Eideard

Pentagon policy on issuing contracts for Iraq reconstruction

The U.S. Defense Department cannot account for about $2 billion it was given to cover Iraq-related expenses and is not providing Iraq with a complete list of U.S.-funded reconstruction projects, according to two new government audits…

The Iraqi government in 2004 gave the Department of Defense access to about $3 billion to pay bills for certain contracts, and the department can only show what happened to about a third of that, the inspector general says…

Although the Department of Defense had “internal processes and controls” to track payments, the “bulk of the records are missing,” the report says, adding that the department is searching for them. Other documents are missing as well, including monthly reports documenting expenses, the audit says.

“From July 2004 through December 2007, DoD should have provided 42 monthly reports. However, it can locate only the first four reports…”

Sounds like the Pentagon performed exactly up to the standards required by Bush and Cheney. Which means none at all.

Separately, the inspector general’s office sent a letter Sunday to the U.S. ambassador to Iraq complaining that the U.S. government is not providing Iraq with a complete list of reconstruction projects…

The Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction was created in 2004 to continue oversight of Iraq reconstruction programs.

In some nations, civil servants and bureaucrats are part of an honorable profession. They exist and function on behalf of the best interests of the country.

The tradition in much of our local, state and federal bodies is to either have a safe, secure job offering a better life of retirement than private industry – or to have a safe, secure job offering an easy way to steal.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta cautioned global rivals on Sunday not to misjudge U.S. plans to slash military spending over the next decade, saying America would still field the world’s strongest military and nobody should “mess with that…”

Pressed on whether the United States could take out Iran’s nuclear sites without using nuclear weapons, Dempsey would only say: “I absolutely want them to believe that that’s the case…”

The tough talk comes days after President Barack Obama unveiled a new military strategy that calls for a smaller force as the United States cuts $487 billion in projected defense spending over the next decade in an effort to deal with the nation’s $14 trillion debt…

Dempsey said he worried that some countries might misunderstand the debate Americans are having over changing strategy and the need to cut defense spending…”There may be some around the world who see us as a nation in decline, and worse, as a military in decline. And nothing could be further from the truth,” Dempsey said…

Panetta said U.S. rivals should not misunderstand the situation…”I think the message that the world needs to understand is: America is the strongest military power and we intend to remain the strongest military power and nobody ought to mess with that,” he said…

Congress missed a deadline for reaching a compromise that could have stopped the new defense cuts, but it could still take action to override the spending reductions before they are due to go into force next year.

Obama, in unveiling the new defense strategy at a Pentagon news conference on Thursday, noted that even with the $487 trillion in cuts to projected spending, the defense budget would continue to grow in nominal terms.

He also said the U.S. defense budget would still be by far the world’s largest – roughly the size of the 10 next-biggest defense budgets combined.

Phew. I was worried the retired generals and admirals infesting the infrastructure of the military-industrial complex might be forced to make do on their pensions.

BTW – don’t you love it when the “peacemakers” we elected can’t help but brag to the rest of the world how easily we can kill and destroy everyone?

I’m here to sign the checks
Daylife/Reuters Pictures used by permission

The United States should give up the capability to fight two major ground wars simultaneously, according to a Pentagon review that will be presented this week, [said the inevitable unnamed] U.S. official.

Chris Lawrence plays into the Pentagon PR boys just like Wolf always did. The only difference is he won’t receive the Marvin Kalb Award for undercover service to the Mossad.

The review will be publicly outlined by President Barack Obama, the White House announced. The president will join Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on Thursday at the Pentagon to discuss the military posture vision.

The official [same guy, I guess], who was not authorized to speak publicly, said the strategic review presents priorities to guide the military into the future, but “they are proposals, not all of them set in stone.”

The review sets forth potentially big changes in U.S. strategy, including, the official said, removing up to 4,000 troops from Europe and downsizing the overall ground forces even further. The 2012 budget request already called for cuts of 27,000 soldiers and 20,000 Marines in the next four years, and those numbers could increase.

The military would not maintain its ability to wage two large conflicts at the same time, such as it did in Iraq and Afghanistan, the official said. But the United States would still be able to deploy troops and equipment to “deter a second adversary” while engaged in a major ground conflict.

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Harvard scientists have built a new type of flexible robot that is limber enough to wiggle and worm through tight spaces.

It’s the latest prototype in the growing field of soft-bodied robots. Researchers are increasingly drawing inspiration from nature to create machines that are more bendable and versatile than those made of metal.

The Harvard team, led by chemist George M. Whitesides, borrowed from squids, starfish and other animals without hard skeletons to fashion a small, four-legged rubber robot that calls to mind the clay animation character Gumby…

The Harvard project, funded by the Pentagon’s research arm…took two months to construct, is 5 inches (12.7 centimeters) long. Its four legs can be separately controlled by pumping air into the limbs, either manually or via computer. This gives the robot a range of motions including crawling and slithering.

