Building A Progressive Future

For a long time now, I have been following the KBR corruption storyline: the dirty water, the electrocutions, the rape cover ups and the tax dodging.

KBR was turned loose on our troops because the Bush administration's blind adherence to right-wing dogma — "government bad, private industry good" — drove it to outsource the management of the war to dozens of private contractors. And, no surprise, the abuses don't end with KBR.

Today Lockheed Martin officials are appearing before Congress to explain why thousands of veterans with service-related disabilities may have been denied government disability or pension benefits or given the wrong amounts. Lockheed was hired (on a no-bid contract) by the Defense Finance and Accounting Service to clear up a backlog of unpaid military benefits.

It's yet another example of what happens when people who hate govenment are in charge of making the government work. And it's yet another example of how the Pentagon sets up their contracts in such a way as to completely let themselves off the hook for enforcing accountability over their contractors. Even when Lockheed Martin failed to deliver timely and accurate benefits to thousands of disabled veterans, DFAS found that its contract rendered it powerless to penalize the company.

Adding further incompetence to the matter, the DFAS then decided to assign its /own / employees to help Lockheed Martin fix the backlog. This move ultimately made the DFAS powerless to monitor Lockheed's quality control because, once they had committed their own employees, they were no longer an outside auditor.

After all the reports of the corruption, wrongdoing, bungling and negligence that have trickled back to the public regarding the no-bid, cost-plus contracts the Pentagon continues to hand out like candy, you would think that the Pentagon would start to rethink these contracts to be better able to force these contractors into, I don't know....doing their jobs? We're not just talking about a few minor slip ups, we're talking about a system that continues to allow contractors to be so negligent that their irresponsibility becomes a hazard to the health and lives of soldiers and veterans.

In this case, it's been reported that 8,763 veterans with service-related disabilities died before Lockheed Martin got around to distributing their payments. And furthermore, more than 60,000 payments and 28,000 denied claims were given after the DFAS has committed their own employees and thus abandoned their responsibility to monitor the quality control of the process, leading Congress to suspect that thousands of these claims were either given in the wrong amount or wrongfully denied.

Is this how the DoD rewards veterans who gave such sacrifices defending our country? By refusing, forgetting or mishandling their benefits? And is this how the DoD rewards their contractors who continue to fail in fulfilling their contracts — by imposing absolutely no consequences and instead committing it's own employees to help them? It's time for the Pentagon to face the truth: their no-bid, cost-plus contracts aren't working, and they are hurting our troops and veterans. It's time for the Pentagon to move in a different direction, and it's time for them to rethink the way they set up their contracts. Sign our petition to the Pentagon, demanding that they hold contractors, and themselves, accountable for getting the job done.