Thomas P.M. Barnett :: Weblog

I agree - it's daddy and the REAL "grown ups" to the rescue; all done sotto voce.

Not sure I understand the reference to Cheney. I have been speculating that we might soon be seeing a Cheney resignation for health reasons. This would set up a new VP who would have the inside track in '08. My speculation as to who the new VP would be: Giuliani. I don't think Bush wants McCain (and obviously not Rodham Clinton) to be his successor, and this would immediately catapult Giuliani to front-runner status.

We seem to be a society out of focus. The Gates nomination is for Secretary of Defense, not Secretary of State. To review, the President and the State Department will set the foreign policy of the United States. Defense will use its resources to implement this policy.

Gates immediate charge should be to curtail the apparent flagrant war profiteering. When our soldiers have to pay $45 for a six-pack of Cokes, there is a major systemic problem. Rumsfeld failed here and America lost.

Gates second charge is to get more boots-on-the-ground and see that they are properly equipped. (Squeeze more than 10% of active duty personnel to Iraq)

Gates third charge is to define the mission in Iraq. (Disarm the place. Guns are going into the hands of people who may not be loyal)

For Gates to get there he needs to be confirmed. This may have some problems if the Dems grandstand with Iran Contra ancient history. Thanks to a caller on CSPAN, another problem may be Gates’ treatment of retired Texas A&M Professor Morgan Reynolds. Morgan Reynolds has raised questions about what really happened on 9 11. Gates does not need to get into a physics argument on 9 11.

Lastly, what the Dems should do is look at man’s personal finances. Is or was he a Carlyle, or other company which got much richer because of the Iraq war, stockholder. If so, goodbye. Is his net worth over say $30 million, even he though he never earned over $200,000 per year? If so, again goodbye.

Assuming that Gates has the right focus and passes the above obstacles, the country should benefit.

Baker's philosophy is pretty basic and goes back to an old Arab saying. It is better to have your enemy inside rather than outside the tent.

Bush may be able to define his presidency in the last two years contrary to the normal "lame duck" labels associated with the election cycle.

"When our soldiers have to pay $45 for a six-pack of Cokes"

Military Urban Legends strikes again. If there is a soldier that over paid that much for anything he/she might be the one that Kerry was referring to

Mr. Benge,

The $45 for a six pack came from the movie Iraq For Sale. See the NY Times review http://movies2.nytimes.com/2006/09/08/movies/08prof.html?ei=5090&en=b62e67ca30a6e91e&ex=1315368000&adxnnl=1&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&adxnnlx=1163118916-Phztnpo4v7jSIl2vBx4zrg

So as not to confuse anybody my local supermarket (Food Lion) sells a 12 pack of Coke for $3.50.

If you are trying to defend the DOD procurement policies in Iraq, be my guest, but be warned that I have a sense of what things cost.

Not legend, Seth. (but 30 cans rather than 6-pack)

"$45 cases of Coke: Halliburton subcontracted with La Nouvelle, a Kuwaiti company, to provide 37,200 cases of soda and ice per month for the remarkable price of $45 for a 30 can case. In one La Nouvelle delivered 37,200 only cans of soda–even though 37,200 cases had been order."

These stories are about the government over paying for these products. I am not sure whether they are even true or not; I suspect the specific incidents are true. But the sodas in question were sold to “outsourced food services” not PX items that soldiers were actually paying for out of their pocket. So really all taxpayers would be paying the price. The Senator Schumer press release seems a little closer to reality while the movie looks to be just another anti-whatever hit piece. The problem I have is when you say, “soldiers are paying”; it just provokes emotionalism and looks like someone is trying to use soldiers. Second, there is less than ten incidents sited this means that there are some abuses, but are they systematic or just random acts of greed and incompetence?

DoD is a large organization that cannot be audited and some abuses are going to happen whoever is in charge. Halliburton is not a Cheney problem they were the contractor in Bosnia when Clinton was president and even now they are often falsely accused of wrongdoing, http://www.nationalreview.com/york/york070903.asp (yes it is the National Review but you linked the NY Times) so just blaming them is a little unproductive. These abuses, if they happen, are serious problems but we are never going to solve the problem if we don’t recognize that it has little to do with the party or person in charge and more to do with the system. Overseeing these contracts and purchasing is one area that I would like to see the military be replaced by civilians. Why do we have people who are trained to fight wars trying to be accountants and contractors? Instead why not get actual accountants, just a thought.

I think the problem is deeper than the $45 or the $9 per six pack claim. There is a systemic problem that needs to be addressed. Consider:

1. Stuart Bowen Jr., the Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, has had his office terminated by wording within a law, which the President just signed. The Senators who had committee jurisdiction over the bill have no idea how the termination provision became law. The termination, in itself, is not great loss as Bowen said that his office was funded for $100 million but achieved only 4 indictments, 2 convictions and recovered only $27 million.