The researchers tested the robot’s flexibility by having it squirm underneath a pane of glass just three-quarters of an inch from the surface.

Scientists maneuvered the robot through the tiny gap 15 times using a combination of movements. In most cases, it took less than a minute to get from side to side.

Researchers eventually want to improve the robot’s speed, but were pleased that it did not break from constant inflation and deflation.

“It was tough enough to survive,” said Harvard postdoctoral fellow Robert Shepherd, adding that the robot can traverse on a variety of surfaces including felt cloth, gravel, mud and even Jell-O.

There were drawbacks. The robot is tethered to an external power source and scientists need to find a way to integrate the source before it can be deployed in the real world…

I love this stuff. Of course, I can see the first battlefield simulation being defeated by a Jack Russell terrier.

Or the first real-life use searching for earthquake survivors in a collapsed building? I can hear some poor bugger trapped in the rubble screaming in panic when he sees a version of this wriggling towards him in the dust and darkness.

They can bring back the Davy Crockett rocket -
One of the dumbest nuclear weapons ever made!

The Defense Department, considered by some a black hole of federal spending, is promising lawmakers it will open its books and show in detail how the billions are spent. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta…admitted Thursday that the Pentagon must improve its accountability.

“While the department’s systems do tell us where we are spending taxpayer funds, we do not yet have the details and controls necessary to pass an audit,” Panetta said in remarks prepared for his appearance before the House Armed Services Committee. “This is inexcusable and must change.”

Until now, the Pentagon has never been subjected to a so-called “clean audit,” a full examination of its spending. In the past, the Defense Department had pledged to provide Congress with auditable financial statements by 2017. Panetta shaved several years off that deadline to deliver that key part of how the Pentagon monitors its spending.

“I have directed the department to cut in half the time it will take to achieve audit readiness for the Statement of Budgetary Resources, so that in 2014 we will have the ability to conduct a full budget audit,” Panetta said. “We owe it to the taxpayers to be transparent and accountable for how we spend their dollars, and under this plan we will move closer to fulfilling that responsibility.”

The Statement of Budgetary Resources, according to the Pentagon, shows what funds the Defense Department received, what was obligated and what checks were written. It is just one of four parts of the internal accounting. The other three, including a consolidated balance sheet and a net cost for the entire department, will remain on the 2017 timetable.

Perish the thought that actual budget cuts have a chance to go beyond the smoke-and-mirrors cuts already agreed to between the White House, Congressional Republicans, Democrats with big military bases delivering welfare checks to their districts and the ever-popular military-industrial complex that has been sucking at at the teat of taxpayer dollars for decades.

Who needs a Cold War when you can have the War on Terror producing non-consumable goods forever and a day?

Daylife/AP PHoto used by permission

The policy is gone, but the lawsuits continue. Two days after the end of “don’t ask, don’t tell“, lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union were in United States Court of Federal Claims in Washington Thursday arguing on behalf of service members who say they received only half their separation pay when they were discharged for their sexuality.

The lead plaintiff is a former Air Force staff sergeant, Richard Collins, who served nine years before two civilian co-workers observed him exchanging a kiss with his civilian boyfriend and reported it to his superiors. When he received an honorable discharge under “don’t ask, don’t tell,” his separation pay was half what it should have been…

According to a statement by the A.C.L.U., “Federal law entitles service members to separation pay if they have been involuntarily discharged from the military after completing at least six years of service. But in 1991, the Defense Department adopted an internal policy that automatically cuts a former service member’s separation pay in half if the service member is discharged because of ‘homosexuality.’”

The A.C.L.U. said that the half-pay policy was enacted before “don’t ask, don’t tell” was passed, and so was not changed when that law was repealed. The group said the Defense Department can change the policy on its own, without congressional approval.

The government has asked the court to dismiss the case…proving once again that the Pentagon not only doesn’t give a damn about the Constitution it is supposed to be fighting for – our military executives couldn’t care less about the rights of members of the armed forces who have served loyally and diligently.

Beancounters are the same everywhere. Saving a buck while screwing individuals is OK in their book.

 
On Tuesday, 24 February 2009, two days before Obama presented a proposed budget to Congress, Barney Frank (D-Mass.) and other House Democrats called on the Obama administration to reduce military spending, setting up a potential clash between House liberals and the White House. At a White House summit on fiscal responsibility the day before, Obama had cast doubt on the future of an $11.2 billion project to upgrade the fleet of presidential helicopters. But Obama has shown no indication that he plans to reduce, or even freeze, overall defense spending, which will be around $650 billion this fiscal year.

Frank says that’s a mistake. “To accomplish his goals of expanding health care and other important quality of life services without ballooning the deficit,” Frank noted, Obama has no choice but to decrease military spending. He said that spending excessive amounts of money on the defense budget “precludes” the Obama administration from addressing other priorities: “If we do not get military spending under control, we will not be able to respond to important domestic needs.”

