Det danske Fredsakademi
Kronologi over fredssagen og international politik 7. Juli 2004 / Time Line July 7, 2004
Version 3.007/07/2004
Exiled to Canada Again? U.S. High-Tech “Military
Draft”
Resources;
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/164693_draft13.html;
http://www.pej.org/html/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=194&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0;
If another U.S. Military Draft follows U.S. Federal Nov. 2004
Elections, even more will flee yet another U.S. draft for
pathological empire. Draft Resisters will once again need to face
choices of exile or jail. Going to prison avoids migratory exile,
yet risks a 21st Century peril twist and Jail time for resisting
the (economic and/or political) U.S. Military Draft in the
21st-Century may, through prison rape or beatings, forcibly induce
pandemic AIDS HIV+ and Hepatitis …, (or related
immuno-suppressant diseases), across the USA detention
establishment.
As its more mobile, “best” or wealthier youth escape
the U.S. once again, their “blood” loss may also again
be relatively counter-balanced by planet-wide hemorrhaging deaths,
such as Iraq & Israel–Palestine wars.
As to Canada, during the 1960s-1970s U.S. South-East Asian wars
and invasions, officially, the U.S. Pentagon-State Department
flatly denied that more than “12,006” left for Canada;
(no “guestimate” planet-wide).
But Canada's Federal Government believed that over two million
exiled U.S. Citizens registered as Canadian “Landed
Immigrants” then, including friends and families of resisters
- that is, mostly - middle or upper-middle - or upper-class youth
exiles or refugees who represented the wealthiest, (costliest to
“raise”), economic-political “cream” (as it
were) of an entire U.S. generation.
Basic Canadian publications then included AMEX/Americans in Exile,
(Toronto Newsletter); Jack Calhoun, Editor, (now in Washington,
D.C.)
and Bonnie Day's This Life One Leaf (Toronto: SAANES, 1972).
Many caged 20th Century U.S. war resisters then landed in federal
prison south of Ann Arbor MI, more or less along the traditional
1860s-1960s “Underground Railroad” Michigan-Ohio Route
to Canada.
Even after prison, the more direct peace and environmental
activists still had to go into exile.
See also http://www.objector.org/;
http://www.nisbco.org/;
http://www.cic.gc.ca/;
http://www.web.net/~ccr/related.htm;
and War Resisters in Canada,
http://www.library.ubc.ca/jones/amcan.html.
07/07/2004
Winning Contractors – An Update
As the number of contracts rises, problems continue to plague the
contracting process
http://www.publici.org/wow/printer-friendly.aspx?aid=339
By Daniel Politi
WASHINGTON, July 7, 2004 — More than 150 American companies
have received contracts worth up to $48.7 billion for work in
postwar Afghanistan and Iraq, according to the latest update of the
Center for Public Integrity's Windfalls of War project.
This figure represents an increase of 82 companies and more than
$40 billion since the Center first released its study of contracts
awarded to U.S. companies for postwar work in Afghanistan and Iraq
on Oct. 30, 2003.
The Center has continued to file Freedom of Information Act
requests with, among others, the Department of Defense, the State
Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development in
hopes of getting the complete picture of U.S. contractors involved
with Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom. As was
the case with the Center's initial report, contractors and dollar
values have only been included in the overall list if there was
authoritative information from either an official government source
or a company source.
Since the Center's first release in October 2003, there has been
more scrutiny of these postwar contracts by Congress, the media and
various government agencies. This was partly due to the revelation
that employees of private contractors Titan Corporation and CACI
were present during the alleged torture of Iraqi prisoners at the
Abu Ghraib prison.
The agencies that have been awarding these postwar contracts have
in turn become more organized with contract information and more
responsive to requests from the media; some agencies have even
increased the amount of information available to the general
public. For example, USAID has enhanced the Iraq section of its Web
site, posting redacted versions of some contracts the agency
awarded. The Coalition Provisional Authority, which formally ceased
to exist on June 28, added a listing of awarded contracts on its
Web site, while the Commerce Department's list of contracts awarded
for work in Iraq is more complete now than it was previously.
Still, much of the work continues to be uncoordinated within
federal agencies and no agency seems to have a full picture of all
the postwar contracts. For example, the Center did not receive a
contract or any list of contracts that included Titan Corporation
or CACI; those contract values came, rather, from Congressional
testimony. This may be due to the number of agencies involved in
the contracting process. The CACI contract, for example, is funded
by the Army but was awarded through the Department of the
Interior.
Although agencies are providing more information regarding the
postwar contracts awarded for work in Iraq, there is scant
information available to the general public—just as there was
months ago—on contracts for work in postwar Afghanistan.
This lack of information about postwar Afghanistan is also notable
in the U.S. government's examinations of the contracting process.
Although there have been several official reports and congressional
hearings on the postwar reconstruction of Iraq, considerably less
attention has been paid to the Afghanistan effort.
Several of these reports and hearings regarding the Iraq effort
painted a picture of undermanned and overworked contracting staffs
without sufficient knowledge of the contracting process, who
stretched contracting rules for the sake of expediency,
particularly in the early days of postwar reconstruction. This lack
of resources has also resulted in inadequate oversight of the
current contracts, according to published reports by the General
Accounting Office and the inspector general of the Department of
Defense.
