad Embassy Contractor Wins More US Contracts

by David Phinney Oct. 24, 2007 -- Despite allegations of poor construction, lousy and abusive labor practices and missed deadlines for completion, the Kuwaiti contractor building the new $592-million-and-counting US Embassy in Baghdad has been quietly bagging new lucrative contracts to build US diplomatic compounds around the world. In [...]

Privatized War is Here to Stay

by David Phinney Oct. 24, 2007 -- Taking the stance that the U.S. is fighting a war in Iraq with more private contractors than military personnel with a ratio estimated at around 180,000 contractors to 160,000 uniformed personnel, Reuters columnist Bernd Debusmann dishes up his realistic analysis: Even if there were political will to stop using [...]

Iraq Revokes Security Contractor Immunity

by David Phinney Oct. 24, 2007 -- The Iraqi government has decided to revoke immunity from prosecution that the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority extended to private security companies operating in the war-ravaged country, according to journalist Ammar Karim. "The cabinet held a meeting yesterday and decided to scrap the article pertaining [...]

What Happened to Sabah and Nashat?

What Happened to Sabah and Nashat?

by David Phinney April 9, 2007 -- Iraqi officials jailed two young men in the summer of 2005 for allegedly pocketing the wages of hundreds -- if not thousands -- of Iraqis working for the Sandi Group, a Washington, DC, firm doing a multi-million-dollar business in Iraq as the leading subcontractor to DynCorp's $1.2-billion Iraqi police [...]

State Department Inspector General Under Fire

State Department Inspector General Under Fire

by David Phinney Oct. 23, 2007 -- (Sorry about the previous typos, guys. I am in the market for a new blog program.) The $592-million Baghdad embassy contract, the $1.2-billion police training program in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the security contract for Blackwater are all under intense scrutiny -- and so is the State Department Inspector [...]

Iraq’s Police Training Program Records in Disarray

Iraq’s Police Training Program Records in Disarray

by David Phinney Oct. 23, 2007 -- The State Department so terribly managed a $1.2 billion contract for Iraqi police training that it can't figure out what it got for the money spent, a new report says (pdf). Total Disarray: in invoices and records on the project -- and because the government is trying to recoup money paid inappropriately to [...]

Read It: ‘Suicide Is Not Painless’

New York Times columnist Frank Rich delivers a scathing analysis of Pentagon and US government-guided procurement in Iraq begins with the suicide of Charles D. Riechers, 47, the second-highest-ranking procurement officer in the United States Air Force who killed himself by running his car’s engine in his suburban Virginia garage several weeks [...]

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