2. Bowen, a long time Bush corny, said on C-Span he was political appointee! He said further that all Federal Government Agency Inspector Generals were political appointees! How did we get here? The IG is supposed to be impartial, not a hack.

3. Bowen did think that cost plus contracts needed to be reviewed. It’s been a long time since I was involved with government contracts. Cost plus contract were allowed back then, but the costs had to be correct (fat chance with no oversight) and the contractor’s fees were either a fixed amount or an incentive amount, with the incentives based upon performance, timeliness and/or coming in below the target cost. I suspect that these no bid contracts issued in Iraq and for Katrina debris removal were would used to be illegal: cost plus a percentage of cost contracts. If so in Iraq, with USG funding at $8 billion per month, with hack oversight, somebody is getting rich while the brave and the well intended die or are maimed.

There could be so much money being made here that cuts could transcend party affiliation.

Back to the point of the post: not only do we have caretakers at State and DOD, but we now have a Congress that looks a lot like what came out of Watergate in 1974. I never accepted the analogy of Iraq is Vietnam, but it looks more believable this morning. We now have in charge those who left the Kurds and Shiites hanging in 1991. That can't be good.

Seth, my friend, speaking as one of those uneducated military types (I'm still not sure how that LSU BSCE and that Florida Master's got on my wall...), very little procurement and contract oversight is performed by the active duty military. More than 95% of the acquisition pros in DoD are civilian.

But, I do agree with you about civilians overseeing contracts. I've got 4 multimillion dollar task orders that I manage, and it is without question the suckiest part of my job.

Halliburton had contracts to provide services to American companies doing oil work in Algeria during the height of their civil war/insurgency.

It would be interesting to look at those contracts.

Isn't it a bit early to put Gates down as a caretaker? I was waiting for at least the confirmation hearings to give the poor guy a chance. I agree that the possibility is there for exactly this scenario but I'm a bit more cautious that somebody would give up their dream job just to be a puppet in a nasty, high risk environment. What's Gates' motivation?

I would also have to disagree with the most important issue of the State Department being Iraq. It isn't that but rather fixing State so the next President doesn't inherit a dysfunctional department as the last 10 have (Did the rot set in before Truman?). Without a competent State Department, Gap shrinkage is doomed. That's much more serious than if we have to go back into Iraq for round III a decade from now just as reworking the Pentagon so it gets off its Cold War fixation is more important than Iraq as well. Neither fight makes for very good TV though which is why you don't see much MSM coverage.

J Canepa - You have adequately made the case that government contracting is done stupidly. This neither implies war profiteering nor corruption though they may very well be there. Some of Sen. Schumer's press release look troubling. Other bits make me wonder why Schumer gets reelected. It is a plain fact of war that there's going to be a lot of dead runs in any sort of military campaign. Trucks take goods to FOBs and the FOBs consume the goods there, leaving little that must be shipped back. The trucks run back largely empty. This *should be* routine.

Now you minimize that sort of thing if you can and there are specialists who make their living doing exactly that in civilian life. But if you really wanted to have full runs in both directions all the time, the only way Halliburton could do that would be to carry Iraqi goods on the reverse runs. That would be spectacularly stupid.

As for the La Nouvelle stuff, the indictment should put things in perspective. Given the maximum, the guy under indictment would get a 160 year sentence. If there's a larger conspiracy, there's plenty of fodder for a deal in exchange for names.

If the USSR re-appeared out of the blue (or maybe the red) then Robert Gates and Condoleeza Rice would make a great team to deal with it. As it stands, neither they nor the rest of the Bush team are up to the job. They can't even spell counterinsurgency. Their flawed perception of reality continues to lead them to equally flawed strategies for calming Iraq. No Mr. President, you can't usually win a war while you're cutting budgets, downsizing the military, and allowing people to wasting or steal Defense Department money through bizarre form of corporate welfare gone Rambo.

There are no easy answers in Iraq now that it's been so badly mishandled, but the next steps should be splitting it into 3 quasi-independent countries within a loose confederation, and putting all US forces in the Kurd areas so the friendly neighbors in Turkey won't come to visit with their tanks. The Kurds are America's only real friends in the country, so we should arm them to the teeth and make them the greater among equals. We should hold a Saddam Hussein impersonation contest and make the winner the new President of the Sunni area, as long as he's willing to roll back the clock to the way things were in the 1980s. The Shiites can handle themselves. It will be interesting to see if some form of Iraqi nationalism among the Shiites will overcome Iran's influence.

