popular logistics

James Risen reports in the Times of July 18th (Electrical Risks at Iraq Bases Are Worse Than Said)  that

Shoddy electrical work by private contractors on United States military bases in Iraq is widespread and dangerous, causing more deaths and injuries from fires and shocks than the Pentagon has acknowledged, according to internal Army documents.

During just one six-month period — August 2006 through January 2007 — at least 283 electrical fires destroyed or damaged American military facilities in Iraq, including the military’s largest dining hall in the country, documents obtained by The New York Times show. Two soldiers died in an electrical fire at their base near Tikrit in 2006, the records note, while another was injured while jumping from a burning guard tower in May 2007.  Electrical problems were the most urgent noncombat safety hazard for soldiers in Iraq, according to an Army survey issued in February 2007. It noted “a safety threat theaterwide created by the poor-quality electrical fixtures procured and installed, sometimes incorrectly, thus resulting in a significant number of fires.”

The New York Times published three articles in one day about fiscal impropriety, abuse of power, or incompetence of the Bush Administration.

On the front page, James Risen writes “Army Overseer Tells of Ouster Over KBR Stir.” Charles Smith says he was fired from his job with the Army for refusing to approve paying more than $1 Billion to KBR after “Army auditors had determined that KBR lacked credible data or records for more than $1 billion.” Smith, an employee of the Army for 31 years, was quoted in The Times saying “the money going to KBR was money being taken away from the troops, and I wasn’t going to do that.” This is another case of firing the whistle-blower. As a patriot, it makes my blood boil.

According to Risen, the Pentagon has recently awarded KBR a 10 year, $150 Billion contract in Iraq, which indicates that we will be in Iraq for another 10 years.

Eric Lichtblau wrote “Grand Jury Said to Look at Attorneys’ Dismissals” that Justice Deptartment Prosecutors are using a grand jury to investigate criminal accusations that grew from the dismissals of nine United States attorneys. Some employees in the civil rights division of the Justice Department have said that they were given a “political litmus test.” The Wall Street Journal reported Monday that Bradley Schlozman, acting head of the civil rights division may be the subject of a “grand jury referral” focusing on perjury charges. Schlozman admitted to Congress that he had bragged about his success in politicizing the Justice Department. Alberto Gonzales, the former Attorney General, may also have committed perjury in his testimony about wireless eavesdropping by the National Security Agency.

As a patriot, this too makes my blood boil. The Government of the United States has always been subordinate to The Law, not The Party. This is the United States, not Communist China, Soviet Russia, Baathist Syria, or Saddam’s Iraq.

The Times also carried Judge Backs “White House in Dispute over E-Mail” a story by the Associated Press reporting the decision, by Judge Coleen Kollar-Kotelly, that the White House Office of Administration is exempt from the Freedom of Information Act. Since its creation, in 1978, the Office of Administration has responded to Freedom of Information requests. The White House has acknowledged problems with it’s e-mail system, while saying that any missing e-mail messages can be found on backup tapes. In a related matter, a judge is considering whether to instruct the Executive Office of the President on steps it must take to safeguard electronic messages. I am not a lawyer, however, I think that Judge Kollar-Kotelly is wrong. If she is making law, as a judicial activist, at least she is doing so legally.

These articles are reproduced below.

Exceptionally sad. Greg Mitchell reports about the deaths of Travis Twigg, 36, who enlisted in the Marine Corps in 1993, and his brother Willard, 38.

The epidemic of suicides among veterans of the Iraq war with PTSD continues. The latest that has surfaced involves a decorated vet who wrote about his PTSD for the Marine Corps Gazette– and this week killed himself and his brother after a long police chase in Arizona.

Police have discovered no motive for the killings, nor why the brothers earlier in the week may have planned to commit suicide by driving into the Grand Canyon — Thelma and Louise style.

Staff Sgt. Travis Twiggs, 36, who enlisted in the Marine Corps in 1993 and held the combat action ribbon — and met President Bush a few weeks ago — wrote a lengthy article in the January issue of the Marine Corps Gazette detailing his efforts to deal with post-traumatic stress disorder. Tom Ricks, The Washington Post military reporter, recalls in an online piece today, that he carried excerpts from that piece early this year.

Twiggs loved his country so much he named a daughter America, The Arizona Republic reports today.

His brother was Willard J. Twiggs, age 38.

