David Phinney

Kellogg Brown and Root requests the pleasure of your company at an awards ceremony in honor of KBR employees to receive the Secretary of Defense Medal for the Defense of Freedom on Friday, the ninth of February at nine o'clock.

Ballroom C, Hilton Post Oak
Houston Texas

#2) Is this ceremony only for the employees working directly for KBR or the thousands of Americans working for KBR's offshore tax shelter subsidiary headquartered in the Cayman Islands, aka, Service Employees International, Inc.? Seventy percent of all Americans working for KBR in Iraq and Afghanistan are actually SEII employees. KBR won't say why it needs the Cayman Island operation but the subsidiary can operate outside of U.S. labor laws.

#3) If SEII employees are eligible, then will the tens of thousands of low-paid laborers working on behalf of KBR/Halliburton's multi-billion logistics contract in Iraq also be honored? These workers are sometimes paid just hundreds of dollars a month, assigned substandard housing and frequently had their passports taken away in case they decided they wanted to leave. Some people call that modern day slavery. Body armor for them is non-existent, the food is atrocious and many of them have been killed or wounded while building military camps for KBR.

*Excerpt from the KBR release waiver:

Paragraph 9. Release: I agree that in consideration for the application for a Defense of Freedom Medal on my behalf that on behalf of myself, my heirs, executors, administrators, assigns and successors, I hereby release, acquit and discharge and do hereby release, acquit and discharge KBR, all KBR employees, the Military and any of their representatives (in both their official and individual capacities), collectively and individually, with respect to and from any and all claims and any and all causes of action, of any kind of character, whether now known or unknown, I may have against any of them which exist as of the date of this authorization and all claims or causes of action arising from or related to this authorization or the use or disclosure of the information or Protected Information described in section 1 above by any of the aforementioned parties. This release also applies to any claims brought by any person or agency or class action under which I may have a right or benefit.

Posted by davidphinney at 11:11 AM | Comments (25) | TrackBack

Civilian Reserve Corps: Private Army?

Jeremy Scahill opines in a Los Angeles Times op-ed about President Bush's proposal for a Cvilian Reserve Corps on Tuesday night:

A privatized version of it was floated two years ago by Erik Prince, the secretive, mega-millionaire, conservative owner of Blackwater USA and a man who for years has served as the Pied Piper of a campaign to repackage mercenaries as legitimate forces. In early 2005, Prince -- a major bankroller of the president and his allies -- pitched the idea at a military conference of a "contractor brigade" to supplement the official military. "There's consternation in the [Pentagon] about increasing the permanent size of the Army," Prince declared. Officials "want to add 30,000 people, and they talked about costs of anywhere from $3.6 billion to $4 billion to do that. Well, by my math, that comes out to about $135,000 per soldier." He added: "We could do it certainly cheaper."

And Prince is not just a man with an idea; he is a man with his own army. Blackwater began in 1996 with a private military training camp "to fulfill the anticipated demand for government outsourcing." Today, its contacts run from deep inside the military and intelligence agencies to the upper echelons of the White House. It has secured a status as the elite Praetorian Guard for the global war on terror, with the largest private military base in the world, a fleet of 20 aircraft and 20,000 soldiers at the ready.

It ain't going to happen. Politically, it's a non-starter unless the Civilian Reserve Corps is veiled as something much more benign -- maybe the Peace Corps?

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January 25, 2007

Candidates to Outnumber Voters in '08

One in Two Americans Running for President, Experts Say

So says The Borowitz Report:

While the negative tone of recent election campaigns have turned off voters in record numbers, the appeal of being the world's most powerful person has never been greater, causing the two trend lines to cross.

Furthermore:

The fact that over 140 million Americans are expected to run for president in 2008 does not deter most aspirants, Ms. Foyler said, explaining, "Most of them still have a better shot than Kucinich."

And elsewhere in the news:

The National Security Agency said that a stream of indecipherable chatter it intercepted turned out to be Paula Abdul.

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A Convenient Candidate

Rolling Stone rolls out the argument for Al Gore to step up to the plate and run again for president.

