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I was taken to task for allegedly ignoring the role of military-industrial complex corporations in my recent post about the decision-making process leading up to Tuesday’s anticipated announcement regarding U.S. strategy in Afghanistan. Concern about corporate interests is well-placed, but it’s only a portion of the picture. Contractors have been a nagging problem since the U.S. began military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. With a current ratio of nearly two contractors to every soldier, the immediate problem is the number of the non-military personnel — a virtual shadow army — we are about to deploy in an escalation in Afghanistan, and the one still on the ground in Iraq.
Coincidentally, Monday was the deadline which House Oversight and Government Reform Chair Eldolphus Towns set for Defense Secretary Robert Gates to report the number, size, and details of contracts awarded for work being performed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Towns’ letter is dated November 3, giving Gates nearly a month to get his hands around these numbers and report them.
Towns has even allowed Gates to report the numbers from the Department of Defense’s records without commenting in his letter about the rather disconcerting numbers Towns has already seen based on reports from the General Accounting Office and the Commission on Wartime Contracting.
The CWC, a bipartisan entity authorized by and reporting to Congress, reported a wide range of numbers depending on the tracking source. The DOD’s Synchronized Predeployment and Operational Tracker (SPOT) reported 160,000 contractors working for the U.S. in Iraq, Afghanistan, Kuwait, and several other smaller and less active arenas this summer. However the U.S. Army Central Command’s quarterly census reported a much different number — 242,000 contractors, with much of the data gathered by hand rather than through reports. As the CWC noted, that’s a difference of roughly 80,000 between the two tallies.
Although CENTCOM’s census doesn’t include contractors working for Department of State or the Agency for International Development (USAID) and SPOT does not account for foreign nationals, it’s generally believed that 80,000 is still too broad a spread in numbers and cannot account accurately for the difference in contractors between the two systems.
It’s not exactly chump change we’re talking about when we can’t confirm how many contractors are working for DOD; based on U.S. experience in Iraq, the cost of private security contractors are roughly equivalent to U.S. soldiers, and the cost of a soldier in theater ranges between $500,000 and $1,000,000 each, depending on which area of the world and which department’s estimates you use. Using the high end of 80,000 contractors unaccounted for, well, you do the math.
When President Obama makes his announcement Tuesday, you can do the math again in your head. For every soldier he says we should muster out to Afghanistan, you can estimate at least one support person — most likely a contractor — and at least $500,000 per head.
And of course, every single contractor works for a corporation, some of which are either solid members of the military-industrial complex, being subsidiaries of other larger firms, or firmly connected to the same through a web of contracts and relationships.
Now…would you like to tell me again that I ignored the military-industrial complex corporations? Why not watch and see tomorrow night, Wednesday and beyond who really does ignore the shadow army we’ll be deploying?
[photo: Local contractors in Afghanistan discuss road building with U.S. soldiers (source: ISAF Media via Flickr)]
50 Comments
Well said, Rayne… thank you.
Astonishing numbers….money/ jobs we need right here at home too.
I made a very similar comment earlier today about this; this is one helluva stimulus package, ain’t it?
I should point out that many contractors are lowly scutt workers, performing tasks as varied as cooking and building roads as well as providing security. The argument for using contractors is based on cost, of course; local scullery help costs less than hiring from within the military, and contractors don’t have retirement packages provided by the military that soldiers have if they stay in the service for the entire career.
But ignoring this shadow deployment is risky; we’re not sending 30,000 troops, we’re sending at least 60,000 people to work in Afghanistan. This shouldn’t be written off as an expense but treated carefully like an investment.
We always forget about the real shadow military. The about two million on the Defense departments payroll that are not active soldiers, sailor, and airmen. They are they office jockeys, and hords of other duty people, who could never be asked to fight. They may wear the uniform but most are as useless as a dead horse.
Throw them in with the contrators, and the suppliers and we are paying for the most useless military establishment in the world.
Remember our Militaries sworn job is to protect and defend the United States of America. It is a job they have failed at miserably the two main times we really needed them, Pearl Harbor and 911. Even now most of it’s men and equipment are station around the world protecting others, and very few are here able to protect us. God forbid an enemy was brave enough to actually attack the shores of our nation, we would be overwhelmed before our military that is here could act.
