H&I Fires* 16 JAN 2007

it's Oscar! now i gotta start saving up my Skyway Soap wrappers and sending in jingles for the big contest so i can win one!!!

"Yeoman Warder of Her Majesty's Royal Palace and Fortress the Tower of London, and Members of the Sovereign's Body Guard of the Yeoman Guard Extraordinary." Now is that just not one of the coolest things you can imagine having stuck up on your "I love me" wall?!?!? I am impressed, the requirements just to be eligible are beyond imagining, and as I understand it, include a perfectly blemish-free military record. Shoot, I'd of lost out on that in year one. And she joined when she was 16! Amazing!

And the winnah is: "As clean as the sky itself!" - from "Have Space Suit, Will Travel"

Hello All, We've had the great pleasure of engaging John over on OneUtah. I see he's invited you all as well. Among our contributing authors, we have some vets but also some very anti-war activists like myself. I think we all agree regardless, it would be unfair to leave the Iraqi to fix what we broke. How do you feel about the idea of pulling out US troops, and forcing the war-profiteers to use their easy-made profits to buy back IEDs and weapons from the insurgents, then hire the re-deployed troops back as mercenaries and pay them contractor salaries to protect the most vulnerable ethnic groups and rebuilding projects? Just kidding, it would never happen. Its the American way, we can't force our private gov't contractors to sacrifice profit, but its hardly fair that our troops and families have to pay the price for Bush's terrible mistake. I mean, who else is paying the price here? Certainly not me. Why should I give a s***? I got no kids, no family serving, no chance of me or anyone I know being drafted (but I sure am making a ton on some contractor stocks). What the hell do I care? I guess I could support the surge. It might work, right? Right? I'm conflicted. Am I supporting the troops by supporting the surge or redeployment? Someone help me here. ps: Is Denizens John? [***added to avoid the net nannies]

Before you go asking the Pakistanis to do more you should check this out PBS Frontline - Return of The Taliban I would guess the article was planted to appease the Bush admin. Notice how they play it down? No high values, no clear report?

Why should I give a s***? I got no kids, no family serving, no chance of me or anyone I know being drafted (but I sure am making a ton on some contractor stocks). Maybe basic human dignity would impel you "give a s***." See also BCR's post.

Actually, Maggie, I *did* specifically mention you and Werekitty as being, um, randy at times. But only in a PG17 way...

re: Profit. Profit is good. No bid contracts are bad. Conflict of interest is very bad (Haliburton/Cheney). How do you feel about Bush trying to fire the inspector general in Iraq? re: Do for a living I left the for profit world in 2002 (with a nice payout) to dedicate my life to non-profit work. I sit on 4 non-profit boards including rolusa.org and theasen.com (we do a lot of work in KS) which I co-founded, hrecutah.org, Afterschool Utah and powerinyou.org. They all help children. I donate a ton of money to liberal/progressive causes including HRC. Last year I served as SLC mayor Rocky Anderson's interim communications director as a volunteer. I've run several political campaigns, (google me) and I donate tons of time designing, maintaining, and hosting websites for 8 non-profits. I recently accepted a job with dufoundation.org / manyone.net which is the coolest thing on the planet. it will be the PBS of the web. The new browser technology will be free, clickless and adapted for the handicapped. You mentioned James Lee Witt. Coincidentally, he is one of our top advisors.

