05 September 2003

Ex-Envoy Criticizes Bush's Postwar Policy, Thomas E. Ricks, Washington Post, Friday, September 5, 2003 I guess my friends at Lucianne.com would say that General Zinni wasn't a patriot. It is amazing the truth that can be told when one is no longer under the thumb of the most incompetent Civilian leadership the nation can imagine. You know, if General Zinni is saying it, there are probably a lot more uniformed military officers and personnel that are thinking it. This Republican administration is indeed a sad failure in every measurable way. Can you say IDIOTS? Sure you can. The Article: "A former U.S. commander for the Middle East who still consults for the State Department yesterday blasted the Bush administration's handling of postwar Iraq, saying it lacked a coherent strategy, a serious plan and sufficient resources." "There is no strategy or mechanism for putting the pieces together," said retired Marine Gen. Anthony C. Zinni, and so, he said, "we're in danger of failing." "In an impassioned speech to several hundred Marine and Navy officers and others, Zinni invoked the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War in the 1960s and '70s. "My contemporaries, our feelings and sensitivities were forged on the battlefields of Vietnam, where we heard the garbage and the lies, and we saw the sacrifice," said Zinni, who was severely wounded while serving as an infantry officer in that conflict. "I ask you, is it happening again?" "Zinni's comments were especially striking because he endorsed President Bush in the 2000 campaign, shortly after retiring from active duty, and serves as an adviser to the State Department on anti-terror initiatives in Indonesia and the Philippines. He preceded Army Gen. Tommy R. Franks as chief of the U.S. Central Command, the headquarters for U.S. military operations in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East." "This was not the first time he has broken with the administration. He was publicly skeptical last winter of the decision to attack Iraq." "Underscoring how much his views have changed since 2000, he implied that the Bush administration is now damaging the U.S. military in the way that Bush and Vice President Cheney during that campaign charged that the Clinton administration had done. "We can't go on breaking our military and doing things like we're doing now," he said." "He also questioned the Bush administration's decision in January to have the Pentagon oversee postwar efforts in Iraq. "Why the hell would the Department of Defense be the organization in our government that deals with the reconstruction of Iraq?" he asked. "Doesn't make sense." "In addition, he criticized the administration for not working earlier and harder to win a U.N. resolution that several nations have indicated is a prerequisite to their contributing peacekeeping troops to help in Iraq. "We certainly blew past the U.N.," he said. "Why, I don't know. Now we're going back hat in hand." "Zinni's comments to the joint meeting in Arlington of the U.S. Naval Institute and the Marine Corps Association, two professional groups for officers, were greeted warmly by his audience, with prolonged applause at the end. Some officers bought tapes and compact discs of the speech to give to others." 8:36:51 PM    comment [] trackback []

'Cost-Plus' Leadership, Matt Bivens, The Nation, 4 September 2003 Speaking of contractors, I wonder what my friends at Lucianne.com would say about this article in The Nation. Republicans are expert at funneling American tax payer's money to LARGE CORPORATIONS, regardless of cause or venue. It is because Republican special interests ARE LARGE CORPORATIONS. Not the American people, or the American worker, who have no other power base but their Government by the People. Electing a Republican always ensures that your government is shanghaied by BIG CORPORATE INTERESTS. The article: "We've recently learned Vice President Dick Cheney's old company (which still cuts him regular checks) is getting hundreds of millions of tax dollars more than we thought. As The Washington Post reports, "as much as one-third of the monthly $3.9 billion cost of keeping US troops in Iraq is going to independent contractors," most of which are Halliburton. The company Cheney once ran has been handed no-bid [!] contracts for "building and managing military bases, logistical support for the 1,200 intelligence officers hunting Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, delivering mail and producing millions of hot meals. Often dressed in Army fatigues with civilian patches on their shoulders, Halliburton employees and contract personnel have become an integral part of Army life in Iraq." More emerges all the time, often via the indispensable Halliburton-related web page of House Democrat Henry Waxman. But perhaps the most irritating news comes in the second-to-last graph of The Post's article: "the cost-plus-award fee system ... is the basis for most contracts." I once worked for US AID in Kazakhstan, and afterwards discussed cost-plus accounting and other outrages in an article in Harper's Magazine. Under a cost-plus contract, one is reimbursed all costs -- and then paid a percentage of those costs (the plus) as a fee. The upshot: You will never spend $1 million to do a job when you can spend $10 million. Cost-plus is the ying to Enron accounting's yang. To see cost-plus magic in action, check out "The Promise and the Threat" post by the wonderful "Girl Blog from Iraq" (scroll down to Aug. 28 to find it): "My cousin, a structural engineer, is a bridge freak. He spends hours talking about pillars and trusses and steel structures to anyone who'll listen," writes the Baghdad blogger. She says her cousin was asked by the American occupying authority to estimate the cost of rebuilding a bridge in south Baghdad. He and his team came up with $300,000. "Let's pretend my cousin is a dolt. Let's pretend he hasn't been working with bridges for over 17 years. Let's pretend he didn't work on replacing at least 20 of the 133 bridges damaged during the first Gulf War. Let's pretend he's wrong and the cost of rebuilding this bridge is four times the number they estimated -- let's pretend it will actually cost $1.2 million. Let's just use our imagination. A week later, the New Diyala Bridge contract was given to an American company. This particular company estimated the cost of rebuilding the bridge would be around -- brace yourselves -- $50 million!!" 5:02:35 AM    comment [] trackback []

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