If he takes the bait, there would be no better time than at the Oscars, where his power-point presentation, ah, I mean film on global warming, An Inconvenient Truth, looks like the top contender for best documentary. While accepting the award he could announce to the world -- an audience of one or two gadzillion people -- that he is launching his campaign exploratory committee. (Question: What in the hell are these candidates exploring?)

This is Tim Dickinson's take in Rolling Stone:

Unlike Hillary Clinton, he has no controversial vote on Iraq to defend. Unlike Barack Obama and John Edwards, he has extensive experience in both the Senate and the White House. He has put aside his wooden, policy-wonk demeanor to emerge as the Bush administration's most eloquent critic. And thanks to An Inconvenient Truth, Gore is not only the most impassioned leader on the most urgent crisis facing the planet, he's also a Hollywood celebrity, the star of the third-highest-grossing documentary of all time.

Dickinson suggests that Gore could easily challenge superstar Hillary Clinton by using the medium he once took credit for inventing -- or at least help fund its invention while in Congress:

Thanks to his vocal opposition to the war -- and his decision to back Howard Dean's anti-war candidacy in 2003 -- Gore has all but sewn up the backing of the party's "Netroots" activists. Eli Pariser calls Gore "a close friend of MoveOn," and Markos Moulitsas, the founder of DailyKos, is equally unabashed in his support. "More than any other Democrat over the last four years, Gore has actually delivered," says Moulitsas, one of the Internet's most influential organizers. "If Gore enters the race, it's his nomination for the taking." In an online poll of 14,000 activists held in December by DailyKos, sixty percent voted for Gore. By comparison, Clinton received just 292 votes.

Others also chime in:

"If Howard Dean could raise $59 million on the Internet," says (veteran Democratic consultant Bill) Carrick, "the mind boggles as to what Al Gore might do." Joe Trippi, who managed Dean's campaign, believes Gore could raise as much as $200 million on the Internet: "Gore may have more money than anybody within days of entering the race."

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January 24, 2007

Bush's State of the Union: Volunteer Civilian Reserve Corps?

I am a little curious about his idea for designing and establishing a volunteer Civilian Reserve Corps. Sounds like a move to institutionalize the use of contractors on the battlefield:

Such a corps would function much like our military reserve. It would ease the burden on the Armed Forces by allowing us to hire civilians with critical skills to serve on missions abroad when America needs them. And it would give people across America who do not wear the uniform a chance to serve in the defining struggle of our time.

Where did he get that idea? Halliburton/KBR? Eric Prince? Or is he just laying ground cover for the coming congressional hearings on Iraq contractor fraud and abuse? I suppose it's an effort for jointness.

Nevertheless, I liked the energy theme.

For too long our nation has been dependent on foreign oil. And this dependence leaves us more vulnerable to hostile regimes, and to terrorists -- who could cause huge disruptions of oil shipments, raise the price of oil and do great harm to our economy.

More importantly, he called for diversifying energy sources through technology (although he missed a good point about new energy technology bringing about a new generation of US exports).

And I liked the 20 percent reduction in gasoline useage in the next decade:

I ask Congress to join me in pursuing a great goal. Let us build on the work we have done and reduce gasoline usage in the United States by 20 percent in the next ten years -- thereby cutting our total imports by the equivalent of three-quarters of all the oil we now import from the Middle East.

Bush should have been more ambitious and raised the bar to 100 percent energy independence in the next decade. That would be a 10 percent reduction a year. Energy independence should be the equivalent to the space race and "putting a man on the moon" in the next decade.

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January 23, 2007

John, Don't Surrender

John made it no secret to his friends and acquaintances that things were getting tough for him. The Iraq contractor had been nursing a bad back injury from an accident in Kuwait for several years as he fought a losing battle for insurance coverage and disability. Apparently, the last Iraq contractor who hired him failed to carry the required insurance coverage.

The company basically just blew the 51-year-old man off. And so did the rest of the country. (Insurance is becoming a big problem for many of the civilians that worked in Iraq.)

A native New Yorker with a charming gift for gab, John Mancini turned to everyone for help. He reached out to the government, to Congress, the news media and the Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction. He quietly had helped them all with fraud investigations, congressional hearings and news tips but his pleas fell on deaf ears.

