The project is too far along to stop, making the mess hall a future monument to the waste and inefficiency plaguing the war effort, according to an independent panel investigating contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan.
In its first report to Congress, the Wartime Contracting Commission presents a bleak assessment of how tens of billions of dollars have been spent since 2001. The 111-page report, obtained by The Associated Press, documents poor management, weak oversight, and a failure to learn from past mistakes as recurring themes in wartime contracting.
Over-reliance on contractors, "no central data base of who all these contractors are, what services they provide, and how much they're paid," and no oversight of these contractors bears a lot of the blame. A White House and Pentagon willing to almost literally throw money at every problem is another. And a congress unwilling to say no to that White House was yet another.
During the Bush administration, there was a pretense that war was some sort of self-running machine, that civilian input in and oversight of military matters during times of conflict was un-American. Bush said he was the Commander in Chief -- as if that were his office -- when it suited him and pretended that the president had no business horning in on the war when it didn't. As a result, the government sent billions to Iraq, without any real idea what was happening to all that money.
And, when we leave Iraq, we'll leave many of these problems behind. In fact, we already are. "At Rustamiyah, a seven-acre forward operating base turned over to the Iraqis in March, the military population plunged from 1,490 to 62 in just three months," reports AP. "During the same period, the contractor population dropped from 928 to 338, leaving more than five contractors for every service member."... [CLICK TO READ FULL POST]