Problems with awarding contracts plagued the Iraq reconstruction
process from the get-go. In the early days, the Office of
Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (which became the CPA in
May 2003) suffered from a lack of personnel. Additionally, there
was no formal contracting plan to purchase equipment.
"A key oversight of the DoD planners was not recognizing earlier in
the process the need for acquisition personnel," the DoD inspector
general wrote.
A specialist from the Defense Contract Management Agency told IG
investigators from the Department of Defense that officials of the
Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance "neither
followed nor tried to learn the acquisition process." In addition,
ORHA wanted quick results and, yielding to pressure, contracting
officers from the Defense Contracting Command-Washington did not
correctly award or manage the contracts. Of the 24 contracts
awarded by the DCC-W that the Defense Department's IG investigated,
22 did not follow the Federal Acquisition Regulation, part of the
official guidelines governing the contracting process.
This lack of structure in the contracting process, coupled with the
need to start work as quickly as possible, led to contractors
providing draft statements of work and cost estimates to
contracting officers, when the government usually provides this
information, according to GAO. In addition, contracting officers
often allowed contractors to begin work before key terms of the
contracts, including price, had been agreed on.
Contracts were also awarded to those with connections to the ORHA.
In one instance, ORHA requested that a contract for a protocol
officer be awarded to an individual who had once been a
private-sector colleague of the former ORHA director, retired Army
Lt. Gen. Jay Garner. In hopes of eliminating any appearance of
conflict, the protocol officer left her job with the contractor for
a position with another firm, Native American Industrial
Distributors. They then received a contract to hire this same
protocol officer that ORHA had requested.
(A copy of the contract is available here:
www.publicintegrity.org/wow/docs/Native_American.pdf)
Acquisition rules were also often not followed when ORHA officials
extended the scope of contracts. For example, ORHA used the Iraqi
Free Media contract awarded to SAIC, which was designed to aid in
the development of local media, to hire an expert who, it turned
out, did no work related to the objective of the contract.
The Iraqi Free Media contract was awarded in March 2003 with a
value of $15 million; by the end of that September, the contract
was valued at $82.3 million.
(See the original contract here:
www.publicintegrity.org/wow/docs/SAIC_0533.pdf)
An acquisition specialist with the Defense Contract Management
Agency told investigators with the DoD's inspector general that the
program manager for the Iraqi Free Media contract bought a Hummer
H2 and a Ford pickup truck, then chartered a cargo jet to fly the
vehicles to Iraq for his use on the contract.
The GAO investigation also noted that there was less compliance
with regulations when contracting officers issued task orders for
existing contracts. The law does not require work issued under a
task order on an existing contract to be competitively bid if the
task is within the scope of the main elements of the original
contract.
Several agencies, however, gave out task orders that went beyond
the work delineated in the original contract. For example, through
an interagency agreement (see it here:
www.publicintegrity.org/wow/docs/USAID_AFCAP.pdf) the Air Force
Contract Augmentation Program was used to provide logistical
support services to USAID. In addition to the regular logistical
tasks the contract was designed for, AFCAP was also used for such
services as creating plans for fixing the power generation for
Baghdad water treatment plants, which, according to the GAO, were
outside the scope of the original contract.The original contract,
awarded March 2003, had a value of $26 million. As of June 2003,
USAID has allocated more than $91 million under this interagency
agreement.
After the contracts are awarded, agencies often suffer from a lack
of resources and personnel to oversee the contracts.
The DoD IG determined that 13 of the 24 contracts it reviewed did
not adequately monitor contractors. Those assigned to monitor the
contracts were not properly trained to assure the contractors were
performing the required work. Similarly, State Department officials
told investigators from the General Accounting Office that they did
not have enough staff to monitor their law enforcement support
contract. (See the contract:
www.publicintegrity.org/wow/docs/DynCorp.pdf)
Federal agencies have sometimes hired contractors to oversee the
work being done by yet other contractors. This, however, can raise
questions of conflicts of interest. A report by the minority staff
of the House Committee on Government Reform and the Senate
Democratic Policy Committee detailed such conflicts in two
oversight contracts awarded by the CPA to Parsons and CH2M Hill.
Both companies are partners in other projects with the very firms
they have been tasked to oversee. For example, one of the companies
Parsons is tasked to oversee is Fluor, even though the two firms
have a $2.6 billion joint venture contract in Kazakhstan.
Several agencies have recognized that there are problems with the
contracting process; with the initial rush to reconstruction having
passed, officials there are trying to develop new ways to oversee
the work of contractors. USAID, for example, requested that the
Army Corps of Engineers provide oversight for a $1 billion
infrastructure contract awarded to Bechtel. Additionally, USAID has
come to an agreement for the Defense Contract Audit Agency to audit
its contracts. Despite these new arrangements, a USAID procurement
official told GAO that the agency still did not have enough
permanent staff to properly oversee all the contracts in Iraq.
© 2004, The Center for Public Integrity. All rights
reserved.
07/07/2004
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