Last fall, John was becoming more despondent and alone. He wanted to work, but in addition to being an unemployed man entering middle age, his injuries were a huge obstacle. From his home outside Phoenix in Surprise, Arizona, he talked about how he felt abandoned after trying to do the best he could for the soldier and the mission in Iraq.

But doing the right thing for 16 months in a theater of war wasn't paying off for John. He was royally screwed. No one would lift a finger to help. He began wondering if he had been a sucker and a stooge for standing up to fraud and not taking advantage of opportunities to be a crook in Iraq.

There wasn't much I could do either, but I had been trying to get in touch with John for a month or more, to say hello, check up on him and find out what he was thinking these days. Then yesterday Jana Crowder sent this October 11 news story from The Arizona Republic across the transom:

A usually quiet neighborhood in Surprise took on the appearance of a war zone last week. Police SWAT teams and vehicles descended on the area after a man fired on police.

John had barricaded himself inside his house for a 10-hour standoff with police. He was accused of firing a gun at them.

The siege ended peacefully about 10:45 a.m. Friday after negotiators persuaded John E. Mancini, 51, to surrender.

John Mancini, the stand-up guy always ready to fight the good fight, had surrendered. Of course, it was the right thing to do.

The Arizona Republic made no connection to the war in Iraq. Perhaps, the judge will.

According to The Arizona Republic, police arrested Mancini the day before for misuse of the 911 emergency phone number. I guess John was still pursuing his options for help -- and exercising a bit of humor. Even after he was arrested and released, he began dialing the number again. The police returned to his home.

As officers arrived, shots were fired and police backed off. They established a perimeter and called in SWAT teams to stand by until the gunman surrendered.

I would be floored if John fired his gun for anything other than desperate shock value to bring attention to his situation and I am sure he fired it away from every living creature on earth. Still, it's very fortunate no one was hurt -- although it's obvious John apparently was hurting very deeply.

John went to Iraq for the money. That certainly was part of it, but he didn't leave his moral center at home the way so many corporations have done while gorging at the trough of profligate US spending in the war-torn country.

This man prides himself on getting a job done well, improving efficiency with innovative thinking and looking out for the soldier in harm's way. One would think he's just the kind of person that Halliburton would want on its side to help manage its multi-billion logistics contract. But Mancini quickly butted heads with his managers on the ground in Kuwait and Iraq.

"There was so much money, nobody cared," he told me last spring.

Very few cared, that is, about doing a good job.

Managers in Iraq weren't interested in competition, he discovered. They were interested in money. Iraq, from John's perspective, was awash with kickbacks and people who had lost their sense of decency. Once the invasion of Iraq was a done deal, the floodgates of American dollars began pouring in. Far too many looked at the war as the new gold rush and took every dollar they could find. John Mancini had his chance too, but instead he became a friend and a trusted source to many reporters and congressional investigators. John is a guy who cared.

Then he went to CACI and worked as a contract manager for a little more than $100,000 a year cleaning up the shoddy mess left by the Coalition Provisional Authority. The CPA lost track of at least $7 billion in Iraqi assets and squandered billions more. John helped recover what he could. Meanwhile, he said, CACI was charging the government $350,000 for his services.

"The situation was fucked when I got there," he recalled. "Everything was so poorly organized. You didn't know what people were buying and what price they were paying for it. "

Under his watch, Mancini said he handled $1.5 billion in arms contracts, $50 million in buses and $72 million in trucks and vehicles. He was also involved in purchasing uniforms and armor for Iraqi police.

"I found that the CPA was buying 40,000 to 50,000 computers for the police academies at full value. I argued for academic licenses from Dell, Compaq and Microsoft and saved $500 a computer," he told me last spring. "I probably saved $2 million."

That savings and others, John said proudly, easily paid for the two dozen or so CACI contract employees cleaning up the CPA contracts. He added incredulously: "One CPA guy buying computers was having CPUs (central processing units) delivered by plane and the monitors were being delivered by boat, which took 60 days to deliver. There were all these things just sitting around."

