Where’s the Armor? Where’s the Money?
As JK noted during his appearance last week with the Iraq war veterans from the group VoteVets,
Nearly four years into this war, many of the men and women of our military are in Iraq without up-armored vehicles, without proper equipment, without sufficient radios or other supplies that they need to protect themselves. That’s simply unacceptable.
Remember Specialist Thomas Wilson of the 278th Regimental Combat Team, a Tennessee National Guard outfit? You probably don’t remember that name but I’m sure you remember his question which he asked Rumsfeld on December 8, 2004.
“Why do we soldiers have to dig through local landfills for pieces of scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass to uparmor our vehicles?” Wilson asked.
That was over 2 years ago and yet, just yesterday, the mom of a marine stationed in Fallujah wrote a diary on dailykos titled, “My son’s Humvee needs a FRAG Kit 5 NOW!!”. What. is. going. on?
Yesterday’s NY Times editorial asked the question this way,
How do you explain to the thousands of American troops now being poured into Baghdad that they will have to wait until the summer for the protective armor that could easily mean the difference between life and death?
It is nothing short of horrific that we are still asking why our soldiers are not better protected. And simultaneously adding grave insult to our brave soldiers, we are finding out about waste and fraud in the billions of dollars spent in Iraq but not on our soldiers.
As JK noted last week at the VoteVets event, “recent audits have shown that money intended to help stabilize Iraq instead went for – among other things – an Olympic size swimming pool, VIP trailers, vehicles that can’t be accounted for and a training camp for Iraqi police that hasn’t been used in months.”
Yesterday JK stepped up to the plate again. Senator Dorgan, backed by Senators Kerry and Leahy, introduced the Honest Leadership and Accountability in Contracting Act of 2006 at a press conference. JK said “the bill would make a series of immediate fixes to the procurement process, including punishing war profiteers with stiffer penalties, requiring more disclosure of contracting abuses, forcing more competition by eliminating sole-source contracts and restricting the ability of contractors to oversee one another.”
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Rick Jacobs at Huffpo noted the event:
While little noticed by the blogs or the main stream media, real leadership shined through Thursday morning in Washington when Senator Byron Dorgan, Chair of the Democratic Policy Committee, backed by Senators John Kerry and Patrick Leahy, followed through on his commitment to rein in contracting fraud and abuse that has been the hallmark of the Bush/Cheney/Halliburton outsourcing of their private war in Iraq.
...The bill follows months of hearings led by the DPC when the Republican controlled Senate patently refused even to hear that Halliburton, Blackwater, CACI, Titan and others were raping the taxpayers of this country while making an ill-planned invasion into a full-fledged disaster, assuring that the only real winners in Iraq would be those companies that had sufficiently close ties to the White House to earn them a free ride in a war that leads us daily closer to the brink.
In introducing the bill, Senators Dorgan and Kerry each referred to Brave New Films’ “Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers,” as one of the key elements in demonstrating the outrageous abuses that these and other firms committed in Iraq.
In his introduction of the bill, JK also said:
We owe every man and woman serving in our military nothing less than complete transparency when we spend money in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. Unfortunately, the war in Iraq and the actions of companies like Halliburton and Custer Battles have become symbols for questions about government waste and a near total lack of accountability. It’s a disgrace that we have to answer to parents who ask how we can allow corporate cheaters to reap massive profits on the battlefield of Iraq when their sons and daughters are serving without proper equipment. This bill will help restore confidence in this process.
So what’s in the legislation?
Here’s a summary which outlines each section of the bill.
Honest Leadership and Accountability in Contracting Act
- Punishes War Profiteers – Sec. 101 establishes penalties of up to 20 years in prison and at least $1 million in fines for war profiteering. This provision is largely modeled on anti-profiteering legislation by Senator Leahy. Note that the penalties would apply to fraud by contractors in any place where the United States engages in military action – regardless of whether the fraud is against the United States or “the entity having jurisdiction over the place where the military action takes place.” So fraud against the Coalition Provisional Authority would have been covered by this provision.