Thanks for this Rayne, it’s a really important point. This theme is explored well over at Truthout:
Estimates for the numbers of contractors have been as high as one contractor for every soldier. As President Obama prepares to announce his decision on Afghanistan, the price of this war is also on his mind since he included Peter Orszag, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, in his last war council.
One of the reasons for the high costs of maintaining each soldier is the lack of oversight of private contractor billings over the course of these two wars. The Department of Defense (DOD), and especially the Army, has fought the auditors and the investigators in the military who have attempted to expose fraud, waste, overbillings and other abuses of costs in contractor contracts. The contractors, using contingency contracting, which is similar to the old cost plus contracts, knew that their profits and, more important, their future task orders and contracts would be priced based on what they spend in the beginning of the wars. So the contractor billing meter, especially in labor costs, spun vigorously in the first years of the war with little oversight. When the Defense Contract Audit Agency (DCAA) tried to withhold a small percentage of payment from KBR, the largest contractor, because it believed that the billings were excessive and they wanted to scrub the numbers, the Army pushed past the DCAA and paid KBR the excessive costs. This set the tone to let the contractor billings run wild.
http://www.truthout.org/1130094
Yeah, one of the links above is to a report with Orszag’s name on it. They know the numbers. Just don’t know how they’re going to justify this — at least not without some concrete measurable deliverables in a finite time period.
The other problem gnawing at me is the people of Afghanistan; there are very mixed messages from them about staying or going. Makes it hard to invest money there when we can’t get a consensus out of them on what they want. That’s a fundamental problem, though; Afghanistan is not a monolith but a collection of localities.
Recommended. Staggering burdens – oh, but Brown announced today that the Brits will be sending 500 more troops, so we’re not alone…
I would appreciate some other perspectives about Obama’s making his war escalation speech to the cadets at West Point instead of from the oval office to the entire nation. It speaks loudly to me.
thanks, rayne. this is certainly important. recommended.
blackwater is still involved but thanks to some adept legal technical shifting around in terms of alphabet covert operations departments and super secrecy … they are doing their dirty deeds and getting their huge amounts of government money. in pakistan now i believe. chilling. what about all those horrifying scandals? bad enough no legal accountability… but to keep on using them???? it is obscene.
I read this at one point:
Also the corporations are importing people from Eastern Europe and Asia is it for the menial jobs, I heard, therefore robbing the starving Afghans of employment. Some nation-building.
There is a whole carpetbagging settlement deal going on. An embassy the size of 40 football fields … or is it 80 in Baghdad. You don’t get to call it “embassy” then. That is a lie!!! The size of Vatican City they say. $1 billion for new one in Islamabad.
I think you’re going to want to update your understanding of a couple key facts:
– Civilian contractors became subject to the UCMJ due to a change in code inserted in the FY 2007 Military Authorization Act.
– The report from CBO linked in the post above along with the report by the CWC also gives more detail about the cost of contractors; the average contractor salary is the same as the average soldier. Not all contractors are private security staff; many are lowly road workers like the ones in the photo here and are paid somewhat more than local prevailing wage. The problem with the cost of contractors is the lack of controls including grossly inadequate documentation.
Thanks, Rayne, for the correction. Lesson for me in watching out for dated material when quoting statistics.
Great piece, rec’d.
great stuff there rayne, I forgot about the support requirements for each added troop
we need this post front page so the critters that use us as an arm for their research can look into these data points and use them when debating/disucssin the issue
Oh, we might get lucky, it might make it to the front page. ;-)
Debated as to whether I should have used underline or italics or bold font each time I wrote “at least.” It’s so hard to get the exact numbers or enough qualifiers to do anything more than swag costs; even some of the gov’t reports are swagged a bit for the same reasons.
We only know one number: when we sign the check.
I sure hope some congress and senate critters are reading us today, I also hope a writter at olberlannd is reading also, important stuff here
tee hee
“olberlannd”..that’s a good one, did I just make that up or has it been around?
ha! another major site is now front paging Contractors and Afghanistan – let’s just say I am better informed as a Seminal reader than that site’s, um, reporter
thank you, thank you Ms Rayne
Afghanistan bankrupted the Soviet Union. It will likely bankrupt the U.S. but not before some people make lots and lots of money.
