Contractors in Iraq, and my mixed feelings
The producers of the movie Iraq For Sale are billing this clip as “the film banned by Congress”. Actually, some Republicans just refused to have it shown during some testimony. Hey, whatever it takes to sell DVDs.
I’ll admit, I was intrigued with the portion from former KBR employees bad-mouthing their former bosses. I can neither confirm or deny any of that. However, it wouldn’t shock me if it were. I seem to recall the talk of “cost plus” from KBR employees.
The part that kind of pissed me off was really the first minute and a half, where you have a couple of former soldiers basically whining about being replaced by a contractor and having to pull guard duty.
Boo friggin’ hoo, you little wusses! And by the way, retention in the Army has been great!
You’re right, soldiers are being replaced by civilian contractors in jobs that don’t involve pulling a trigger. Whether you like it or not, SECDEF Rumsfield used a business model on the military. Basically, if it wasn’t one of the services’ “core compentencies”, it was going to be outsourced - a common theme in all major companies and corporations.
What are the core competencies of the military? Most would say, killing people and breaking things. I wouldn’t call taking names at the MWR internet cafe (see the clip) as a military “core competency”. Besides, all of the so-called highly paid contract workers I encountered at MWR internet cafes were actually guys from third-world country making maybe a few hundred dollars a month.
Anyway, watch the clip and you’ll see what I’m talking about. The first 1-1/2 minutes are what all of the above rant was about.
UPDATE - OK, yeah, the waste of government tax dollars does piss me off too. I always saw those of us in the military as having to be good stewards of the people’s tax dollars, because after all, it’s my tax dollars too. So, the fact that money was getting thrown away was indeed a crime.
On occasion, I had to work with KBR to get force protection jobs done on the FOB. There was always a debate about the use of KBR equipment and what it could be used for. According to the LOGCAP contract at that time, none of it could be used for force protection projects - even though the government was paying for the equipment. If I tried to use KBR equipment - which would just be sitting there idle otherwise - it came with a huge bill.
I’d like to conclude all this by saying that KBR employees, on the whole, really did try to work with us in the military as much as they thought they could get away with by their employers. They saw themselves as partners with us in this grand adventure in Iraq and I knew they were doing their best to do what they thought to be the right thing.
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