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TechnoratiTrouble at the Pentagon
The Pentagon is in crisis: The war in Iraq is entering its fifth hot summer. And while U.S. troop casualties are down, the light at the end of the occupation tunnel is no closer and no brighter.
Headaches mount on the home front as well. The head of the Air Force was recently embarrassed and forced from the cockpit. Billions of dollars have been misplaced or misspent. Huge cost overruns bedevil weapons contractors. And, private contractors have formed a cubicle mercenary force, outnumbering uniformed personnel and federal employees in many DoD agencies.
The Government Accountability Office has issued a series of reports on these problems. While the watchdog agency sticks to the script of analytic bureaucratese, what they document is cumulatively damning to business as usual at the Pentagon.
Money Problems
The Pentagon has its work cut out for it. Keeping track of its more than half trillion dollar budget and the hundreds of billions more in war spending is no easy task. There is bound to be some slippage here and there. But the Pentagon's Inspector General's Office recently reported to Congress that the Pentagon is unable to account for nearly $15 billion earmarked for the Iraq reconstruction effort. In a May report to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, the Inspector General's Office highlights $7.8 billion paid to contractors for everything from telephones to trucks without any support documentation-like a check for $5.6 million to an Iraqi contractor. For what? No one knows. Or the $32 million doled out to build a facility for the Iraqi military. Never built. Why not? No one knows.
One reason that money just seems to disappear is that there are not enough people watching the books. While the Pentagon budget has soared in the past seven years, the resources and staff time devoted to making sure that money is well spent have not increased.
In fiscal year 2007, the Pentagon contracted with companies for $316 billion in military goods and services. But the Inspector General's Office only had the resources to track fewer than half those projects. And they also have to keep an eye on war spending. At the beginning of June, Inspector General Claude Kicklighter went to Congress with hat in hand to ask for another $25 million for his department next year. He is also arguing for a 25% increase in staffing over the next seven years. The funds -- comparable to just a few hours of the war in Iraq -- are in the proposed 2009 defense authorization bill now before Congress.
Meanwhile, the GAO estimates that the Pentagon has $900 billion in planned spending on weapons systems over the next five years. While Congressional and Pentagon leaders point to the need to "reset" military forces worn out by years of warfighting, the lion's share of this money is not going to repair equipment or replenish dwindling stocks of needed material. Rather, it is going to pay the ever-spiraling bill for high tech weapons systems still in the pipeline.
According to "Assessments of Selected Weapons Programs," a March GAO report, the Pentagon had 75 major weapons programs in production in 2000. Collectively, the programs were $42 billion over-budget and behind schedule by an average of 16 months. Today, there are 95 major weapons programs, which are $295 billion over-budget and 21 months behind schedule. Ouch.
"This would never be tolerated in the private sector," lamented Claire McCaskill (D-MO). Maybe so, but when the private sector moves into the Pentagon in a period of "more-than-enough-to-go-around" military budgets, it seems like they have no problem spending the public's money hand over fist.
Whose Pentagon?
In Iraq, private military contractors like Blackwater and Kellogg Brown and Root are doing soldiers' work for many times the pay. PMCs -- as they are called -- are so ubiquitous that the United States can no longer go to war without them. According to "Additional Personal Conflict of Interest Safeguards Needed for Certain DoD Contractor Employees," a March GAO report, the Pentagon can't do its paperwork without private contractors either. In offices throughout the Department of Defense, cubicle mercenaries are working shoulder-to-shoulder with uniformed military staff and federal employees.
In fiscal year 2006, the Pentagon spent more on contracting for services with private companies than they spent on weapons systems or other equipment. Over the past 10 years, contracts with private companies for services have increased 78% in real terms -- to a total of more than $151 billion.
The GAO looked at 21 different offices and found that private contractors outnumbered Department of Defense employees in more than half the locations. In some offices -- like the engineering department of the Missile Defense Agency -- they make up more than 80% of the work force. The GAO found that contractors are responsible for carrying out "a range of tasks, including studying alternative ways to acquire desired capabilities, developing contractor requirements and advising and assisting on source selection, budget, planning and award fee determination." In its rebuttal to the GAO report, the DoD pointed out that most contractors are involved in the technical -- rather than the policy -- side of the work. Nevertheless, it is conceivable that an employee paid by L-3 Communications is sitting at a desk in the Pentagon and drafting the requirements that L-3 would need to fulfill to get another contract, and that an employee with SAIC is evaluating what sort of award fees should be granted to SAIC once they get another contract. Contract employees are also not subject to the federal laws and regulations designed to prevent personal conflicts of interest.