He then went to work for another Iraq contractor, Procurement Services Associates of Pleasanton, California. The company sent him back to Kuwait. Within a month he hurt his back very badly in a car accident. PSA began quibbling over insurance coverage. The quibble erupted into a war. Mancini says the company never had the required insurance as all contractors in Iraq are required to have. John got fucked -- royally. He was in pain every day for the past few years sitting at his computer and chatting away on Yahoo -- with people like me and others interested in his experiences.

All he wanted was a helping hand. Nothing, not even dialing 911 has worked.

MORE FROM THE EAST BAY EXPRESS (And it isn't pretty):
Pay Me, You Motherf**ker Not long ago, this paper published a profile of John Mancini, a civilian defense worker stationed in Iraq and Kuwait who was one of the first two congressional whistleblowers to expose Halliburton's alleged practice of overbilling the government, to the tune of as much as $1.4 billion ("Soldiers of Misfortune," feature, 10/4). A few days after the issue came out, Mancini apparently flipped out and barricaded himself in his house, the Arizona Republic reported, and he threatened to shoot any cops who came in the front door. He was eventually apprehended, and although his phone is no longer working, his friend Barbara Friedkin says Mancini told her his prescription cocktail of morphine and antidepressants was recently altered. According to Bonnie Mancini, the mother of Mancini's second child, the police found 18,000 rounds of ammunition in the house, in addition to his dog, which had been shot and injured.
In the news biz, this is one of those episodes that tends to, shall we say, reduce a source's credibility, although much of Mancini's story was confirmed by his fellow whistleblower Henry Bunting, ex-wife Susan Mancini, and a source at Congressman Henry Waxman's office. In addition, Halliburton representatives did not return calls seeking comment for the story, and officials with his last employer, Pleasanton's Procurement Services Associates, refused to discuss the matter. PSA's lawyer faxed over a copy of a brief prepared during the course of mediating a financial dispute with Mancini; the brief did not dispute the essential elements of Mancini's story, but merely took issue with whether the company was liable for any further medical expenses. Nonetheless, Mancini's crisis may explain an e-mail he apparently sent to PSA officials, a copy of which was faxed to us too late for publication in the original story. Sensitive readers had best stop here, because this e-mail ain't pretty.
In a message titled "Pay me you Motherfucker," Mancini allegedly wrote, "If you think shock and awe was something in Iraq you haven't experienced a heavily medicated, morbidly obese, old New York Italian, with attitude, who knows where you live. You will go down and i will ripe [sic] your head off and piss into your bleeding, gasping, lifeless body then shit in your mouth and you will sell your wife and children into white slavery to make certain I collect my money. ... I will make you regret your faggot father ejaculated into the slut of a woman known as your mother. ... If I get mad, or even mildly upset you will be selling your smooth white ass to niggers with AIDS just to pay me because NOT paying me is NOT an option." Nice, huh? — Chris Thompson
The full text of the e-mail is reproduced below.
In a message titled, “Pay me you Motherfucker,” Mancini allegedly wrote, “I will be filing liens on all your assets, personal liability fuckhead, I will seize all your equipment if you think shock and awe was something in Iraq you haven’t experienced a heavily medicated, morbidly obese, old New York Italian, with attitude, who knows where you live. You will go down and i will ripe [sic] your head off and piss into your bleeding, gasping, lifeless body then shit in your mouth and you will sell your wife and children into white slavery to make certain I collect my money.
“NON PAYMENT is not an option you want to pursue. You would rather be Saddam’s double with my friends at CACI they know how to soften a prisoner, but I am a quick learner.
“They buy human organs, for cash You DON’T want me after you I will make you regret your faggot father ejaculated into the slut of a woman known as your mother.
“You are Very lucky I am just agitated, If I get mad, or even mildly upset you will be selling your smooth white ass to niggers with AIDS just to pay me because NOT paying me is NOT an option. I am undergoing massive pain therapy, with prescribed medication sell your soul to the devil cause if it don’t work, God can’t protect you I will be after you and all your fucking officers of the corporation. I will place your organs on Ebay, and if the debt still has a balance you will be ground up for dog food.”

Posted by davidphinney at 01:53 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

January 19, 2007

Richardson Readies for Wiggle Room

Not that it's much of my business, but the Democratic operatives on Capitol Hill I know say he shares the same liability as Bill Clinton. A few flings or maybe more outside the zipper of his marriage vows. The skeletons could be rattling any moment now once New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson announces this Sunday that he is ready to create a presidential exploratory committee.

