The Dems scandal fantasy
David Brooks:
"Over the past few months, the Democratic presidential candidates have been peddling a story. The story is that the Bush administration is circumventing the competitive bidding process to funnel sweetheart Iraq reconstruction contracts to major campaign contributors, especially Dick Cheney's old firm, Halliburton.
"...The problem with the story is that it's almost entirely untrue. As Daniel Drezner recently established in Slate, there is no statistically significant correlation between the companies that made big campaign contributions and the companies that have won reconstruction contracts.
"...The real story is that the Halliburton subsidiary, Kellogg, Brown & Root, won an open competition to provide the service support for overseas troops. This contract is called the Logcap, and is awarded every few years. KBR won the competition in 1992. It lost to DynCorp in 1997, and won it again in 2001.
"...But some circumstances are not covered under Logcap. During the Clinton administration, the Pentagon issued a temporary no-bid contract to KBR to continue its work in the Balkans. In the months leading up to the Iraq war, Defense officials realized they needed plans in case Saddam Hussein once again set his oil wells ablaze. KBR did the study under Logcap. Then in February, with the war looming, Pentagon planners issued an additional bridge contract to KBR to put out any fires that were set. KBR had the experience. Its personnel were in place. It would have been crazy to open up a three-to-five-month bidding process at that time.
"There are a number of legitimate questions Democratic candidates could be asking about our procurement system. Are we so overreliant on private contractors that the line between combat personnel and support personnel is getting blurred? Should we beef up the Pentagon procurement staff, to give us the ability to manage contracts from a wider cast of companies? What do we do if the private contractors decide to pack up and leave Iraq?
"But answering these questions would mean coming up with a positive vision of how to better proceed with our reconstruction efforts. Instead the Democratic presidential candidates are content simply to repeat demagogic and misleading applause lines."
David Brooks:
"Over the past few months, the Democratic presidential candidates have been peddling a story. The story is that the Bush administration is circumventing the competitive bidding process to funnel sweetheart Iraq reconstruction contracts to major campaign contributors, especially Dick Cheney's old firm, Halliburton.
"...The problem with the story is that it's almost entirely untrue. As Daniel Drezner recently established in Slate, there is no statistically significant correlation between the companies that made big campaign contributions and the companies that have won reconstruction contracts.
"...The real story is that the Halliburton subsidiary, Kellogg, Brown & Root, won an open competition to provide the service support for overseas troops. This contract is called the Logcap, and is awarded every few years. KBR won the competition in 1992. It lost to DynCorp in 1997, and won it again in 2001.
"...But some circumstances are not covered under Logcap. During the Clinton administration, the Pentagon issued a temporary no-bid contract to KBR to continue its work in the Balkans. In the months leading up to the Iraq war, Defense officials realized they needed plans in case Saddam Hussein once again set his oil wells ablaze. KBR did the study under Logcap. Then in February, with the war looming, Pentagon planners issued an additional bridge contract to KBR to put out any fires that were set. KBR had the experience. Its personnel were in place. It would have been crazy to open up a three-to-five-month bidding process at that time.
"There are a number of legitimate questions Democratic candidates could be asking about our procurement system. Are we so overreliant on private contractors that the line between combat personnel and support personnel is getting blurred? Should we beef up the Pentagon procurement staff, to give us the ability to manage contracts from a wider cast of companies? What do we do if the private contractors decide to pack up and leave Iraq?
"But answering these questions would mean coming up with a positive vision of how to better proceed with our reconstruction efforts. Instead the Democratic presidential candidates are content simply to repeat demagogic and misleading applause lines."
Comments
Post a Comment