The GAO report did not discuss contractor pay, but a separate March report "Army Case Study Delineates Concerns with Use of Contractors as Contract Specialists" assesses the Army's Contracting Center of Excellence. There, private contractors make up less than 20% of the workforce, but they are paid far more than federal employees. The average hourly cost of a contractor employee was more than 26% higher than that of a government employee.
Revolving Door: Spinning for Profit
For those public sector employees left at the Pentagon, the door to the corporate world is always open. In a May report titled "Post-Government Employment of Former DoD Officials Needs Greater Transparency," the GAO found that thousands of senior Pentagon officials take refuge in the corporate world. In fact, of the almost 2,500 former Pentagon officials analyzed, almost two thirds of them went on to senior positions at just seven companies -- SAIC, Northrop Grumman, Booz Allen Hamilton, L-3 Communications, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics and Raytheon. Except for the consulting firm Booz Allen, all seven are on the Pentagon's list of top ten contractors. Together, they received more than $87 billion in contracts from the DoD in 2007.
The GAO report asserts that "our results indicate that defense contractors may employ a substantial number of former DoD officials on assignments related to their former DoD agencies or direct responsibilities."
Military policy will define the presidential race between Barack Obama and John McCain. Already the rhetoric is flying thick and heavy. Who knows more about the surge? Who has more Iraq stamps on his passport? Who is more bellicose toward Iran? Who is more serious about beating the terrorists?
The answers to these questions are nothing more than political wordplay without a strategic and critical examination of the Pentagon -- as the exerciser of American power abroad, as the single largest consumer of federal resources, and as a teetering bureaucratic disaster. Let's see if either of them tackles the problems on the Potomac in a meaningful way.
Foreign Policy In Focus columnist Frida Berrigan is a senior program associate at the Arms and Security Project of the New America Foundation.
Copyright © 2008, Institute for Policy Studies
22 Comments so far
Show AllSince the military is so bad at keeping track of OUR money that they spend, maybe they shouldn't get any.... Sort of like disciplining a wayward child by taking away her/his toys. Kind of like the old saying, what if we threw a war and nobody came? Congress, are you reading this?
"Military policy will define the presidential race between Barack Obama and John McCain. "--from the 16th paragraph of the article. So much for including any of the other viable presidential candidates, such as Nader, or Ron Paul, or Green & Libertarian party nominees. Ralph has a sound answer to these kinds of bureaucratic systematic 'headaches'. I'll make my vote for anyone other that the 'statis quo, dupeloply' that continues to bankrupt this country.
wild
Wow, we need to seriously take the power back. I saw this funny video just ragging on some politicians this morning. I rather enjoyed it -
http://www.minimovie.com/film-128295-Welcome%20Back,%20Clinton
So the GAO States, "DOD has no way to account for hundreds of billions of dollars spent in Iraq and Afghanistan."
My , my.......In 2002 Donald Rumsfeld admitted at a press conference, "The Department of Defense can not account for 2 TRILLION dollars worth of arms, munitions, and supplies."
In 2003 the GAO reported, "The Department of Defense can not account for an additional 1 TRILLION dollars worth of supplies and arms."
My guess is that Rumsfeld and his NeoCon buddies funnelled those supplies, arms, and munitions to the mercenary groups: Blackwater, DYN Corp, Triple Canopy, Titan, and CACI.
The U.S. State Department hired Accenture, you remember them as Arthur Anderson Consulting and the guys who taught Enron everything they knew. (Oh, that was Arthur Anderson Accounting. However, many of the same people transferred between companies and prior to 2000 the companies worked with one another.) They received a contract worth up to 15 billion dollars to do the passports and other consulting work.
Did Accenture teach the State Department and Department of Defense how to "COOK THE BOOKS"?
I never hear that The State Department Budget is included as part of the "War's" expenses yet half the mercenaries are working for the State Department and the State Department can not account for BILLIONS of dollars of reconstruction expenses!!!!!
In the 60's and 70's Welfare Mothers receiving $5,000 a year were blamed for the ills of the common taxpayer.
Today, illegal immigrants are being blamed for cheating the taxpayer of education, social security, and health care money.
The reality is that companies like Kellog, Brown, and Root Inc., Halliburton, Bechtel, Carlysle Group, and Raytheon et al. have been overcharging and cheating the taxpayers of hundreds of billions of dollars, possibly 1 TRILLION or more in the past 5 years.....Cheney's Halliburton Options will probably earn him 200 million dollars and he will be given his post Vice Presidency Consultant fees of hundreds of millions of dollars within the year.