Superstars Hillary and Barack have sucked out most of the breathing room in polls of early nominating states, but this Bill may be the most qualified Dem jumping into the field. Once the campaign heats up, his competitors will doubtlessly open their mouths to exhale some controversial positions -- either that or bore voters and drive them away. That just might be enough to create the wiggle room Richardson needs. (And he may even be able to wiggle. Richardson's lost a ton of weight.)

Fourteen years in Congress, U.N. ambassador, Energy Department secretary and Western governor are the notches in his resume. The details are sometimes even more compelling. President Bush asked him to visit North Korea for talks on the nuclear program and he even more recently traveled to Sudan to broker a 60-day peace agreement and an end to the bloodshed in Darfur. He's very good at that kind of work.

While in Congress, he visited Nicaragua, Guatemala, Cuba, Peru, India, North Korea, Bangladesh, Nigeria, and Sudan to represent U.S. interests. In 1995, he travelled to Baghdad for lengthy and successful one-on-one negotiations with Saddam Hussein to free a few American hostages.

Putting aside his sticky problems with the Wen Ho Lee saga and baseball tales, Wonkette lists some interesting pluses:

* He's half-Mexican and speaks Spanish. * For 23 of the past 27 years, governors have been president.* For 15 of those years, Western governors have been president.* Actually a talented politician.* Ran the DGA and almost ran the DNC, so knows the machine.* Born in California, raised in Mexico and Boston -- he's got the local angle everywhere but the South, which could be fixed with Edwards on the ticket as veep. * No war support vote to worry about. * Actually coherent on the get-out-of-Iraq plan, because it's the Baker-Hamilton plan and he understands how to make it work with Syria and Iran. * Old enough to make Edwards and Obama look like kids, yet young enough to make McCain look like a crazy old man.

Posted by davidphinney at 10:40 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Got a War? Dial 1-800-MERCENARY

This is a clever take:

Considering all the flak that President Bush has endured for ordering 20,000 more troops to Baghdad, it's a wonder that he didn't just pick up the phone and dial 1-800-MERCENARY.

Jon D. Markman on TheStreet.com reiterates what private military pundits and observers already know: "Independent companies are now the third-largest contributor of forces to Iraq, after regular American and British troops."

And since Markman works for a handy investment and financial Web site, his advice is buy. "You've now got a chance to make a few bucks off the men and women who actually shoot to kill. It's a capitalist version of 24, without the commercial breaks."

Markman predicts DynCorp's future as especially rosy and he's keen on the name: "It's like giving the name Spot to a vicious Doberman, or meeting a mobster with the name John Smith."

Think about it: this could be an endorsement for investing in the mob and Doberman kennels as well. (....Maybe I think too much.... )

L-3 looks riskier. The company's recently-acquired Titan division lost a multi-billion-dollar linguistics contract to DynCorp. Besides, Baghdad is not exactly a safe work environment: Titan has reportedly lost 216 employees in the war "so far."

We're talking dead here -- not employees simply having a hard time finding their way around town. So, DynCorp workers may not have come out on the winning end of things with this new contract either.

L-3's Titan translators have the task of going out on midnight Army raids breaking down doors and ransacking homes in search of insurgents and other troublemakers. Titan people are among those who regularly carry side arms -- authorized or not.

An excellent series in The San Diego Union-Tribune explained the job thusly:

Titan employees say they worked in a land of chaos and lawlessness, where company rules were often vague and employees were sometimes left to fend for themselves....They complained of flak vests that lacked body armor, satellite phones that never worked and unsafe vehicles.

The company also worked Abu Ghraib during the time when torture and humiliation were routine -- and yes, Titan employees were present. They were supposedly under investigation by the Justice Department, but time marches on.

Markman says there are 20,000 gun-toting private contractors doing security work on the ground in Iraq. Actually, the number is more like 25,000 to 35,000, according to Tim Spicer, the British overlord of all private security companies operating in Iraq. That's not counting the other gun toters -- from interpreters to civilian and military advisers. Then of course, there are those who are unauthorized to carry arms but do anyway.

