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nick cobb · Guest

Published on Tuesday, August 12, 2008 by The New York Times
Use of Iraq Contractors Costs Billions, Report Says
by James Risen

WASHINGTON - The United States this year will have spent $100 billion
on contractors in Iraq since the invasion in 2003, a milestone that
reflects the Bush administration’s unprecedented level of dependence
on private firms for help in the war, according to a government report
to be released Tuesday.

The report, by the Congressional Budget Office, according to people
with knowledge of its contents, will say that one out of every five
dollars spent on the war in Iraq has gone to contractors for the
United States military and other government agencies, in a war zone
where employees of private contractors now outnumber American troops.

The Pentagon’s reliance on outside contractors in Iraq is
proportionately far larger than in any previous conflict, and it has
fueled charges that this outsourcing has led to overbilling, fraud and
shoddy and unsafe work that has endangered and even killed American
troops. The role of armed security contractors has also raised new
legal and political questions about whether the United States has
become too dependent on private armed forces on the 21st-century
battlefield.

The budget office’s report found that from 2003 to 2007, the
government awarded contracts in Iraq worth about $85 billion, and that
the administration was now awarding contracts at a rate of $15 billion
to $20 billion a year. At that pace, contracting costs will surge past
the $100 billion mark before the end of the year. Through 2007,
spending on outside contractors accounted for 20 percent of the total
costs of the war, the budget office found, according to the people
with knowledge of the report.

Several outside experts on contracting said the report’s numbers
seemed to provide the first official price tag on contracting in Iraq
and raised troubling questions about the degree to which the war had
been privatized.

Contractors in Iraq now employ at least 180,000 people in the country,
forming what amounts to a second, private, army, larger than the
United States military force, and one whose roles and missions and
even casualties among its work force have largely been hidden from
public view. The widespread use of these employees as bodyguards,
translators, drivers, construction workers and cooks and bottle
washers has allowed the administration to hold down the number of
military personnel sent to Iraq, helping to avoid a draft.

In addition, the dependence on private companies to support the war
effort has led to questions about whether political favoritism has
played a role in the awarding of multibillion-dollar contracts. When
the war began, for example, Kellogg, Brown & Root, a subsidiary of
Halliburton, the company run by Dick Cheney before he was vice
president, became the largest Pentagon contractor in Iraq. After years
of criticism and scrutiny for its role in Iraq, Halliburton sold the
unit, which is still the largest defense contractor in the war, and
has 40,000 employees in Iraq.

“This is the first war that the United States has fought where so many
of the people and resources involved aren’t of the military, but from
contractors,” said Charles Tiefer, a professor of government
contracting at the University of Baltimore Law School and a member of
an independent commission created by Congress to study contracting in
Iraq and Afghanistan.

“This is unprecedented,” he added. “It was considered an all-out
imperative by the administration to keep troop levels low,
particularly in the beginning of the war, and one way that was done
was to shift money and manpower to contractors. But that has exposed
the military to greater risks from contractor waste and abuse.”

Dina L. Rasor, an author and independent expert on contracting fraud,
said she believed that the $100 billion cost estimate from the
Congressional Budget Office might be low, since there were virtually
no reliable audits of or controls on spending during the first years
of the war. “It is a shocking number, but I still don’t think it is
the full cost,” Ms. Rasor said. “I don’t think there have been any
credible cost numbers for the Iraq war. There was so much money spent
at the beginning of the war, and nobody knows where it went.”

Peter W. Singer, a defense contracting expert at the Brookings
Institution, said the biggest problem was that the administration
contracted out so much work in Iraq, almost no thought had been given
to an overall strategy to determine which jobs and functions should be
handled by the government, and which could be turned over to private
companies without damaging the military effort.

“These new numbers point to the overall question - when do you cross
the line in terms of turning over too much of the public mission of
defense to private firms,” Mr. Singer said. “There are some things
that are appropriate for private companies to do, but others things
that are not. But we don’t seem to have had a strategy for determining
which was appropriate and which wasn’t. We have just handed over
functions to contractors in a very haphazard way.”

Senator Byron L. Dorgan, a North Dakota Democrat, said recently that
the Pentagon’s outsourcing in Iraq had grown so large and raised so
many unanswered policy questions that he had been pushing for the
Senate to create a special war-contracting committee, like the panel
that Harry S. Truman led in the Senate before he was tapped to be
Roosevelt’s running mate in 1944.