- Cracks Down on Big Corporate Cheaters – Sec. 102 restores a Clinton Administration rule on suspension and debarment, which prohibited awarding federal contracts to companies that exhibited a pattern of overcharging the government or failing to comply with the law, including tax, labor, environmental, antitrust, and consumer protection laws. The Bush Administration repealed this rule in March 2001, one of its first actions upon taking office.
- Requires Full Disclosure of Contract Abuses – Sec. 103 provides for greater transparency in contracting. Specifically, this section would require agencies to provide to the chairman and ranking member of committees of jurisdiction a list of all agency audit reports that have found contractor misconduct. It would also require creation of a website listing (1) any instances where a major contractor has been fined or found guilty of misconduct, and (2) information on all sole source contracts in excess of $2 million.
- Forces Real Contract Competition – Secs. 201 and 202 would prohibit the awarding of umbrella contracts over $100 million on a “sole source” basis, so that such contracts would be jointly awarded to at least two companies, which would then compete with each other, under the umbrella contract, for all purchase orders worth more than $1 million. The provision would preclude a multi-billion dollar, sole source award like Halliburton’s LOGCAP contract, forcing some real price competition. Agencies would have waiver authority in cases where only a sole source contract was feasible, but would have to justify a waiver in writing and notify Congress.
- Bans Corporate Cronyism in Contracting – Sec. 211 requires that federal agencies conduct contract oversight, rather than paying contractors with conflicts of interest to oversee one another. (On March 10, 2004, the Pentagon awarded $129 million worth of oversight work to major Iraq contractors – essentially asking them to oversee each other. Some of the companies tasked with overseeing each other had huge conflicts of interest, like Parsons and Fluor, which had a $2.6 billion joint venture in Kazakhstan.) A Dorgan-Wyden amendment to the FY 2005 Defense Authorization bill prohibited the outsourcing of oversight, and was signed into law – but the Pentagon took the position that it had not outsourced oversight, but rather functions relating to oversight. Sec. 211 restates the prohibition on outsourcing of oversight, and clarifies that specific activities relating to oversight, including “services that involve or relate to the evaluation of another contractor’s performance,” could not be outsourced to companies that have a conflict of interest.
- Eliminates Conflicts of Interest for Federal Contracting Employees – Sec. 212 closes the perverse loophole that allows federal contracting officials to work as representatives for companies to whom they awarded contracts. Federal law currently prohibits federal contracting officials from being hired as employees, directors, or consultants of companies to whom they awarded contracts – but the law does not prohibit them from being hired as representatives. Sec. 212 would make it clear that procurement officials could not be employed by contractors in any capacity, including as representatives, within two years of leaving their government positions.
- Ends Cronyism in Key Government Positions – Sec. 301 stops unqualified political appointees like David Safavian and Michael Brown from holding key jobs relating to (1) federal contracting or (2) public safety. It specifies that political appointees for such positions must have relevant professional credentials, a record of accomplishment, and specific expertise in the field in question. Also, the nominee cannot have been a representative for any client having business before the agency in question in the previous two years. The provision explicitly lists certain jobs that this restriction would apply to, including the head of procurement at OMB and the director of FEMA, but would extend to all political appointments in the fields of federal contracting and public safety. This provision is modeled on the Waxman Anti-Cronyism Legislation in the 109th Congress.
- Strengthens Whistleblower Protections – Among other provisions, Sec. 302 makes it more difficult for federal agencies to retaliate against whistleblowers. Currently, only the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals is allowed to review whistleblower retaliation cases; Sec. 302 would allow other federal courts to consider such cases. The bill would also create a mechanism to ensure that whistleblowers are able to come forward to Congress with classified information, in a way that protects both the whistleblower and the classified information.
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Leaderdship.
This is another demonstration of who really looks out for, and values our troops.
It also puts into focus who places more value on fat cat government contractors and war profiteers!
Lead on Senator.
Excellent post!
How do you ask a soldier without adequate protection to be the last soldier to die for a lie?
Honestly, that is an awesome piece of legislation.
Leadership, oversight, it’s about time.
Here’s a good article by Rick Jacobs, chair and co-founder of Brave New Films:
Dorgan, Kerry and Leahy: Iraq’s Not For Sale
This was an excellent speech.
This + the war profiteering bill that Dorgan, Kerry, and Leahy are pushing .