Posted by davidphinney at 09:22 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 17, 2007

News Media Does the Math on Contract Workers in Iraq

Major media is getting around to discussing the plight of the blue-collar workers coming home from jobs in Iraq.

Thanks to youtube.com, us video watchers have this very well done CBS recap -- sounds a lot like my work from two years ago.
.

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January 14, 2007

Gripping Headline!!! Hold the Phone! This Just In!!!

A guy I was standing next to in line at Murky Grounds on Capitol Hill pointed this out to me.

"That's no headline," he said, pointing to a stack of Washington Post newspapers by the cash register.

And there it was, above the fold on The Washington Post front page:

"HOUSE GOP SHOWS ITS FRACTIOUSNESS IN THE MINORITY"

Fractiousness???

Forget news stand sales, darling, please whisper sweet nothings in my ear....

I'm no headline writer, but the man was right. That's definitely no headline word and certainly not the kind of word that wakes me up on a Sunday morning.

No wonder newspaper circulation is in a nosedive.

How about: "Unity Falls Apart, "Republican Leaders Lose Their Grip,"" Republican Goose Stepping Ends," or "Republicans Break Rank."

The news media needs to get out of the Ivy Leagues and regain a little street sense (no matter how unruly and fractious those streets may sometimes be).

Fractiousness
A. noun
1. unruliness, fractiousness, willfulness, wilfulness
the trait of being prone to disobedience and lack of discipline.

Interesting story, nonetheless:

"You're freer to vote your conscience," said Rep. Jo Anne Emerson (R-Mo.), who received an 88 percent voting record from the American Conservative Union in 2005 but has so far sided with Democrats on new budget rules, Medicare prescription-drug negotiations, raising the minimum wage and funding stem cell research. "Or, really, I feel free to represent my constituents exactly as they want me to be."

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January 10, 2007

And the Oscar for Best Documentary Goes to.....

This is a tough one. Two outstanding docs are up for the nomination: Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth and The War Tapes by Deborah Scranton and Chuck Lacy.

Posted by davidphinney at 12:13 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

January 09, 2007

'Deplorable' Conditions for US Contract Laborers in Iraq

Just cleaning up my notes and found this inspection of a labor camp for the US Army dining facility at Camp Marez. Dated February 2005, most of the people living there were low-wage workers from the Philippines and Turkey.

"Filthy" is the common word summarizing the housing where workers were kept under this multi-billion-dollar US contract held by KBR/Halliburton.

Even now, there are tens of thousands of such workers imported from around the world to work in Iraq for dollars a day in support of the US military. The hiring of local Iraqis has been slow in coming because contractors are terrified of terrorists and insurgents.

"It is of my professional opinion that there are too numerous of health and safety issues to list individually regarding these buildings where these workers currently reside," notes the inspection. "The living conditions of these workers are deplorable and at least one of these buildings should possibly be condemned. In many areas of these buildings a strong smell of urine is overwhelming. It is important to note that these individuals that reside here appear to be clean in appearance and utilizing proper hygiene in spite of these conditions."

Among the highlights:

"Vermin holes in walls"

The person who sent it to me says the workers for the Turkish subcontractor working for KBR were fairly evenly mixed between Turks and Filipinos, but that the Turkish management heavily discriminated against the Filipinos.

The verbatim inspection is after the jump.

01 February 05

Partial Inspection of H-4 DFAC Worker's Living Area

This inspection was conducted by QAQC Inspector, Bobby Lee Johnson and Pamela Tibbs, Safety Coordinator. Also present was Serka Sub-Contractor Representatives, Hasan Kocahan and Murat Arikoglu. It should be noted that this inspection was conducted with the purpose of reviewing the living conditions of these workers.

It is of my professional opinion that there are too numerous of health and safety issues to list individually regarding these buildings where these workers currently reside. The living conditions of these workers are deplorable and at least one of these buildings should possibly be condemned. In many areas of these buildings a strong smell of urine is overwhelming. It is important to note that these individuals that reside here appear to be clean in appearance and utilizing proper hygiene in spite of these conditions.

