Commission Finds U.S. Paid For Shoddy Work in Iraq, Afghanistan

The Commission on Wartime Contracting released its interim report June 10, telling U.S. lawmakers of cases of shoddy construction, redundant work and a general lack of oversight of construction and support contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Examples included substandard work on the future headquarters for U.S. forces in Afghanistan, the New Kabul Compound. Members of the commission toured the facility in April and found unusable bathrooms, cracks in the structure, sinking sidewalks and broken pipes. In another example, the Army awarded a $30 million contract for the construction of a dining facility at Camp Delta, Iraq. The request for that contract was based on outdated paperwork that didn't take into account that an existing dining facility at the camp was being remodeled and expanded. Though the final report is to outline recommendations for fixing contracting problems, the issues are so pressing that the commission urged corrective action well ahead of its final report, which is due next year, Michael Thibault, co-chairman of the commission and a former deputy director of the Defense Contract Audit Agency, told congressmen on Capitol Hill. Members of the commission described their findings at a hearing of the House Oversight Committee's national security panel in conjunction with the report's release.
There are more than 240,000 contractors supporting U.S. activities in Iraq and Afghanistan - more than the number of U.S. military personnel in those areas, Thibault said. About 80 percent of those contractors are foreign nationals, according to the report.
Congress has appropriated about $830 billion to fund U.S. operations in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001. As of May 27, 1,360 contractor employees have died in Iraq and Afghanistan; 4,973 military personnel have died in the two war zones.
The bipartisan, congressionally mandated committee was created last year and has gathered information from visits to bases in Iraq and Afghanistan, and dozens of meetings with military, contractors and employees from the State Department and United States Agency for International Development (USAID).
One worry voiced repeatedly during the hearing was that the military will have to depend on contractors even more, and with even less oversight, with a drawdown of troops from Iraq.
As troops are withdrawn, "we're probably going to have to rely on contractors who remain there to close down those bases" and transfer appropriate equipment to Iraqis, said Grant Green, a member of the commission and a former undersecretary of state for management and assistant secretary of defense.
One contract that got a lot of attention at the hearing is the massive Logistics Civil Augmentation Program (LOGCAP), which covers a wide range of logistics and support activities. The current iteration of the program, LOGCAP III, is a 10-year, multibillion-dollar sole-source contract held by KBR. The Army is in the midst of transitioning to the next iteration, LOGCAP IV, under which KBR, DynCorp International and Fluor International compete for task orders, but commissioners told the congressmen that the transition isn't happening quickly enough. Moreover, the addition of two contractors to the program will exacerbate the shortage of military personnel picked to oversee contracts in addition to their regular duties.
The military's LOGCAP management office is handling the transition to the next LOGCAP program with not more than 13 personnel on its staff at a time and has augmented its staff with personnel from another contractor, Serco, according to the report.