Acknowledging that Obama does plan to save hundreds of billions of dollars by withdrawing from Iraq, Frank said the President must go further and take big whacks at big-ticket military projects. He pointed to programs like the Air Force’s F-22 fighter, the Osprey troop transport, and missile defense as expensive, unnecessary Cold War-era boondoggles. He singled out missile defense in Eastern Europe as a particularly wasteful use of American taxpayers’ money. “I will confess that I am not a regular reader of Iranian-issued fatwahs,” Frank quipped. “And probably one of the ones I missed was the one where they threatened devastation against Prague. We plan to spend several billion dollars to protect the Czech Republic against Iran. That’s either a great waste of money or a very belated way to make up for Munich…”

But don’t look to Congress to reduce military spending on its own, Frank said: “Left entirely on our own, the Congress will not do the cuts in the military budget that ought to be there.” Military spending cuts will only come, he said, if there’s grassroots pressure for them…

Overdue. We can cut over 20% of the military budget just by bringing our troops home from the 175 countries where they are stationed. At a minimum, the cost of maintaining someone in the military is doubled when they are stationed outside the continental US.

Go to www.congress.org and email your Congress-critter and President Obama. Tell ‘em to Bring the Troops Home Now!

A U.S. military task force has discovered that part of a $2.16 billion transportation contract was diverted through a murky network of subcontractors and into the hands of a group of Afghan power-brokers, criminals and Taliban insurgents…Roughly $600 million of the contract had been spent before authorities were alerted to the scandal…

Only part of that money, however, is believed to have been diverted to “nefarious elements,” the source added…Well, that makes me feel better.

The official said it appears some of the payments were given for truckers to be assured of safe passage through insurgent areas of Afghanistan. As has happened in other instances, trucking contractors paid off local drivers who then turned around and paid local security forces, who in turn paid insurgents in their areas…

Actually, when I worked in traffic management, we did the same thing to get our shipments through Mafia checkpoints in Newark.

The contract program, called Host Nation Trucking — which expires in September — has since been replaced by a more stringent system that requires up to 40 different contractors — an effort to reduce overall reliance on a single firm.

The new program is also meant to tighten accounting measures of second and third party vendors, an area various groups had previously been able to exploit, the source said…

Government officials are currently pursuing corrective actions against the trucking firms, including suspensions and limits on work, though all eight companies still remain on the U.S. payroll.

If you’re functioning here at home within a Republican-devised system like “mark to market” accounting, why expect the Pentagon to deploy legitimate accounting and oversight in a war zone created by the same phonies?

Wyoming house big enough to house 2000 corporations?

Two companies incorporated at a little house in Cheyenne, Wyoming, won Pentagon contracts after their owner took advantage of the state’s liberal incorporation laws to create the firms using an alias, and then represented them as minority-owned to win favorable treatment as a military supplier. The firms and their owner were later banned from doing business with the Pentagon for providing knock-off parts.

A Reuters investigation has found that more than 2,000 companies are registered at 2710 Thomes Avenue in Cheyenne, the headquarters for Wyoming Corporate Services, a business incorporation company that specializes in corporate anonymity.

Among the firms incorporated there is a small subset that make their money from government contracts.

A Reuters review of federal contracting databases found nine firms registered at 2710 Thomes Avenue have been awarded 93 contracts worth more than $1.6 million by a half dozen government agencies, including the U.S. Department of Defense, the U.S. Treasury’s Internal Revenue Service, the Centers for Disease Control, and the Department of Veterans Affairs.

More than 90 percent of the contracts were awarded by the Department of Defense…

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Daylife/Reuters Pictures used by permission

From nearly the beginning of his tenure as secretary of defense, Robert Gates set his sights on ending a controversial practice in the U.S. Army known as “stop loss.” Wednesday he announced he’s done it.

“There are no Army soldiers stop-lossed,” Gates announced at a Senate hearing.

“Stop loss” is the Pentagon’s policy of forcing some service members to stay in uniform beyond the date they expected to leave the service.

It’s used during times when the Pentagon needs as many troops as possible, such as at the start of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.

As far back as 2007, just months after taking over as defense secretary, Gates said about stop loss: “It is an issue. It troubles me. And I think it is a strain. “

But he couldn’t eliminate it because tens of thousands of soldiers, many of them experienced sergeants, would have left the Army if not for stop loss. But in March of 2009, he announced that the practice would be phased out by 2011.

And according to an Army spokesman, Lt. Col. Timothy Beninato, as of May 31 there are no more soldiers under stop loss, except for approximately 131 who were previously stop-lossed and are now hospitalized or receiving rehabilitation resulting from wounds or illness incurred while on duty in “a hostile fire” area…

All told, about 120,000 soldiers have been subjected to stop loss orders, the Pentagon says. Under federal law, each of them is entitled to $500 for each month they were stop-lossed…

If you’re a veteran who can lay claim as one of those held captive in the military under the stop loss rule, you can file a claim online at www.defense.gov/stoploss.

And thank you for service above and beyond the contract your government originally made with you.