Welcome To Iraq, The Contractors’ Paradise

In a report out Wednesday, the Wartime Contracting Commission will show how tens of billions of dollars have spent in Iraq since 2001, most of it because of poor management, weak oversight, and failure to learn from past mistakes.  A $30 million dining facility at a US base will be completed December 25. Merry Christmas! It was to far along to stop, and is described as a monument to bad planning and botched paperwork.

There is no central database of what contractors are doing and how much they’re getting paid.  And lack of oversight extends to Afghanistan, unless systems are changed quickly.

KBR Inc., the primary LOGCAP contractor in Iraq, has been paid nearly $32 billion since 2001. The commission says billions of dollars of that amount ended up wasted due to poorly defined work orders, inadequate oversight and contractor inefficiencies.

In one example, defense auditors challenged KBR after it billed the government for $100 million in costs for private security even though the contract prohibited the use of for-hire guards.

KBR has defended its performance and criticized the commission for making “biased” statements against the company.

The new dining hall is being completed even though the existing one just got a $3.36 million upgrade.  There was no review of the new project after the security agreement was signed.  But then again, what kind of review was done before the Iraq war was started in the first place?

By: Alan

Alan Colmes is the publisher of Liberaland.