“The Truman Committee held 60 hearings on waste, fraud and abuse,” Mr.
Dorgan said. “It’s unfathomable to me that we don’t have a bipartisan
investigative committee on contracting in Iraq.”

AGGreen · Guest

***Of course. Reconstruction costs, big time. You expected freebies? LOL!

"nick cobb" <nickkcobb@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:398ec944-471b-4e65-914a-eb6935bbd0ea@34g2000hsh.googlegroups.com...
Published on Tuesday, August 12, 2008 by The New York Times
Use of Iraq Contractors Costs Billions, Report Says
by James Risen

WASHINGTON - The United States this year will have spent $100 billion
on contractors in Iraq since the invasion in 2003, a milestone that
reflects the Bush administration’s unprecedented level of dependence
on private firms for help in the war, according to a government report
to be released Tuesday.

The report, by the Congressional Budget Office, according to people
with knowledge of its contents, will say that one out of every five
dollars spent on the war in Iraq has gone to contractors for the
United States military and other government agencies, in a war zone
where employees of private contractors now outnumber American troops.

The Pentagon’s reliance on outside contractors in Iraq is
proportionately far larger than in any previous conflict, and it has
fueled charges that this outsourcing has led to overbilling, fraud and
shoddy and unsafe work that has endangered and even killed American
troops. The role of armed security contractors has also raised new
legal and political questions about whether the United States has
become too dependent on private armed forces on the 21st-century
battlefield.

The budget office’s report found that from 2003 to 2007, the
government awarded contracts in Iraq worth about $85 billion, and that
the administration was now awarding contracts at a rate of $15 billion
to $20 billion a year. At that pace, contracting costs will surge past
the $100 billion mark before the end of the year. Through 2007,
spending on outside contractors accounted for 20 percent of the total
costs of the war, the budget office found, according to the people
with knowledge of the report.

Several outside experts on contracting said the report’s numbers
seemed to provide the first official price tag on contracting in Iraq
and raised troubling questions about the degree to which the war had
been privatized.

Contractors in Iraq now employ at least 180,000 people in the country,
forming what amounts to a second, private, army, larger than the
United States military force, and one whose roles and missions and
even casualties among its work force have largely been hidden from
public view. The widespread use of these employees as bodyguards,
translators, drivers, construction workers and cooks and bottle
washers has allowed the administration to hold down the number of
military personnel sent to Iraq, helping to avoid a draft.

In addition, the dependence on private companies to support the war
effort has led to questions about whether political favoritism has
played a role in the awarding of multibillion-dollar contracts. When
the war began, for example, Kellogg, Brown & Root, a subsidiary of
Halliburton, the company run by Dick Cheney before he was vice
president, became the largest Pentagon contractor in Iraq. After years
of criticism and scrutiny for its role in Iraq, Halliburton sold the
unit, which is still the largest defense contractor in the war, and
has 40,000 employees in Iraq.

“This is the first war that the United States has fought where so many
of the people and resources involved aren’t of the military, but from
contractors,” said Charles Tiefer, a professor of government
contracting at the University of Baltimore Law School and a member of
an independent commission created by Congress to study contracting in
Iraq and Afghanistan.

“This is unprecedented,” he added. “It was considered an all-out
imperative by the administration to keep troop levels low,
particularly in the beginning of the war, and one way that was done
was to shift money and manpower to contractors. But that has exposed
the military to greater risks from contractor waste and abuse.”

Dina L. Rasor, an author and independent expert on contracting fraud,
said she believed that the $100 billion cost estimate from the
Congressional Budget Office might be low, since there were virtually
no reliable audits of or controls on spending during the first years
of the war. “It is a shocking number, but I still don’t think it is
the full cost,” Ms. Rasor said. “I don’t think there have been any
credible cost numbers for the Iraq war. There was so much money spent
at the beginning of the war, and nobody knows where it went.”

Peter W. Singer, a defense contracting expert at the Brookings
Institution, said the biggest problem was that the administration
contracted out so much work in Iraq, almost no thought had been given
to an overall strategy to determine which jobs and functions should be
handled by the government, and which could be turned over to private
companies without damaging the military effort.