It looks like poll results are still mixed and inconsistent on the increase, which will likely be read by the admin as support for their increase, I suppose.
http://blogs.reuters.com/frontrow/2009/11/25/the-first-draft-poll-shows-growing-us-support-for-afghan-troop-increase/
There’s one other problem to add into the mix, and that’s mixed and inconsistent feedback from the people of Afghanistan.
Received a letter from Sen. Carl Levin this past week in response to questions about Afghanistan; he mentioned in his reply,
That’s a little at odds with feedback we’ve received from other countrymen. And I’m sure this has affected the strategy we see, as much as all the other factions involved have impacted the shaping of strategy.
I think you’re going to get a somewhat different answer from every village elder, with responses varying by tribal affiliation, ethnicity and how intimidated they are by bandits or guerillas (only some of which are Talibs). This isn’t anywhere near as clean as Vietnam, where we were fighting widespread discontent with our abusive client regime and where the US base of support was clearly urban and middle class, with almost ubiguitous opposition to us in rural areas. There you have it: ambiguity abroad and at home.
What is clear, no matter what we decide, is that we need a plan that works and we need a solution to both the Pakistani-seepage problem and the our-client-is-a-corrupt-SOB problem. I personally think that we have a maesure of responsiiblity to the Afghans (including those who still want us there) to leave the country we invaded and destroyed – on the pretext to our failed global war on terra – with some hope of a future. I don’t know whether this means we should go or stay, but we need some type of plan that has a pin-hole’s chance of succeeding. If we pull out completely or largely and the country immediately goes to the dogs, descending into Somali-style stateless chaos, then we will have seriously harmed American foreign policy for decades to come. If we stay and increase and the country descends into stateless chaos, then we will have seriously harmed American foregn policy for deacdes to come. It may very well be lose lose. My question is, which way loses us less?
“Which way loses us less?”
Exactly. This was lost nearly eight years ago, no matter what level of sugar-coating/bullshit/outright denial Deadeye Cheney wants to heap upon it.
The current commander in chief is tasked with cutting the losses.
Sometimes that’s the best move.
The best cut of loss is to get out completely, of there and Iraq, and open up channels of diplomacy regarding joint investments of the regions and their resources and routes with Russia, China, Germany, France.
And the savings at home would help pull us out of our domestic depression.
As I keep saying, I DO love a good fairytale, don’t I?
The american people can only force this to happen by placing bodies in the streets by the millions upon millions.
That and boycotts will PRESSURE change. I DON’T believe complete repression and martial law would be the result of these actions.
The 1% need us, still. They can’t put us ALL in prison, not tens of millions.
I remain fairly confident of THAT.
The rest, is depressing as hell, and until we DO hit the streets it will only get worse for us all.
I love the first part of your comment.
As to our loss of foreign policy?
Our foreign policy has been a fucking failure for decades! MORE!
Not to mention how that policy has SPAWNED the corruption and abuse of our government, MIC, banking and financing systems and more (well, it’s hard to tell which end the spawning starts from anymore).
What business do we have invading and trying to control foreign sources of oil, gas and the distribution routes (not to mention all that free cash from drugs and THEIR routes)? What business do we have trying to do so just to keep it all from Chinese/Russian hands and influences?
Now, if it’s all about business, then joint ventures WITH Russia, China and USA could benefit all of the world, spare us all the war, and likely help to develop the nations WITH the resources and the routes.
But that’s not how USA rolls, is it . . . Course, I love a good fairytale as much as anyone.
Another hidden cost is the medical treatment of wounded mercenaries. Who picks up the tab for emergency response and treatment in the field, transportation to hospital and rehabilitation or/or long term care? Do our ex-servicemen that joined the mercenaries get VA treatment and long term care?
nobody gets VA care unless they served x amount of years (20 ?) or were wounded in combat wearing a US Military uniform
There is a hierarchy (I think it’s 8 levels) for VA care as long as you served but if there’s no documented service connected disability (not just from combat) and a couple of other caveats, then they are at the bottom and treatment is not easily come by.
SouthernDragon could probably give the hierarchies from memory. I would have to go look them up. I think my situation (unemployed, honorable discharge with at one time a 10% rating due to residuals from gallbladder surgery, I think I’m at level 5 or 6 – not the bottom but not a high priority)
thanks.