At what cost were the "Power Elite" willing to make the American People pay so that they could accumulate more wealth? Were the "Power Elite" willing to "Demolish with explosives" World Trade Center #7 and if so what else were "They" willing to do??????????
The US has citizen-soldiers in name only. Thanks to their training and leadership, they are more like a mercenary army with a slave mentality. The basic problems in the US military go far back, as the real problems with the prosecution of the Vietnam War were not resolved, but swept under the rug. The biggest problems are in the officer corps, and the enlisted personnel follow.
What is new is the magnitude of the corruption in support contracts, including PMCs. This fits in neatly with Naomi Klein's "The Shock Doctrine", with the shocked nation being the US itself.
The high cost weapons programs are partially caused by a desire to be able to wage war without bravery and self-sacrifice, substituting mass taxpayer dollars and "sacrifice" of the lives of others. The idea that killing, largely at random, is a deterrent rather than an incitement, is one of many military myths that kill a lot of people, and make the US a more dangerous place.
Thank you Paul M! He absolutely right to quote Machiavelli regarding a state's reliance on mercenaries. Machiavelli had a rich history to draw on that concluded any time a state relied upon the services of mercenaries, they were doomed (Carthage is a prime example). Historical amnesia mixed with hubris seems to be a particular American affliction (i.e., the USA thought it was exempt from what the French experienced in Vietnam), and under the reign of Dubya, Cheney, & Co., America is getting an F+ in learning from history.
"PMCs — as they are called — are so ubiquitous that the United States can no longer go to war without them."
As Machiavelliu pointed out, that means the state is already destroyed. A state must be able to defend itself with it's own citizen-soldiers, or it is no state at all.
Troop deaths and concussions are down because our government has realized the troops aren't doing anything useful or sane. The new plan is
1. to send in saturation bombing.
2. to give our former enemy combatants all the arms and money they want.
3. To pay half of Iraq to murder the other half, and often vice-versa too, resulting in millions of Iraqi refugees coming to the US if they can, to Jordan or Syria if they can't. This is called the "Salvadoran option", named after the Spanish word for our Savior. In other religious news, this tactic requires more money than God.
However, our troops are successfully sitting in the middle of the desert all by themselves.
I have a question about the 87 billion dollars being awarded to private contractors that are building the National and Interntional spy network.
How much of that money is going to warrentless spying???
Cointelpro tactics are being tought to the IAFF (International FireFighters),Citizen Crop,and local Neighborhood watch groups,TIPS programs.
Local and Federal agencys are training civilian groups to conduct warrentless 24/7 survielene on thousands of innocent Amercans accross this country. They need suspects To keep the money train going and to builD thier community watch groups using fear of these suspects.
Slander campaigns, and Cointelpro tactics are used to control and destroy thier targets while the local watch groups are desensitized to the torturous tactics.
Is this EAST Berlin? Is the Stazi Police here in America?
Please look into this Nation wide abuse of money and our constitutional rights by law enforemnet agencies using local watch groups to conduct illegal surveilence.
When did we as a nation decide to allow non-law enforcement volunteer groups to conduct warrentless survielence on Americans.
This is a direct result of the USA Patriot Act and King Georges CIA buddys.They are all over this country setting up these covert groups that attack innocent Americans for political and financial gain every day.
This is torture!!!! How many times do you have to hear that before you act.
Americans hate torture, and this government under the cloak of Patriotism has setup the biggest torture spy network in the world using law enforcement directing local community watch groups.
NO IMMUNIY for these groups ,Verizon ,Infragard,Citzen Corp, IAFF.
Some one cut off these funds to the CIA and FBI sponsered neighborhood TERRORIST TORTURE PROGRAMS NOW!!!!!!!
Military policy will define the presidential race between Barack Obama and John McCain. Already the rhetoric is flying thick and heavy. Who knows more about the surge? Who has more Iraq stamps on his passport? Who is more bellicose toward Iran? Who is more serious about beating the terrorists?
and there you have it....how can you do that without the "war in iraq"
america is defining itself through the "war in iraq"....on the basis of course that it hasn't allready WON the "war in iraq" ...saddam hussein is gone..the regime armed forces are defeated...a new regime is in place...yet the "war in iraq" continues without even breaking it's stride..
if saddam husseins regime is gone..
and a new government is in place (no matter what any-one thinks about that new government ..it does exist)
who is the "war in iraq" being waged against..?
do we disrespect the government of iraq so much that we do not even acknowledge the fact that they ARE the new government of Iraq??