“All this violent behavior, him killing his brother, that was not my husband. If the PTSD would have been handled in a correct manner, none of this would have happened,” Kellee Twiggs, the wife of Staff Sgt. Travis Twiggs, said. She said he began changing after his second tour of duty in Iraq, and worsened after he returned from his third stint there, when he lost two good friends from his platoon.

Senator Jim Webb of Virginia is the proponent of expanded veteran’s benefits, which have drastically declined in actual value since World War II. Webb’s proposed legislation would pay for the benefits by increasing income tax only on households with incomes in excess of $1 million annually.

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and his allies have introduced their own version of the bill, which would reserve the most generous benefits for those who have served at least 12 years. Webb pointed out that it would exclude the vast majority of service members:

Seventy to 75 percent of the ground troops in the Army and the Marine Corps have left the service by the end of their first enlistment. And those are the people who are not being taken care of. … They are not getting an opportunity for the first-class education they deserve.

As Webb pointed out, conservatives need to match their rhetoric on supporting the troops with their actions.

Think Progress: Webb: Bush Would Be First President In History To Veto Benefits For Vets

Michael Yon Online: he’s a U.S. veteran who’s been blogging about the war from Iraq, apparently pleasing and irritating people on both ideological sides of things. If  there’s a discernible ideology here, it’s the U.S. Special Forces notion that you win over cultures and communitites with a lot of engagement, community-building, and (physical) infrastructure construction.

I wouldn’t have learned about Michael Yon’s work if I hadn’t found a piece about it on BlogRunner, a site started by The New York Times, and which had a link to this profile of Michael Yon by Richard Perez-Pena.

The Post World War II G.I. Bill paid 100% of tuition for veterans. Plus other benefits. Now it maxes out at $800 month. As U.S. Senators Jim Webb and Chuck argued in “A Post-Iraq G.I. Bill,” The New York Times, November 8, 2007: “[i]t is hardly enough to allow a veteran to attend man community colleges.

“In terms of providing true opportunity, the World War II G.I. Bill was one of the most important pieces of legislation in our history. It paid college tuition and fees, bought textbooks and provided a monthly stipend for eight million of the 16 million who served. Many of our colleagues in the Senate who before the war could never have dreamed of college found themselves at some of the nation’s finest educational institutions.

Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey went to Columbia on the G.I. bill; John Warner of Virginia to Washington and Lee and the University of Virginia Law School; Daniel Inouye of Hawaii to the University of Hawaii and the George Washington University Law School; and Ted Stevens of Alaska to the University of California, Los Angeles, and Harvard Law School.

College costs have skyrocketed, and a full G.I. Bill for those who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan would be expensive. But Congress has recently appropriated $19 billion next year for federal education grants purely on the basis of financial need. A G.I. Bill for those who have given so much to our country, often including repeated combat tours, should be viewed as an obligation.

We must put together the right formula that will demonstrate our respect for those who have stepped forward to serve in these difficult times. First-class service to country deserves first-class appreciation.

Senators Jim Webb and Chuck Hagel, A Post-Iraq G.I. Bill , The New York Times, November 9, 2007.

Wikileaks has a report, “U.S. Military Equipment in Iraq (2007),” based on leaked documents, outlining the array and cost of equipment held by United States forces in Iraq:

Important points (on our first reading) include: Chemical and biological weapons portable facilities

The United States has been caught with at least 2,386 low-grade chemical weapons deployed in Iraq. The items appear in a spectacular 2,000 page leak of nearly one million items of US military equipment deployed in Iraq given to the government transparency group Wikileaks. The items are labeled under the military’s own NATO supply classification Chemical weapons and equipment.

In earlier wars, failures to supply troops were the basis of scandals. Shouldn’t they be now? From yesterday’s New York Times:

Hundreds of United States marines may have been killed or wounded by roadside bombs in Iraq because Marine Corps officials refused an urgent request in 2005 from battlefield commanders for blast-resistant vehicles, an internal military study concludes.

The study, written by a civilian Marine Corps official, accuses the service of “gross mismanagement” in delaying the deliveries of the mine-resistant, ambush-protected trucks for more than two years.

Maj. Manuel Delarosa, a Marine Corps spokesman, called the study “predecisional staff work” and said it would be inappropriate to comment on it.

Cost was a driving factor in the decision to turn down the request for the vehicles, known as MRAPs, according to the study. Authorities in the United States saw the vehicles, which can cost as much as $1 million each, as a financial threat to programs aimed at developing lighter vehicles that were years from being fielded.

After Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates declared the MRAP the Pentagon’s No. 1 acquisition priority in May 2007, the trucks began to be shipped to Iraq in large quantities.

The vehicles weigh as much as 40 tons and have been effective at protecting American forces from roadside bombs, the weapon of choice for Iraqi insurgents. Only four American service members have been killed by such bombs while riding in MRAPs; three of those deaths occurred in older versions of the vehicles.

The study’s author, Franz J. Gayl, catalogs what he says were flawed decisions and missteps by midlevel managers in the Marines that occurred well before Mr. Gates replaced Donald H. Rumsfeld in December 2006.

Mr. Gayl, the science and technology adviser to Lt. Gen. Richard F. Natonski, has clashed with his superiors in the past and filed for whistle-blower protection last year.

Among its findings, the Jan. 22 study concluded that budget and procurement managers failed to recognize the damage being done by roadside bombs in late 2004 and early 2005, and were convinced that the best solution was adding more armor to Humvees. Humvees, even with extra layers of steel, proved incapable of blunting the powerful explosives used by insurgents.

The study also found that an urgent February 2005 request for MRAPs got lost in bureaucracy. It was signed by Brig. Gen. Dennis J. Hejlik, who asked for 1,169 of them. The Marines could not continue to take “serious and grave casualties” caused by roadside bombs when a solution was commercially available, wrote General Hejlik, who was a commander in western Iraq from June 2004 to February 2005, and who has since been promoted to major general.

Mr. Gayl cites documents showing General Hejlik’s request was shuttled to a civilian logistics official at the Marine Corps Combat Development Command in suburban Washington who had little experience with military vehicles. As a result, there was more concern over how the MRAP would upset the Marines’ supply and maintenance chains than there was in getting the troops a truck that would keep them alive, the study contends.

The study says Gen. James T. Conway, the Marine Corps commandant, was not told of the gravity of General Hejlik’s request and the real reasons it was shelved. That resulted in General Conway giving “inaccurate and incomplete” information to Congress about why buying MRAPs was not forcefully pursued.

The Combat Development Command, which decides what gear to buy, treated the MRAP as an expensive obstacle to long-range plans for equipment that was more mobile and fit into the Marines Corps’ vision as a rapid reaction force, the study said.

Mr. Gayl writes that “if the mass procurement and fielding of MRAPs had begun in 2005″ in response to the known and acknowledged threats at that time “hundreds of deaths and injuries could have been prevented.”

“Study Faults Delay of Armored Trucks to Iraq,” The New York Times, 17 February 2008.

In mid-2003, the World Health organization reported on cholera in Iraq:

rom 28 April to 4 June 2003, a total of 73 laboratory-confirmed cholera cases have been reported in Iraq : 68 in Basra governorate, 4 in Missan governorate, 1 in Muthana governorate. No deaths have been reported.

[Show as slideshow]

From 17 May to 4 June 2003, the daily surveillance system of diarrhoeal disease cases in the four main hospitals of Basra reported a total of 1549 cases of acute watery diarrhea. Among these cases, 25.6 % occurred in patients aged 5 years and above.

Link.

Laura Strickler of the CBS News Investigative Unit reports on CBSNews.com that the Pentagon’s Inspector General has found that a great deal of equipment in Iraq is unaccounted for:

Tractor trailers, tank recovery vehicles, crates of machine guns and rocket propelled grenades are just a sampling of more than $1 billion in unaccounted for military equipment and services provided to the Iraqi security forces, according to a new report issued today by the Pentagon Inspector General and obtained exclusively by the CBS News investigative unit. Auditors for the Inspector General reviewed equipment contracts totaling $643 million but could only find an audit trail for $83 million.

The report details a massive failure in government procurement revealing little accountability for the billions of dollars spent purchasing military hardware for the Iraqi security forces. For example, according to the report, the military could not account for 12,712 out of 13,508 weapons, including pistols, assault rifles, rocket propelled grenade launchers and machine guns.

The report comes on the same day that Army procurement officials will face tough questions from the Senate Armed Services Committee regarding their procurement policies. One official, Claude Bolton, assistant secretary for acquisition, logistics and technology has already announced his resignation on the heels of sharp criticism of army contracting. Bolton’s resignation is effective Jan. 2, 2008. The Army has significantly expanded its fraud investigations in recent months.

