Civilian contractors back out of contracts in Iraq
[link|http://www.newhousenews.com/archive/wood080103.html|New House]
U.S. troops in Iraq suffered through months of unnecessarily poor living conditions because some civilian contractors hired by the Army for logistics support failed to show up, Army officers said.
One thing became clear in Iraq. "You cannot order civilians into a war zone," said Linda K. Theis, an official at the Army's Field Support Command, which oversees some civilian logistics contracts. "People can sign up to that -- but they can also back out."
The Army was depending on civilian contractors to do some semi-important work in Iraq and things got mucked up when they backed out.
Neither article names any specific names, partially because the maze of overlapping layers of sub-contracting make it unclear who is actually responsible for the contractors not doing what they are supposed to. The politcally power of the companies that do this sort of work probably also is a factor.
I think the ultimate lesson here is simple though. The military needs to be able to provide all of their own services in a combat zone. Being forced to camp out in the rough is bad enough, but contractors are taking an increasingly important role in the supply chain and maintaining electronics.
Another side to this problem not mentioned above is the contractors can often get around oversight rules since they are not part of the military directly. A smaller side effect of the massive use of contractors is to make the military look much smaller then it is.
Jay