Also, excellent choice of books by Senator Kerry in the Hill article.
http://www.johnkerry.com/news/articles/newsarticle.html?id=131
Allow me to add one, which is an excellent description by a scientist (not a climatologist, but a naturatist that has seen during his research the evolution of global warming).
This book is excellent because it pauses the problem of global warming with clarity, explains the causes, the potential of every source of energy in causing and solving global climate change.
http://www.theweathermakers.com/
The Weather Makers
The History & Future Impact of Climate Change
by Tim Flannery
If you are only going to read one book on global warming and that you are not an expert, read this.
JK speaking on the Senate floor:
Praising Se. Warner, thinks the admin. should “bend over backwards” to listen to him.
Congress has new responsibility after ‘06 election and after Iraq Study Group opportunities. Efforts of Baker, et. al., were cast aside. Today the POTUS is doing the opposite of what generals are telling him to.
Senate obligated to vote on this issue without procedural delays. American people want Congress to accept the responsibility it took on when it voted for war, even though the POTUS did not do what he promised in Iraq.
People in favor of the surge should stand up and be counted, others should vote “no” as the House it about to do.
Nothing more demoralizing to the troops than policy that doesn’t work. We are sending troops out to accomplish nothing but to die or become injured. 20,000 troops raises the stakes and invites more mischief.
People who don’t want a timeline on Iraq have placed a timeline on the surge.
Iraqis must be held accountable with a deadline. GOP does not want to make a decision; avoiding responsibility by not voting. Let’s have a real vote on Iraq.
60 American troops have died since “we started talking about talking about Iraq” last month.
JK’s office sends care packages to troops, has pics of troops celebrating holidays who have since died. Senators were elected to protect those troops with better policy.
Our purpose in Iraq is to train army - there can be a deadline for that. A policy that advantages USA position in Iraq is not abandonment. Current policy is making the world more dangerous.
When a policy is failing, leaders must get it right with a summit and diplomacy.
The remainder of JK’s comments were not read and will be placed in the record.
BTW, I posted the Boston Herald article concerning the Dorgan/Kerry bill yesterday on DU.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x216696
Senator Baucus making a good point: talking to your enemies doesn’t mean you agree with your enemies. We need to use diplomacy to get Iraq and other countries in the region to “sober up.”
Posted by democrafty | February 16, 2007 1:57 PM
Democrafty,
Thanks for the summary. I agree with Senator Kerry, it’s time to stop “talking about talking about Iraq.”
Time for action!
The floor speech today was both passionately said and sad in it’s content. It is awful to think of all those families, like the one of the young soldier that Sen. Kerry mentioned today, suffering through these losses. So many, there have been so many.
Sen. Kerry is correct when he says that we owe those soldiers, and those current serving in Iraq and about to be deployed, a policy that can actually begin to turn this war around. We do need to ‘get the policy right.’
ProSense - did you catch Senator Dorgan just now? He said the Senate floor is the only real estate in America where you have to debate whether or not to have a debate before you get to have it. Ha! Sometimes I wonder why everyone doesn’t watch C-SPAN all the time, and sometimes I know EXACTLY why :)
Democrafty,
I wasn’t able to watch, but it sounds like Senators Kerry and Dorgan nailed this for what it was: a colossal waste of time.
Debating to debate, geez!
I’ve always been an opponent of government contracts with any sort of profit, private or publicly traded organization, such as corporations. All the war profiting is there, regardless if it’s great sums of money or not. It’s my belief that, even in a time of war, that an organization/business that can and is employed to provide manufactured equipment (such as body armor, guns, etc) that they should be turned into a non-profit operation.
And this goes for the employees of that organization as well. If someone is making $100,000/yr manufacturing specially made arms for hunting fans, and then that company is employed by the government to manufacture arms for military combat, then their wages should be cut. It’s a time of war, and sacrifices need to be made to ensure that the mission can be accomplished… or at least have the proper equipment to accomplish the mission.
Furthermore, I believe any profits made during such operations should be turned to providing health care for the soldiers, or even sending them entertainment like we’ve done in the past. Our soldiers are out there giving their lives for a cause they believe (or once believed) in, and that in doing so, they will earn great respect and admiration from their people at home and abroad.