A soldier who deserted en route to Iraq would be charged with desertion. And - one’s position on the war notwithstanding - it’s understandable. Military discipline depends on compliance with lawful orders.

Let’s take a different case: soldier goes to Iraq, not once but twice, serves honorably, and after the second tour is hospitalized and diagnosed  with PTSD. After being discharged from hospital, he’s told that continued medical care in the United States “would delay any chance he had at obtaining a medical release” - and that he should, therefore, return to Iraq with his unit.

We assume that a soldier with a physical injury wouldn’t be rotated back to combat. Shouldn’t this soldier - having already served twice and having suffered this way - be in a better position than the soldier who deserts before serving in combat? The Army apparently thinks otherwise.

From the AP’s November 14th piece by William Kates:

A soldier who served two combat tours in Iraq was arrested Wednesday for leaving the Army without permission more than a year ago to seek treatment for post traumatic stress disorder.

At a news conference hours before his arrest, Sgt. Brad Gaskins said he left the base in August 2006 because the Army wasn’t providing effective treatment after he was diagnosed with PTSD and severe depression.

“They just don’t have the resources to handle it, but that’s not my fault,” Gaskins said.

Tod Ensign, an attorney with Citizen Soldier, a GI rights group that is representing Gaskins, said the case is part of a “coming tsunami” of mental health problems involving Iraq and Afghanistan vets.

Last month, the Veterans Administration said more than 100,000 soldiers were being treated for mental health problems, and half of those specifically for PTSD.

Gaskins, 25, of East Orange, N.J., was taken into custody at a Watertown cafe by civilian police officers from Fort Drum and two local police officers, Ensign said. The lawyer said he had been on the phone with military prosecutors working out the details of Gaskins’ surrender when the soldier was arrested.

Fort Drum spokesman Ben Abel said after a soldier is AWOL for more than 30 days he becomes classified as a deserter and a federal arrest warrant is issued. He said he was unaware of the specifics of Gaskins’ case and declined to comment on it.

An eight-year Army veteran, Gaskins served two tours in Iraq and a peacekeeping tour in Kosovo. He said his mental health began deteriorating during his second tour in Iraq, which began in June 2005, when his job was to conduct road searches and locate improvised explosive devices.

He said after returning to Fort Drum in February 2006, he began suffering flashbacks and nightmares, headaches, sleeplessness, weight loss and mood swings that took him from depression to irrational rages. Military doctors sent him to the Samaritan Medical Center in Watertown, where he spent two weeks and was diagnosed with PTSD. When he later asked his commanders about returning to Samaritan, they told him it would delay any chance he had at obtaining a medical release, Gaskins said.

At the time, the Fort Drum mental health facility had a staff of a dozen caring for approximately 17,000 troops, Ensign said.

Gaskins said that because he had been unable to get proper help, he requested a two-week leave and went home to New Jersey, where he has been living since.

The base has expanded its mental health facility staff to 31 in the past year, with plans to add another 17 staffers, Abel said. “Is there a need for more — yes,” he said.

Gaskins said he hasn’t been able to get a job because of his PTSD, and that he and his wife have separated. He said he has only supervised visitation rights with his two children.

See also:

“Sergeant Fled Army, but Not the War in His Head,” by Fernanda Santos, in The  New York Times. 

Federal agents are investigating whether several large food companies charged the government excessively high prices for supplies to U.S. troops in Iraq and Kuwait, according to administration officials.Widening their previously disclosed inquiries into contract fraud and corruption in Kuwait and Iraq, investigators from the Justice and Defense departments are examining deals that Sara Lee, ConAgra Foods and other U.S. companies made to supply the military, officials said.

The inquiry centers on whether the companies overcharged Agility Logistics, a Kuwait-based company formerly named Public Warehousing that is the U.S. Army’s principal food supplier for the war zones. Investigators are also reviewing whether Agility Logistics improperly took payments from the food companies.

Agility Logistics, which supplies enormous amounts of fruits, vegetables and meats for more than 160,000 troops in combat zones, said in a statement that it had done nothing wrong and was fully cooperating with the investigation.

But a Justice Department lawyer, Brian Mizoguchi, told a Federal Claims Court judge in Washington on June 12 that the company’s business arrangements were the target of “a very large and active investigation into criminal fraud involving amounts in the hundreds of millions of dollars.”