Bottom line is we have no business "nationbuilding" or overthrowing governments. There are dozens of places no less friendly to terrorists than Iraq is right now, and we're not doing anything about them. You have to pick your fights. You can't start a war intending only to pacifcy a hostile country and make them like America. That didn't work in Vietnam and isn't working in Iraq. Quit wasting my tax dollars.

Halliburton, Waste management and a couple of other Contractors win most of the contracts because THEY ARE ALREADY THERE, thus, no mobilization costs. This alone usually gives them a 5 to 8 per cent edge . . sometimes more . .

And while there's continous bleating about the costs involved using these Contractors, there's little said about their suppliers, most often companies owned by Arabs and based in the Persian Gulf Area. Those people have no qualms about gouging the Americans when they can . . and as often as they can. Whatever Halliburton charges DOD for Fuel, is directly porportionate to what the Kuwaitis have charged them . . and regardless of what the press and the movie makers whine about, they fail to relate the whole picture, and often, are opionating with few facts.

Halliburton, it's subsidaries, Waste Management and the other Global Companies that are there, cannot be expected to work, without profit, in a high risk war zone . . and while there definetly needs to be oversight, most of those decrying the lack of same are very hesitant to get on a plane and go there, and do that! That being said, it is the Chain of Command's job to see that the IG does it's job . . My guess is that it goes back to the core of the Pentagon . . Those Contractors have been in place for years, long before the Gulf War, so blaming either Congress or the Current Administration is not where we need to start . . perhaps the contracting ruleset needs to be changed . .

Kinda off topic here tho . .

Okay, I'm new here, so maybe I'm missing something but you guys seem to be debating the price of Cokes, when I think the real commenting ought to be on J. Canepa's 3 charges for Gates. I submit that he's got them backwards. They should be:

1. Define the Mission

2. Put more boots on the ground

3. End war profiteering.

Not the other way around.

Of course, that's my theory. The political reality may prevent #1 and 3; the logistical reality may prevent #2.

Regards,

Allen: are you aware that Seth's military, too?

Allen,
Being military myself the uneducated soldiers comment was a joke and your response might be as well. Sarcasm sometimes doesn’t come across on the internet. My point was that it would be hard to find a soldier that would walk into a PX and over pay that much.

As for procurement, in country the S-4/G-4 seem to be the guys that ordering most of this stuff not civilians. In the case of the food items it unusually falls on the Master Sergeant in charge of the DFAC. Some other supplies might be contracted by the camp commandant or Mayors Cells. Then of course they are responsible for making sure that the work is completed or the product delivered. You even said yourself that you are overseeing multimillion contracts. Lets some of those procurement guys from the pentagon that you point out and make them do a year tour.

I was in a civil affairs unit and we negotiated contracts and oversaw work. At the government center for the entire Anbar province there was Master Sergeant in charge of education because he was a music teacher!

For whatever its worth, I agree that Glenn's order of things Gates should do makes more sense than what I proposed.

Something to reflect on is that Baker and Gates are old, old, old. Think about the famous Democratic fixer, Clark Clifford.
Time does move on and eventually Clifford screwed up.
I mean no disrespect for our older leaders and citizens but there is risk, real risk in placing so much power in such an elderly unelected individual.
We have many Senators of very advanced age as well and Nancy Pelosi is pretty close to Social Security already.
For better or worse what happens when these old players FINALLY die. The country might do better with the mistakes of the younger. Will we go the way of the USSR with an era of sclerotic leadership.
Doesn't sound like renewal.

What we need is a Sec Def that understands the nature of the new war kind of war that we are fighting but he/she also needs to understand the inner workings of the Department and is respected enough by the senior military leadership that they will listen to him and be honest in their assessments. I wonder if having one the good Generals like Abizaid, Mattis or Petraus retire and take the position would have been the answer? Then again we still have Chu and some of the other Assistant Sec, Under Sec and Deputy Sec in place that will make it difficult to make any big changes. First thing any new Sec Def will have to do is bring in a whole need team in these areas.

1. Replace upper management at DoD
2. Change priorities of the department away from large war fighting
a. Equipment
b. Training
c. Manpower
3. Break the deadlock in Iraq. This may or may not require more troops, but it wil require working with Iran.

Without an over all administration policy that works with Iran to resolve the situation in Iraq the Sec Def is going to have a hard time wrapping up the situation.

Like Montgomery said about the Malay Emergency “when we have a plan and a man we shall succeed, not otherwise”.

"DoD is a large organization that cannot be audited and some abuses are going to happen whoever is in charge."

So, why do we have all those civilian auditors on the payroll?

I guess I should have said something like "much of DoD can't be audited". I was looking for a statment from the Comptroller where he says something along these lines.