Unfortunately, resentment could take over soldiers—as is the case we are finding over the recent years. Resentment that they have been lied to, their deployments lasting much longer than expected, and worse, when they do come home, the health care they so badly need, especially the psychological treatment, is not there.
In World War II, we sent so many troops at one time, all with plenty of gear (of, at that time, which could possibly be provided)... and we came out on top. Meanwhile, back at home, men and women sacrificed so much to ensure that as much resource as possible was brought to the troops.
In our time we have now, as information flows more quickly, and accurately, people are “in the know.” They know if they’re being lied to: simply using the live television and radio broadcasts as a means of manipulation won’t cut it. And this leads to many people resenting the government more today than they were ten, twenty or thirty years ago.
I’ve said this before… I’m fed up with this government, and we need to do something about it.
I am so glad someone if finally doing something about war profiteering. Without that, perhaps there won’t be so much incentive to keep the war going.
Also it’s ridiculous that they can’t give the troops the armor they need. I would much rather my tax dollars go to protect the troop than to money ending up who knows where. I work hard for the money I make, and want it to go for a worthwhile cause. They have no business losing our money that way and acting like it doesn’t matter. It’s hard to think about that amount of money because it’s so large. It helps to think of it, I think in the amount you pay - how it would make you feel if someone told you - oh, I lost (or stole) that $4000 you gave me but it’s no big deal, will you give me the money again - or whatever the amount is you pay in taxes. Maybe it’s because $4000 is alot of money to me and many people, it means more than people with unlimited funds.
This is a travesty. First, we send them into a war they shouldn’t be fighting, then we don’t give them the proper equipment, and when they’re injured, this is the kind of care we provide our troops? How can this happen?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/17/AR2007021701172.html
There’s a noteworthy diary on dailykos by Peter Laesch, brother of John Laesch who ran against Denny Hastert, about conditions during his time in Iraq. It’s not quite your usual soldier’s tale but equally wrenching to read about what we are failing to do for our military.
Thanks for posting about the Washington Post article, GV. It is truly shocking to see what kind of so-called care the powers that be in Washington are doling out to the volunteer victims of their uncalled-for war.
While the politicians are pandering and the spinbots are shouting and every monkey in a red-white-and-blue suit is screeching “I support the troops! We support the troops!”, the torn and tattered veterans of the neocons’ illegal and immoral war for conquest in the Middle East are being warehoused in Washington in conditions that most Americans would never even dream of letting their house pets live in, let alone their wounded warriors.
Walter Reed Army Medical Center is supposed to be this country’s flagship facility for taking care of those who have almost but not quite died in the service of their country. So why by the name of all that’s holy are the much-vaunted support-the-troopers leaving them to rot in conditions that the most timid ASPCA officials would scream about were they to find out that cats and dogs were being held in such despicable conditions in some animal shelter someplace?
This is just so very many kinds of wrong, in so very many ways. The Washington Post’s article about the WRAMC on its website today can—and certainly should—make you mad as hell so you won’t take it any more. It’s way too long to quote here in detail, but please go to their website and read their Walter Reed story asap. (Fair warning: your blood pressure will go up at least 20 points by the end of the article, I guarantee.)
Then call your Congresscritters about it, fax your local media outlets about it, spam your buddy lists about it, shout on every blog and myspacebook page you can find about it, holler and raise hell and bang pots and pans on every street corner about it—do whatever it takes to spread the word about this tragic travesty of so-called supporting the troops in every corner of the land.
That’s right kid. Suck it up. Tell it to the Marines. Because the politicians sure ain’t listening.
This is pure and unadulterated cowflop, and the self-serving political hacks wrapping themselves in the flag and hiding behind their right-wing rhetoric and their phony support-the-troops photo ops can’t possibly be allowed to get away with it any more.
It’s our turn to support the troops now. So get on out there and raise hell, people. They should never have had to be there, but they were there anyway, and now they’re getting treated like abandoned pets that we have to hide from the public eye. And that is just so very many kinds of wrong, in so very many ways.
The True Shame of a Nation. (A vet’s diary at kos.)
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/2/18/3125/18851