(no subject)

[winterbadger]

Thanks to kmusser for this link. I'm shocked, shocked to find illegal preferences being awarded here. THis lady should be *running* the contracts office, not being pushed out of it.

Also, look here for an op-ed on the counterinsurgency in Iraq by the lovely and talented poliscidiva. Sorry, free registration required.

Comments

[winterbadger]

The "shocked, shocked" line is, of course, irony and a refernce to Maj. Renaud in Casablanca. I'm not at all surprised to find people getting raked over the coals for questioning no-bid, five-year contracts going to the VP's former company. I'm just angry about it. I work on a five-year contract, but we just won it this year agaisnt very tough opposition, and it has a cancellation clause every year in case we're not performing to the satisfaction of the contracting officer and the COTR. Why do I suspect that these limits are not placed on KBR?

There was an(other) op-ed today on the need to get USG civilian diplomatic and armed contractor personall out of Iraq; if I recall where I saw it, I'll post the link. The author was quite eloquent on the extent to whihc the attitude of these people in general and the cost of protecting them are preventing a lot of important reconstruction work from getting doen.

[flewellyn.livejournal.com]

Oh, believe me, I got the reference. :-) But you're right, it's basically payola and corruption. Try to fight it, and those benefitting from it just fight back. And they're usually in more powerful positions.

Not that this kind of thing is new to the US armed forces; the brass will always try to cover their asses when anything goes wrong by blaming underlings, which is so in keeping with the stated military tradition of honor and courage. (Here I am reminded of the USS Pueblo incident.)