‘Iraq’ Archives
Bad Mood
'Bill would bar contractors from running Defense programs': Congress is moving to bulk up the Pentagon's in-house acquisition staff and cut back on contractors providing procurement guidance on how to spend taxpayer money. How about a bill that would bar Defense contractors from running the Pentagon? (Is Darleen Druyun out of jail yet?) Megan [...]
Coalition of the Willing: Going, Going, Gone
Last year was the first year the Coalition of the Willing in Iraq found no non-U.S. new troops to replace the ones that went home. That means that U.S. troops now make up 92 percent of the boots on the ground in Iraq, according to the investigative arm of Congress, the Government Accountability Project. In the May 9 report, Stabilizing and [...]
Democrats Adding Up the Numbers
Congress Does the Math: Not only are there 145,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, there are over 100,000 private contractors working U.S. funded contracts. Many of them are doing jobs that the military once did. They may not be Americans, but they are drawing their pay stubs from the U.S. treasury -- making them the largest deployed private military force [...]
Iraq Inspector General under Investigation
Stuart Bowen, the inspector general assigned to auditing the $22 billion in US reconstruction funds for Iraq is under investigation himself. This is nothing new. It involves complaints from former employees at the office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction filed in early 2006. What is New: Details about employees apparently [...]
‘Top Secret’ Material May Have ‘Devastated’ U.S. Iraq Mission
June 16, 2007 -- Massive amounts of "top secret" material stored in the living trailer of the former Camp Cropper prison commander was "extremely sensitive" and could have devastated the U.S. mission in Iraq if it had been leaked, an investigator said Tuesday. The hearing on allegations that Army Lt. Col. William H. Steele aided the enemy by [...]
Smokin’ Saddam: Cuban Cigars?
The latest from Camp Victory Hearing: At Tuesday's hearing to decide if the former military commander at Camp Cropper prison in Iraq must stand trial on charges that he aided the enemy, it was said that Steele bought Cuban cigars for one-time prisoner Saddam Hussein. Misappropriation of Funds? Two witnesses said Army Lt. Col. William H. Steele [...]
Giant Sucking Sound at the Border?
DynCorp is Hiring Again: 120 openings. Compensation includes more than $134,000 in salary, much of it tax-free, plus a $25,000 bonus for signing up in time for a May 5 training session. Working Conditions: Challenging. The border is in Iraq. (more…)
Civilian Contractor Casualties
Latest SIGIR Report: Since Iraq reconstruction began, 916 death claims for civilian contractors working on U.S.-funded projects in Iraq have been filed. In the quarter ending March 31, 2007, the Department of Labor reported 146 new death claims. reports that 16 U.S. civilians died in Iraq this quarter. Since the beginning of the U.S. [...]
War in Iraq Costs: A Half-Trillion-Dollars and Counting
Receipts for the war in Iraq to will soon be ringing up to $564 billion, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service. That's more than ten times the $50 billion that the Bush administration once predicted before the war started in March 2003. "It's worth it," Bush said last May, when the tab was about $320 billion. "I wouldn't have [...]
Willing to Please
There once was a line of thinking that the sign of a good manager is when one knows his or her weaknesses and compensates those weaknesses with the strengths of a well-rounded staff. Good presidents also go out of their way to find the strongest thinkers of opposing views to help probe policies for their weaknesses and figure out where solutions [...]