It appears that the buildings are not grounded at all or not grounded properly in many cases. Between the buildings and lying on the ground are electrical cables and debris which is noticeable in many areas throughout the referenced area. This not only creates safety and health concerns but gives the area an overall unkempt appearance. The interior of these buildings in most cases are in worse conditions. Shower curtains are almost non-existent and the evidence of mold is rampant throughout these buildings. Smoke detectors are few and some that are present do not have batteries. All fire extinguishers have no tags attached however the ones that were located appeared to be properly charged.

Again, this inspection should be considered a partial inspection because many of the interior doors were locked and could not be entered and properly inspected. It is suspected that in many cases the ratio of workers to a bedroom/bathroom is unacceptable.

It is our understanding that these workers are scheduled to be relocated in the next few weeks to a different living area within the confines of H-4 Marez. A strong sence of urgency is recommended to act quickly on the relocation of these workers and/or repairs/ necessary safety issues addressed immediately. It should be obvious that our findings will reveal that in many cases repairs and renovations would not be economically feasible.

The following is a partial listing of discrepancies and non-compliance issues found and documented in our partial inspection of each of these building that are the domicile of these workers.

Dining Facility Lounge

Loose stepping stones at entrance creating a possible trip hazard

Electrical cord at entrance on the floor creating a possible trip hazard

No hot water available to the rear sink

Dining Facility Lounge (cont.)

Circuit board is missing a switch cover on one switch

Vermin crack in walls

All windows need re-caulking and not sealed properly

Hole in wall over door at east entrance

No tag on fire extinguisher

Loose electrical cable(s) on walls not securely mounted throughout facility

Rear/East Door not sealed properly with a large gap at the bottom

Note: There are electrical cable(s) hanging between the Dining Facility Lounge and Dormitory One as well as on the ground. Debris is scattered around the exterior of the building creating possible tripping and safety/vector hazards

Male Dormitory One

Exterior door missing glass window and open to the elements

There is only one exterior door that is not locked. Fire and/or emergency hazard

Overhead light(s) in hallway missing covers and some are broken and not working

Toilets leak as well as the shower heads and sink fixtures

Mold is evident

No light fixture cover at ceiling

New caulking is needed in the bathrooms as well as the bedrooms inspected

Vermin holes in exterior of building at top of exterior doors

Female Dormitory

Exterior door missing glass window and open to the elements

There is only one exterior door that is not locked. Fire and/or emergency hazard

One ceiling hall light not working

Ceiling light fixture is not secured properly

Bathrooms have leaking plumbing fixtures

Mold is evident

Electrical box at ceiling has no cover

Electrical wires are hanging from ceiling

New caulking is needed in the bathrooms as well as the bedrooms inspected

Vermin holes in exterior of building at top of exterior doors

Large Metal Container

(This was locked and we were advised that no persons lived in it and it was only used for storage.)

Male Dormitory Two

(Believed to be housed by ABC Sub-Contractor Workers)

Insufficient number of workable smoke detectors

Only one shower out of two is functional

Leaking plumbing fixtures at sink, shower and toilet

Filthy

Mold is evident

Strong odor of urine is present

Only one toilet is functional

Duck work in building leads to outside elements with no covers

Poor or very little floor drainage

Broken mirror(s) mounted on the wall(s)

Rain water enters at the floor on the east side of this building

A fire has occurred in this building and smoke damage is present

Caulking is needed throughout the building

HVAC unit is one of the rooms needs replacement

Vermin hole in west wall of one of the rooms at floor level covered with cardboard

Several loose ceiling light fixtures

Electrical wires hanging from the ceiling in several rooms

Male Dormitory Three

Electrical wires exposed at ceiling of west door

Bathroom is filthy

No ceiling light fixture

Shower curtain(s) if present are a health hazard

Mold is evident

Leaky plumbing fixtures

Loose ceiling light fixtures

Caulking is needed to throughout the building

Insufficient number of smoke detectors

Vermin holes in walls

Buildings Numbers Four – Nine

(The following is again only a partial listing of our findings)

Filthy

Mold is evident in bathrooms

Leaky plumbing fixtures

Insufficient number of smoke detectors

Loose Ceiling Fixtures

Caulking is needed throughout these buildings

Poor or little drainage in bathrooms

Loose ceiling light fixtures (many without covers)

Vermin holes in exterior walls

Some cracked or broken windows

Skilled Services Building

We were advised that only six people occupied and/or lived in this building. These individuals are alleged to be electricians, plumbers, generator repairmen, etc.