or are we defending the new government of iraq against...some one....or some thing? if so then who and what are we defending the new government of iraq against...would that not be "terrorists"?? those who would seek to bring down the new government of iraq??
by claiming that we are still fighting the original "war in iraq" .we are saying that we do not acknowledge the new government of iraq...we do not acknowledge the validity of the iraqi peoples claim to their own country...we do not acknowledge the fact that we defeated saddam husseins military forces and we do no acknowledge the fact that there has been a regime change..
what is it.."alice thru the looking glass" or something?
the real question is who are we fighting in iraq..
if the answer to that question is terrorists..then there is no "war in iraq"
it is a continuation of the "war on terror" and it is being fought in iraq to defend the iraqi government..and at some point this war has to stop.. not least because the Iraqi government is asking that it stop..
there's that word...stop....the phrase "the war on terror" and the word "stop" can never be allowed to appear in the same sentence...politicaly
the constantly chanted brand name "the war in iraq" is nothing more than an insult to the iraqi people and it's new government...and it's an insult to our intelligence...it's the war on terror and the iraqi government has asked us to stop ..
yet ..again here we have the mantra
"The Pentagon is in crisis: The war in Iraq..etc etc etc"
if america is going to define itself in these terms...it ought to at least get the name of the war right...and stop insulting every-ones intelligence from iraq to the rest of the world including itself...
even more so if that phrase "the war in iraq" is going to dictate who wins the coming election..
it's the "war on terror"...and it is patently un winnable..and we carry on fighting it in spite of the fact that the people who we are claiming to protect have in deed asked us to stop...why?
because we are not protecting them at all..are we..right?
define "the war in iraq" don't just say it..it has become a brand name
as the pentagon has enourmous political clout...and war is it's buisness
getting the name of the war right the reasons for the war right and the objectives for the war right...is important...if the thing itself is a lie..then everything else built ontop of it will be a lie also..
EVERYONE NEEDS TO READ THE TWO ARTICLES I included links for in the page for Ray McGovern's article. What the article by Stephen Lendman is about is extraordinarly and strongly, wholly ... pertinent to the topics of both Ray McGovern's and Frida Berrigan's articles; while the other article I linked to is by Andrew G. Marshall and is not as immediately relevant, but it tangentially and importantly is.
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/06/12/9566/#comment-299194
If you think that there are problems at the Pentagon, and with G.W. Bush and George Tenet, then YOU ARE IN FOR HAMMER-BLOW with what Stephen Lendman's article is about and which is TOPMOST-TOPPEST-... information investigated and exposed by an extraordinarily courageous 30-year careered CIA agent or officer. MAJOR INFORMATION; and once it becomes adequately known by all of the USA, then we might have everyone, including Congress and other high-ranking U.S. govt officials causing a MAJOR EARTHQUAKE, and VP Cheney running for his life, if capable of then being able to escape.
IT'S INFORMATION THAT IVAW, VFP, Veteran CIA and like officials for Peace and justice, and so on to LEARN ABOUT; they ALL REALLY WANT TO KNOW WHAT IT IS, particularly what Stephen Lendman's article provides.
AGAIN, READ THOSE TWO ARTICLES; WE OWE IT TO OURSELVES AND THE REST OF HUMANITY! (link to my post with the article links is at the start of this post)
"Post-government employment of former DoD officials needs greater transparency". Yeah really!
Such facts are rarely brought to the public's attention much less explained in specific detail. Those 2,500 former DoD officials end up working for the companies they award contracts to? Which ones did what? It would be something to see what contracts these officials did approve and where they ended up working later. A closed shop's revolving door becomes institutionalized and boy is it ever.
Hidden in plain sight? Is it even hidden hardly ever at all? Seems the conflict of interests are right in our faces and quite open but nevertheless rarely commented on by the media. How does that work? Why does that work? The republican agenda made little effort to disguise an attitude that government's primary function is to provide defense (meanwhile they privatize). Pursuant to privatization, is the removal of congressional oversight. Does anyone notice anymore?
Maybe it isn't any one specific function of government that is privatized, like say intel collected by contractors but rather the overt integration of privatization into our democracy.
What has Bush changed? Do we know anymore? Once we were worried about a military industrial complex's growing influence. Now we must worry about our democracy's increasing ineffectualness and lack of influence over it's own functions. Ike's warning seems outdated.
Privatization has allowed the military industrial complex to leap frog over the niceties of democracy and is putting in place, a de facto, direct corporate governance of government.
They've made it so that they no longer even hide the conflicts of interest. Hidden in plain sight? They don't even bother hiding it anymore.