It’s a little more complicated than that. Service members who do not have a condition related to their service can be seen at VA. They wait longer than service connected vets but they are seen. Number of years in service is not a factor. It’s the type of discharge. Anything less than an “honorable discharge” is usually not eligible for treatment. Non-service connected vets are also subject to a MEANS test.
From the VA website on eligibility:
“There’s no length of service requirement for:
•Former enlisted persons who started active duty before September 8, 1980, or
•Former officers who first entered active duty before October 17, 1981
•All other veterans must have 24 months of continuous active duty military service or meet one of the exceptions described below…..”
However, there are priority categories. Not everyone who wants healthcare from the VA can get it — because how many people the VA can serve depends on how much money they get from Congress.
The VA, as you probably know, runs the best healthcare system in the country.
That’s socialized medicine for you. Lieberman loves it.
I believe when the CBO says $500K per person, it’s all inclusive — a generalized number, not specific.
We also don’t know what some of the contractors/subcontractors provide in the way of care and insurance. I certainly wouldn’t work for one who didn’t have these offered.
Thanks for all your posts and comments, Rayne !
Who enters a war expecting to be killed? And I suspect no one ever thinks about a debilitating injury, such as head trauma or amputations, could happen to them. It always happens to the other unlucky smuck. Anyway the pie is sliced, taxpayers will be footing health care costs for Iraq and Af/Pak wars for the next 80 years.
Please expect veterans to be screwed.
That would not bode well on the USA’a reputation very poorly and schmuck who try and cut the VA $$ will pay in the ballot box. There ARE a lot Vets and they are better organized these days.
edit
I always wondered WHO paid the insurance for injuries suffered by employees of wartime contractors?
Well, its seems there is a Defense Base Act that uses tax payer money for certain injuries.
For other injuries ,not covered by DBA, there are just THREE insurance companies underwriting these policies-and contractors MUST have them on their employees. Not surprisingly,AIG is one of the insurance firms. Here’s an excerpt from Propublica:
National Security
Pentagon Study Proposes Overhaul of Defense Base Act to Cover Care for Injured Contractors
by T. Christian Miller, ProPublica – September 15, 2009 6:52 pm EST
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Congress could save as much as $250 million a year through a sweeping overhaul of the controversial U.S. system to care for civilian contractors injured in war zones, according to a new Pentagon study.
In the most extensive review ever of the taxpayer-financed system, the Pentagon suggested that the government could issue its own insurance to cover the skyrocketing costs of medical care and disability pay for injured civilians.
Currently, the U.S. pays more than $400 million annually to AIG and a handful of other carriers to purchase special workers’ compensation insurance policies required for overseas civilian contractors by a law known as the Defense Base Act, the study found.
By cutting out insurance company profits as high as 35 percent, the government could self-insure the contractors for less money, according to a copy of the study obtained by ProPublica [1]. The study is due to be released Friday.
[Edited by Moderator. Due to Fair Use standards, limit copy and paste from other sites to a maximum of 3 - 5 paragraphs and a link]
http://www.propublica.org/…/pentagon-study-proposes-overhaul-of-defense-base-act-915 – Cached
NOTE: Posted earlier by me on a Seminal post .
btw, did anyone else catch Dan Rather on Rachel last night where he said we most likely wouldn’t suffer the Soviets fate in Afghanistan because we were running so many concurrent non military missions ? – stunning to see someone with that experience and background fall for the ‘it’ll be different for us’ trap
The only way Rather’s p.o.v. makes sense is if the Russians, Chinese and Arab nations have been brought together under the Umbrella of developing the region in a way that brings lasting prosperity to the local populace.
Obama is smart enough to have done this … statements coming from other World leaders will tell the tale.
First, Thanks Rayne for an excellent diary!
And yes, I saw Dan Rather on Rachel last night.
I would not suspect Dan of playing the fool for anyone, and I respect his opinion. Is yours a loose paraphrase or a pretty exact quote? I’d like to know a lot more about those “non-military missions.”
Bob in AZ
Bob – went back and checked the transcript and glad I did because I was incorrect – Rather was speaking to what commanders on the ground think
but still dismaying to hear the ‘this time it’s gonna be different’ talk from those leading this tragedy
Agreed and coming from someone who had the privilige of decent Vietnam reporting
Once one buys into an all-volunteer military force, how can one logically take issue with contractors such as Blackwater (Xe)?
All serve voluntarily for pay and have, therefore, almost no incentive to disobey an illegal order.
