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Yet Again, Privatization Bites Us In The Ass
AngelHedgie
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
KBR uses the threat of not feeding the troops to get away with corruption and overbilling.
Seriously, this shows how fucked up the privatization of military services is. KBR has the military over a barrel - if they stop feeding the troops, things could get very ugly indeed. Because of this leverage, KBR can force the military to just pay inflated bills as is, with no oversight.
This can't end well.
Seriously, this shows how fucked up the privatization of military services is. KBR has the military over a barrel - if they stop feeding the troops, things could get very ugly indeed. Because of this leverage, KBR can force the military to just pay inflated bills as is, with no oversight.
This can't end well.
XBL: Nox Aeternum / PSN: NoxAeternum / NN:NoxAeternum / Steam: noxaeternum
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That's kind of awful.
The whole problem is that the general has no way of forcing KBR to perform, so they can use these threats. I wish that he had authority like the captain of a warchip in combat does - he can pretty much force someone to do anything as long as it keeps the ship alive.
In my experience, state-level contracts can grant the government quite a bit of power, I don't know why the same couldn't be done on the federal level.
At least when the government was running things, they were bureaucratic and incompetent, but not malicious.
I'd say that being all three, as well as costing taxpayers an extra Billion dollars, is a significant step back.
But then again, this is KBR, the people who managed to get rape classified as a tribunal issue not under the jurisdiction of courts.
It's more the company knowing it has friends in high places, so it doesn't need to adhere to it's contract, provisions be damned. Nobody's going to actually punish them.
Technically, yes. But the thing is that KBR can cease operations immediately, and there's nothing the general can (legally) do to stop them. By the time it gets to the courts, it's too late.
Right, so as with everything we're dealing with recently, it's due to horrible failures in the executive branch, and probably less of reason to say that privatization of this kind of function cannot work.
How? They could airlift in a McDonald's if it came to it since selling food to the Army isn't exactly a commission begging for bidders.
It's still not a good idea. As the old maxim goes, "an army travels on its stomach." No business would ever outsource mission-critical aspects of their operations (well, no sane business, anyways), so why should the military?
When the KBR chiefs make these threats, they mean "pay up, or we cease operation immediately." And while yes, you could, with time, get a new supply line in - time is the one thing a base in hostile ground doesn't have.
I support this. This is ridiculous. I can't stand how the people who whine and bitch and moan about supporting the troops can be so bald-facedly exploitative of their well-being while turning around and calling people who can clearly see how horrible this is unpatriotic.
NNID: Hakkekage
Pretty much my stance on it. Field operations and everything making them possible should be internal and controlled. Otherwise you run into these situations, where a contractual dispute can cause you supply issues in a combat situation. I was never comfy with the amount of outsourcing the military IT did when deployed, either. But in the case of continued supply, "let us do whatever or we don't ship you food" is up there with "ammo? Fuck that, we're not in the mood."
I dunno, we have the guns. I have the feeling that any stocks of food they have in Iraq would become unofficial US Army property pretty quick.
kick KBR right out then annex the local grocery store and turtle inside the base?
The problem is that while technically he CAN do that, he's got no legal justification to do so. So in doing that, he's pretty much fucked.
Wouldn't fix the problem. Since it's a continued shipment, we can seize all their assets in Iraq, and still not be able to do the job ourselves(it's questionable, but I think a court would be fine with it since we already had a contract and they weren't upholding it. Also, warzone.). Seizing them in the US is far more difficult to do legally and the supply line is the hard bit. I do think the appropriate solution is to start setting up a new supply line, but the issue is that in a lot of situations the higher ups in the chain of command to do that know they'll get sweet jobs when they retire from the contractors if they keep giving them sweet deals (like a huge performance bonus to KBR for filling bullshit expense reports)
I'm not suggesting that it would be the higher-ups that do/order this to happen.
There's a rather large amount of accountability and procedure issues when it comes to many government processes and the like in the eyes of the public. While I do not work for a government agency, but a private company, I can only speculate on what I've heard from people who have left the government sector and now work for private industry. I wonder if this type of thing occurs much more often than we know about but the government branch/agency in charge of these things either does not have the resources or approval to handle them any differently and we see things like this happen every so often.
I also wonder if these things just get thrown out there because it deals with a much larger beast so to say, which would be the government or army.
I mean, if this is such an issue, why can't they go look for another group to provide the same services and then try to find a way out of the current contract or just replace them when said contract ends?
NNID: Hakkekage
I think we can in a time of war take their assets that we need, but we have to pay them for it later. I'd need to look it up, but it's been pretty common practice in active combat. Simply being a hot zone with no actual combat though, it's fuzzy to me.
Bah. We paid them for the food in a non coerced contract for a fair price, if they withhold it to active combat troops my opinion is they should pretty much be fucked over. Also, I really really hate KBR in particular.
that was KBR too
You left out where under her contract, she couldn't sue them, and the courts upheld that and allowed KBR to determine if they were guilty of misconduct or not.
What courts
I need to strangle them
I would love to see Obama as one of his first actions as President to cancel all outstanding KBR contracts, and then declare them permanently ineligible for federal contract work of any kind.
Lemme find the article, it's the fucking arbitration clause in nearly everyone's contracts these days they no court upholds.
edit: Here: http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=4249898&page=1
The problem is even if they are breaching their contract by saying "pay us more or we stop giving you food" there's nothing to be done about it because bringing a legal action means our troops suddenly stop getting food.
huh, you're right. I could have sworn that was Blackwater.
On the black screen
I mean, she couldn't sue KBR, but why couldn't she go after her co-workers?
I'd be very surprised if the co-workers produced some signed documentation stating that rape was a part of their assigned duties, that KBR were paying them to rape other contractors or some nonsense like that.
I suppose I could take a guess that the contract stated that any employee/contractor of KBR was also out of the question when it comes to settlement?