Our whole democracy is headed for privatization. Our United Corporations of America. Maybe when it is complete, they will still let us vote. It looks better that way.
The founding fathers (yeah they did find what belonged to someone else more often than not) did not create a corporate run democracy.
But we are.
Some of the base closings initiated in the 1990's are still in the works. Examples are Fort Monmouth in NJ and Willow Grove Joint Air Station in PA scheduled to close around 2012.
Closing unecessary bases, while not always popular locally, was a big part of Clinton and Gingrich balancing the federal budget. Often the Pentagon was in complete agreement with closing an obsolete base protected by a politics.
The neocons and the war have swept these savings away. One can only guess how much they have undermined the military command and control. The neocon minders and "special working groups" were imposed on the pentagon early in the Bush administration. Then there is the return of "Star Wars", and suspicions the B-52 nuke "screwup" was at Cheney's orders through an unofficial chain of command. On and on!
Ben Franklin had better things to do than grab property. Besides, the boudaries of the colony had long been established through "Walking Purchases" with the easy going Lenni Lenape. There was one incident when Penn's sons, pressed for more room for settlers, hired some very fit British Army scouts to jog the Purchase over a period of days, complete with support team on horesback. The Lenape were a little pissed, apparently, but its the same nation that sold Manhatten for $24. Their descendants mostly live on a western reservation.
The war in Iraq ...The war in Iraq ...The war in Iraq
which war in Iraq...
the war against saddam hussien's Iraqi armed forces?
or the war on terror...
the media and damn near every-one keeps ignoring this detail..
there's just something hypnotic about the way this phrase "The war in Iraq" keeps on coming up...which war in iraq?? what war in iraq? The war in Iraq
it's the war on terror...and it happens to be in iraq....The war in Iraq ended when saddam hussiens iraqi armed forces were defeated...i dunno maybe nobody cares..maybe it doesn't matter (?????)... but it sounds like misdirection to me..
it's the same where ever you go..these glaringly obvious and yet very important details get ommited..details that change the way you think about things...details that allow you to catch your breath and seperate one issue from another...The war in Iraq ? nope i don't buy it
"Oh well, the Founding Fathers were thieves too. Benjamin Franklin made most of his money selling stolen Indian land."
I'm afraid he made his fortune as a printer, publisher, author and statesman, including Postmaster general. Poor Richards almanac was enough top make him wealthy and he certainly wasn't involved in any land deals in his early life.
"One reason that money just seems to disappear is that there are not enough people watching the books. While the Pentagon budget has soared in the past seven years, the resources and staff time devoted to making sure that money is well spent have not increased."
This certainly begs a very powerful question:
Is the money spent by the Pentagon EVER well spent?
It doesn't matter, does it? The US citizens will keep paying and paying and paying, never questioning whether they get a CONSTRUCTIVE government or a government sunk in rampant DESTRUCTION.
We reap what we sow. It's as simple as that.
After the collapse of the soviet union, the Pentagon became the world's largest command economy.
However, its the type of command economy the super-rich and huge corporations love.
It gives them assured markets and no-bid contracts; all you have to do is lobby for the next contracts and promise good jobs for those military contractors who pass the goodies your way.
No sloppy markets involved; no oversight uncorrupted; no pricing mechanism that can't be manipulated.
The best of all possible worlds.
Frida, you wrote "The war in Iraq is entering its fifth hot summer." I count six, not five. 2003, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. Sorry to be nit-picky... keep up the great work!
Oh well, the Founding Fathers were thieves too. Benjamin Franklin made most of his money selling stolen Indian land.
-'Who would have ever thought we might one day have to fight our own government in order to restore our Democracy? Well, how about the Founding Fathers!!!'-
it just deserves repeating
The Pentagon seems to be an island unto itself. The idiot elected officials stumble all over themselves, trying to give even more money, to an agency which openly admits, that it cannot find even a penny, of over a Trillion dollars which has gone missing!!! What should we ever do? Well let`s give them even more money! Can anyone spell "Organized Crime"? That is what we have come to in this country! Now, How the hell are going to get our government back from super rich organized criminals??? Things do not look good for the future! Corporate Facism rules this country!!! Not the Democracy and Freedom propaganda we here about everyday from the Corporate Media!Who would have ever thought we might one day have to fight our own government in order to restore our Democracy? Well, how about the Founding Fathers!!! Nuff said!
doesn't matter which candidate you choose in the "cola war" of this so called democracy, the main ingredient in "cola" is a military industrial complex.
step up to a healthier "beverage", free of hydrogenated complexes.
vote nader.