Mar
3
Suicide bombings in Iraq continue to target civilians
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In the run-up to March 7th elections, a string of suicide bombings across Iraq have continued to target civilians and cause widespread disruptions. Yesterday’s terrible bombing killed dozens of civilians including blowing up a hospital where victims were being treated.
Since August, a series of large-scale bombings aimed at government buildings have killed several hundred people and shaken confidence in Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s security services, following the withdrawal of most U.S. combat forces from major Iraqi cities last summer.
The number of Iraqis killed in February was twice as high as in January and 40% higher than a year earlier. The ongoing violence deters many of the 2 million Iraqi refugees — many of them middle class professionals now living in Syria — from returning to Iraq.
http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/meast/03/03/iraq.violence/index.html
Feb
20
Contractor waste, poor performance, threatens Afghan police
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The local police are a critical factor in holding onto any gains made during the current US/NATO operations in Afghanistan. Due to waste and ineffective efforts by the contractors hired to train and recruit Afghans to the police force, it is not clear whether they will be able to do this job. READ BELOW:
This does not bode well for costs either. The US has pledged to train and pay another 100,000 Afghan police as well as 100,000 Afghan troops, and this is likely to cost another $15 billion per year.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-02-18/keeping-the-taliban-down/p/
Feb
2
The President’s budget requests $192 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan over the next year and a half, including $160 billion for the next year. While $13.3 billion per month is a staggering figure in itself, it does not include:
- Funding for veterans medical care, veterans disability compensation, and job training, housing and reintegration programs for veterans
- Other costs buried in the defense budget, such as medical costs of military hospitals, senior Pentagon management time and attention, concurrent receipt of benefits, base salaries and equipment depreciation
- Interest on the debt used to finance the war
- Economic costs, such as loss of life, quality of life impairment, impact on family members, dislocation and long-term mental health disabilities
Jan
27
SIGIR audit cites waste in $2.5 billion DynCorps contract
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The Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) this week issued an audit of a $2.5 billion State Department contract with DynCorp International for training Iraq’ police. The report finds that the State department failed to oversee the contract properly, due to a shortage of staff to oversee work done by contractors. The SIGIR discovered that there was ONE single conractor officer to monitor invoices for the $2.5 billion contract –who was approving all invoices without questioning them. (There are now 3 contracting officers overseeing the contract).
The result: waste. For example, the Department paid more than $4 million per year to assign a 16-person security detail to protect 6 US contractors in Iraq who already had a whole team of hired guards.
Read report: http://www.sigir.mil/reports/pdf/audits/10-008.pdf
Jan
26
SIGIR finds money for democracy-building in Iraq is misspent
Filed Under Casualty Reports & FOIA, Latest News & Scandals | Leave a Comment
Only 41 percent of the $114 million in the 7 DRL grants reviewed by SIGIR (there were 12 total) actually went to the programs. IRI’s money went heavily to security (57.2%) with about 7% on overhead; while NDI spent about one-third on security (32.7%) but more on indirect overhead costs (17%).
Read the report: http://www.sigir.mil/reports/pdf/audits/10-012.pdf