The problem, IMO, isn’t at base the contractors. It’s the all-volunteer nature of our armed forces.
We need to attend to cutting deficit spending! The sky is falling and privatizing everything in sight will help us get ahead and save future generations from bearing the onerous weight of foreign adventures and currently unsustainable subsidies to Bankers. So, says Obama, and so shall it be. And, thank god we have Obama, because McCain/Palin would cut SocSec, privatize wars, schools and, you know: greater evil.
Heresy.
To have suggested on some un-named blogsites 15 months ago that a McCain presidency might not be that different from, and even might be preferable to, an Obama presidency would have been a death-penalty offense.
Seems age and experience and perspective have some value.
Of course, that’s easy to say. I’m 64.
“And, thank god we have Obama, because McCain/Palin would cut SocSec, privatize wars, schools and, you know: greater evil.”
Did I miss the snark tag?
Cuz, that’s where we are headed for, any way you cut it and I don’t see Obama or the Dem’s fighting it all, much.
Shadow army fits in nicely with our shadow government (run from an undisclosed location).
Of related interest from Army Times,courtesy of Propublica:
Out-of-Control Security Guards Hamper Afghanistan Efforts
by Alexandra Andrews, ProPublica – December 1, 2009 12:41 pm EST
Trigger-happy” private security guards in Afghanistan are killing civilians and undercutting counterinsurgency efforts, reports today’s Army Times.
About twice a week, convoys up to 50 vehicles long snake westward on Highway 1 in Afghanistan, ferrying supplies to coalition bases in Helmand province. The road runs through Maywand province, where more than 30 civilians have been wounded or killed in the past four years by the private guards tasked with protecting the convoys, according to the district’s senior Afghan intelligence representative.
Read more…
Thanks for following up on the Towns request from Gates. Can I assume from your diary that Gates has not yet responded to Towns?
You’ll note that letter from Towns to Gates was dated 03-NOV-09, one day after a hearing with CWC testimony about the contractors/subcontractors and oversight.
But Towns (or his staff) didn’t post the letter and an announcement about it until 30-NOV-09.
I think that was Towns’ way of both admitting Gates wasn’t going to make the schedule, and embarrassing Gates for the failure.
Sources say it’s going to be a while before we get numbers.
Thanks for yet another great read.
In regards to it all, MIC and contractors/subcontractors (I’ve always thought they were ALL part of the MIC) and AfPak, we’re not getting out, that’s not likely a goal.
Why?
As I commented below somewhere:
Aside from losing our investments in trying to gain ground in controlling the gas, oil and distribution routes of AFPak, and Central Asia, and the Middle East, (and to keep China/Russia from getting them) what do we LOSE by leaving AfPak or Iraq?
Nothing.
Those countries are, and never will be, any threat to the US Mainland.
Al Queda is NOT well loved by the Talibani, which in itself is a LOOSELY confederated grouping of hundreds if not thousands of tribal and ethnic groups under a general and loosely interpreted version(s) of Islam.
Al Queda (small as it is) does not have a country of origin. As long as Al Queda attacks civilian populations of ANY ethnic or religious origin in Central Asia or Middle East, they make enemies of other Muslim’s. Al Queda can’t grow or prosper or threaten unless we are IN Iraq/AF-Pak, etc. Our presence only adds to the jihadist mindset and unifies what are elements who are opposed to each other in the first place!
So ANY discussion of if we pull out, ‘they win’ and will somehow be a THREAT to USA mainland is not only wrong, it’s insane.
We are there for the resources, and only the might of our country’s masses in the streets in the MILLIONS on a regular basis will get us out of there. Maybe.
A day of unbelievable numbers… Obama’s 30K to Afghanistan… EW pointing out the 8 million tracked cellphones…. and your vying numbers creating a probability cloud over just how many contractors are operating in Iraq/Afghanistan (160,000-242,000… hell, what’s eighty or so thousand contractors anyway!)…
Thanks for bringing this to our attention… I guess.
(No, really, thanks.)
I actually wonder if the shadow armies are going to play as big a role here as in Iraq, for this simple reason:
The surge won’t start until the middle of next year, as the Pentagon just can’t supply the extra troops until then. The shadow armies can be mobilized a lot quicker — and with unemployment having been so high for the past three years, they’ve had no shortage of applicants.