Posted by D. Cupples | Yesterday, control of Iraq security contracts was moved from Sec. of State Condoleezza Rice to Defense Sec. Robert Gates. (New York Times) This comes a week after Rice testified before the House Oversight committee -- and failed to directly answer numerous questions about the State Department's failure to monitor contractors' job performance and billing.
In other words, Rice did a bad job -- so we'll let someone else try. Will the change do any good?
The Defense Department hasn't done a stellar job of protecting us taxpayers from unscrupulous contractors. Consider former Halliburton subsidiary KBR, for example. Years before the Iraq war, KBR paid $2 million to settle a Justice Department suit alleging that KBR had defrauded the government during work at a California military base back in the ‘90s. In 1997, the GAO found that KBR had over-run its estimated costs by 32% on work in the Balkans.
And yet, the Defense Department awarded KBR huge contracts relating to the Iraq war. How did KBR conduct itself under the new contracts?...
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