Sigh. The condescension continues. I'm Denizen ry(short for Ryan) aka gollum(at times). If you really want to 'whip it out' and start comparing notes on terrorist organizations and the like I'm down with it. I've got a pretty large database. I can also call on friends who work at DIA, NSA, and one analyst who lives in ALaska who started teaching me this game(one L. Sidney Trevethan who has written for FAS from time to time and things like A Brief History of MAD and Prognosis for CHina)---but John is smart enough to tell me absolutely nothing. Do you really want to go into the nuts and bolts of the problems of Pakistan qua Pakistan or just in relation to terrorism, shaky support of Pervez(he and I are on a first name basis/joke), and the problems of the populace of Pakistan irt GWOT? I can do that too. I prefer to talk about China and the Far East, seeing as that what I was originally taught by Sid, but can do more. Don't just assume, because that's what you're doing(don't assume because it makes an @55 out of u and me), that I don't know much. You'd be surprised what quite a few of us actually do know. Like, that North Waziristan peace deal may(is often assumed to be with no real, in open source materials anyways, proof to back up the assertion) allowing safe haven for the remnant,and now resurgent, aQ. Or, maybe the peace deal bought off the local warlords in NW and now aQ only has SW as a safe haven. You seen anything open source that definitively says one way or another? And a tv newsmagazine is not typically considerd a good source(unless their provided primary sources are stellar), as I've been told quite loudly over the phone more than once. You might want to check your parallax filter, homes. For later in the day numbers did come out(30---on NPR even). Or this could simply be an event untied to American domestic politics, maybe? Naw. All politics is local. Even in remote Southern Waziristan. Also, keep in mind. I'm naturally verbose. Extrememly. John's been trying real hard to break me of that habit. If I had my druthers there'd have been ten paragraphs, at least, of background with that blurb(with all of them actually). But that isn't what the H&I is for, and that's one of my sucesses(I kept it short and sweet and left the article to largely say everything for itself). Welcome to the Club. Don't be surprised after a while if the only seat at the Castle Bar is next to me(OD, journalist OWen Dwyer, is also one such personage, also of rather a blue hue for these parts). It happens. (dang, and now I'm late on doing my H&I building. No stale cheetos from John for me today).

I like the body armor. It looks kewl. Now if it could be digitized color like the CDUs, it would be all right. One other question; how does it compare in weight to what they are wearing now, and is it more efficient? I like the nod to 'Dune' in the water supply but he has yet to learn to recycle sweat. I am still waiting for my comments to pop up over at OneUtah.

John - I really must commend you on the thoughtful and polite way you are conducting your discourse with Cliff, while at the same time saying the things that need to be said, e.g. KBR being in Kosovo long before Cheney was VP. I must admit that my tolerance for the left actually went down during my time in Iraq so I know I would not have been so self-controlled.

Maggie - I deliberately didn't go into that, mainly because my memory is fuzzy on the subject. But, IIRC, there are two - French, and Russian, neither of which were wanting to play in that sandbox.

John, Reviewing your thoughts on contracting, it sounds like you appropriately critical. But you just can't leave it alone without the tribal hat tip:

Now - I agree that the going-in contracting and after was badly handled. And a Democrat gov't wouldn't have handled that any better

Well John, thats just so completely disingenuous it doesn't really justify a response. But I'll you and your readers the benefit of the doubt that you haven't been paying attention or that you think Clinton would have fired professional career procurement officers and replaced them with political appointments. For starters, google Halliburton+Greenhouse+FBI (I would have provided a link but your system refused google 'dot' com) Just a small snippet:

On the eve of the 2004 presidential election, allegations about the corrupt relationship between the Bush administration and Halliburton Corp., the company formerly run by Vice President Richard Cheney, have taken center stage once again. Press reports Friday said that the FBI has expanded an ongoing investigation into contracts obtained by Halliburton’s subsidiary, Kellogg Brown & Root (KBR), in Iraq and Kuwait.

There are several American companies far BETTER qualified for oil field work like Schlumbeger, but they are competitors to the VP's company.

This is not the first time that top Pentagon officials appointed by George W. Bush have overruled career civil service professionals to award contracts to Vice President Cheney’s old firm. In the fall of 2002, an Army lawyer objected to the initial Iraq-related contract for KBR, $1.9 million to draw up a plan for operating the country’s oil infrastructure after a war. While tiny in relation to the huge oil field recovery and military supply contracts doled out later, this award was critical because it gave KBR an edge over any potential competitor. The Government Accountability Office later determined that the Army lawyer had been right.

So John, when you say "Democrat gov't wouldn't have handled that any better", I think you are just making a hat tip. And this super-apology takes the cake -

"and in fact the Clinton administration set the stage for it... not intentionally of course, but indirectly."

Thanks for listening. I do love you all. btw: Balkans doesn't count, that was NATO

Heh.

btw: Balkans doesn't count, that was NATO.

Oh, really, Cliff. You can do better than that. Disingenous? Cliff, please. Allow me to give you a tribal hat tip back to you. Google(dot)com produces scads of spam. We hateses them. Even as we uses them. Um, Cliff - perhaps you didn't follow the point - but the Clinton Administration spent 8 years implementing the drawdown started under Bush the Elder. They committed us to the Balkans. Ergo, they set the stage, like it or not, for the paradigm used in contracting out services. Or do only Republican administrations get to take the blame for that sort of thing, as the Democrats are seemingly without sin in regards to waste and mismanagement?