“These new numbers point to the overall question - when do you cross
the line in terms of turning over too much of the public mission of
defense to private firms,” Mr. Singer said. “There are some things
that are appropriate for private companies to do, but others things
that are not. But we don’t seem to have had a strategy for determining
which was appropriate and which wasn’t. We have just handed over
functions to contractors in a very haphazard way.”

Senator Byron L. Dorgan, a North Dakota Democrat, said recently that
the Pentagon’s outsourcing in Iraq had grown so large and raised so
many unanswered policy questions that he had been pushing for the
Senate to create a special war-contracting committee, like the panel
that Harry S. Truman led in the Senate before he was tapped to be
Roosevelt’s running mate in 1944.

“The Truman Committee held 60 hearings on waste, fraud and abuse,” Mr.
Dorgan said. “It’s unfathomable to me that we don’t have a bipartisan
investigative committee on contracting in Iraq.”

nick cobb · Guest

Idiot - most of these contractors are the political cronies of the
Republicans. The American taxpayer is paying for George Bush's buddies
to get rich with shoddy, inflated contracts. The Iraqi gov. should be
re-building their own country with their $80 Billion surplus from oil
sales!

On Aug 12, 10:24 pm, "AGGreen" <A...@nospam.edu> wrote:
> ***Of course. Reconstruction costs, big time. You expected freebies? LOL!

++ · Guest

nick cobb wrote:

nick cobb · Guest

You love living in your world of delusion. The only stupid remarks
here are yours. You don't read what's written, but insist you're
correct. Delusion is a form of mental illness!

On Aug 13, 12:01 pm, "AGGreen" <A...@nospam.edu> wrote:

AGGreen · Guest

***Bullpoop! Most have been supported by Democratic PACs. LOL!

***Please, keep making stupid remarks! We love to see you embarrass
yourself!! LOL!

Al

"nick cobb" <nickkcobb@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:143d71b6-07ff-467b-afe4-ebe4bb5d528a@25g2000hsx.googlegroups.com...

AGGreen · Guest

***Jewish idiot!

"nick cobb" <nickkcobb@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:e030ba52-e9c0-4f79-bb30-64339bc4edf6@x41g2000hsb.googlegroups.com...

nick cobb · Guest

Don't be so hard on yourself - we'll do that for you!

On Aug 13, 10:03 pm, "AGGreen" <AGG@not the imposter.edu> wrote:

nick cobb · Guest

You seem to be the expert here on guys being hard. Pick up any young
boys lately?

On Aug 14, 9:19 am, "AGGreen" <AGG@not the imposter.edu> wrote:

AGGreen · Guest

***You know all about being "hard" on other guys!! LOL!

"nick cobb" <nickkcobb@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:5964de69-37ec-4959-97b6-e3cf2f9d01ff@a70g2000hsh.googlegroups.com...

nick cobb · Guest

Not me; it's you who has the name Al "Bend-Over" Green.

On Aug 14, 2:54 pm, "AGGreen" <AGG@not the imposter.edu> wrote:

AGGreen · Guest

***Bend over for any of your seminarian buddies lately? LOL! Time for you to
feed the gerbils!!

"nick cobb" <nickkcobb@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:ce4899f9-cbff-439e-856b-3be577c7fca4@c58g2000hsc.googlegroups.com...

AGGreen · Guest

***Nice try. Prove it! (On the other hand...I have this email from a certain
bishop about your seminal seminary activities...)

"nick cobb" <nickkcobb@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:f7ac80e9-9238-45a8-9419-306631bea9fe@79g2000hsk.googlegroups.com...

nick cobb · Guest

Well, you are a first class liar, slanderer and libelist as everyone
here knows. Fr. Steven Belonick, Dean of Students at SVS, can be
contacted by anyone here regarding your lies. And since he was once
your parish priest, they can also ask about your mental illness.
Bishop Peter's secretary still insists you were DEFROCKED due to your
nefarious acts toward young boys. Keep on lying and trying to hide,
reprobate.

On Aug 14, 10:27 pm, "AGGreen" <AGG@not the imposter.edu> wrote:

AGGreen · Guest

***You can do better than this tripe. In fact, I'm copying this to Fr.
Steven. We'll see who's lying.

***What's the secretary's name and contact info so some of the folks on the
list can contact him/her? I'll bet you won't supply it!

"nick cobb" <nickkcobb@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:6fd8b116-8dcd-415e-9472-d96b6d86942e@y21g2000hsf.googlegroups.com...


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