To reinforce your point, John. On all of my Southern Watch deployments (1994 - 1998), the Air Force had already outsourced a lot of logistic support. There were just enough active-duty cooks to supervise the contract cooks. In fact, when we deployed to Bahrain in the fall of 1997, we had one MSgt and one SSgt to supervise meal preparation in 3 chow halls for almost 6,000 troops. BTW, those 2 individuals were also responsible for billeting, laundry and MWR. Needless to say, we eventually plussed them up to 20. In case you were wondering, the pre-positioned MREs had been destroyed by the intense heat in the warehouse so we only had a 3 day supply on hand, so we were stuck with contract cooks. BTW, I still thank you are being very polite when I don't think I could.

So, let's look at this. 1991 punting of IA out of Kuwait. How many divisions were deployed by that MNF? How many US divisions were in existence? What was the ratio of trigger pullers to support arm personel?(Heh, I've been looking for the pre-2000 FM on Doctrine myself for a while. Hard to come by. But, it is quite obvious that the two were different. 14 divisions vs. 10 and the 14 had not gone thru 'Transformation' yet. A bit hueristic, but still provable and true.) 2003-present invasion of Iraq. How many total divisions? Make up of forces relating support arm to combat arm? Are the two the same? 1991 Kuwait punting: Kuwaiti social/political/economic infrastructure in place and ready to re-take over. Tiny country the size of Rhode Island. Small and defined instances of needed help(like putting out oil field fires) that exceeded indigenous ability to handle. 2003-current invasion of Iraq: what was in place to take over(we assumed there was. CHalabi and such were to take over quickly and get the country running again. Didn't work out that way. Not. At. All.). Were there small and well defined instances of capabilities that exceeded the grasp of indigenous forces(what indigenous forces, I ask. There was nothing left but a vacuum.). Are these two similar on this level? If you're going to do comparisons at least look for things that make sense to compare. Don't employ false parrallels. And, let's look at the leap of logic you're expected to do here. "Cliff - military support services get contracted out because mostly of end-strength issues, and trying to push "tail" into contracted positions, so that "teeth" can be maintained." What does this mean? How many MP batts were stricken or moved to Reserve component to keep combat arms units of similar size in the Active Component? Same for other non-combat arms slots. They were pared off to keep the cambat arms. Now, "reflecting the Pentagon's growing post-Cold War reliance on contractors for such jobs as providing security, interrogating prisoners, cooking meals, fixing equipment and constructing bases that were once reserved for soldiers." Is there a pattern to be gleaned here? What is it? Does it jive with both claims and fit all evidence? Why yes there is one and it fits all the anecdotals supplied here and the evidence, not the opinions but the actual evidence (the two aren't the same---general philosophy and rhetoric classes my good man). Downsizing the military, shrinking its budget, and deploying it often(1991 GW, Bosnia, Somalia, Haiti. Four major deployments in less than 10 years) while paying for the deployments out of the procurement funds eventually had a cost. Occams razor leads you to the conlusion that: by going cheap in peace time we had fewer bodies for doing all kinds of functions in war time, like cooks, police, engineering, and intelligence(everyone hates intel weenies anyways from the way you all talk about them. Haters.). THat's the next logical step you're being proded to at least consider. For some reason we're all expected to, having considered the possibility of conspiracy and rejected it upon reflection and contrary evidence and employing logic, return to it and cherish it as truth? If you care to look you can also see this argued in the USNI's Proceedings magazine over the dental field in the Navy(some time last year or 2005. Can't remember and I'm not going to dig thru the mags at 5am. Sorry, but I'm not gonna.). No conspiracy. Just the realities of budgeting. No money to keep professional dentists on the roster in the USN---so they farm it out to whoever can do it cheapest. No conspiracy(unless KBR is in the dentist business). Parrallax strikes again, me thinks. What you know effects how you interpret what is presented to you. (The point of the Proceedings articles is that this is a rather widespread and re-occuring problem. When you are aware and understand the widespread nature of the problem Iraq does not jump out as a singularity anymore. It's just one more symptom of the same disease.).

Cliff, I answered your contracting question with a post of it's own.

Oldloadr - Very good, and see, you did handle it calmly!