It is our opinion that there is evidence that more than six people live in this building. Most of the interior doors were locked or unable to be opened.

West side of exterior of this building is cluttered with debris and electrical wires

30 rooms with most locked and unable to enter and inspect

Circuit board does not shut properly and is not locked

One bathroom and is filthy with a strong odor of urine

Shower curtain is moldy and filthy

*Six sinks with one not functioning

*Six showers with only one functioning

*Six toilets with only one functioning

Floor tile is missing and the floor is wet with poor or limited drainage

Broken windows in some bedrooms

Caulking is needed throughout

Large hole in ceiling

Only two hall lights working

Insufficient number of smoke detectors

Missing covers for ceiling light fixtures

Skilled Services Building (Continued)

*It should be noted that these sinks, showers, and toilets are being used and functional but have leaky faucets and shower heads. There is water accumulated on the floor and the area is unsanitary. There does appear to be a strong odor of bleach in the air in a possible effort to sanitize this room.

It is an accurate statement that many of the listed items of concern are rampart throughout the compound. While all the health, safety and non-compliance issues listed in this inspection are accurate they are many still not noted in this report/inspection.

Bobby Lee Johnson

QA Inspector H-4 Marez

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January 05, 2007

Congress Urged to Look at Labor Trafficking

GovExec reiterates POGO's press release today by outlining the group's 13 priorities for Congress in the coming session. Among those priorities, the often celebrated, self-appointed, Washington-based watchdog group, aka, the Project on Government Oversight, singles out labor trafficking under US contracts in Iraq:

Highlighting a little-known issue, the advocacy officials cited a Defense Department investigation into human trafficking by federal contractors operating in Iraq. They noted that no hearings have been held to examine potential abuses of third-country nationals working on U.S.-funded projects, including the illegal confiscation of passports and violations of Iraqi immigration rules.

For more on what is claimed to be the "little known issue" of labor trafficking under US contracts, click here.

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Ouch!

From a December 12 Bill Moyers speech before a bunch of lefty groups gathering in New York sponsored by The Nation, Demos, the Brennan Center for Justice and the New Democracy Project:

Democrats are ebullient as they prepare to take charge of the multitrillion-dollar influence racket that we used to call the US Congress. Let them rejoice while they can, as long as they remember that while they ran some good campaigns, they have arrived at this moment mainly because George W. Bush lost a war most people have come to believe should never have been fought in the first place....

Democrats would be wise to be mindful of Shakespeare's counsel, "'Tis more by fortune ... than by merit." For they were delivered from the wilderness not by their own goodness and purity but by the grace of K Street corruption, DeLay Inc.'s duplicity, the pitiless exploitation of Terri Schiavo, the disgrace of Mark Foley and a shameful partisan cover-up, the shamelessness of Jack Abramoff and a partisan conspiracy, and neocon arrogance and amorality (yes, amoral: Apparently there is no end to the number of bodies Bill Kristol and Richard Perle are prepared to watch pile up on behalf of illusions that can't stand the test of reality even one Beltway block from the think tanks where they are hatched). The Democrats couldn't have been more favored by the gods if they had actually believed in one!

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January 04, 2007

Arianna's Aggressive Pursuit of (the) Action

Talk about swing voters!

Sunday, Home Edition
Copyright 1995 The Times Mirror Company; Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
February 5, 1995, Sunday, Home Edition
LENGTH: 1033 words

HEADLINE: ARIANNA'S WORLD;
WITH HER 'BROWN BAG' LUNCHES AND PLANS FOR A 'BEAT THE PRESS' SHOW, MIKE HUFFINGTON'S WIFE CRUSADES IN WASHINGTON FOR GOP CAUSES

BYLINE: By DAVID PHINNEY, SPECIAL TO THE TIMES

DATELINE: WASHINGTON

BODY:
Mike Huffington may have spent $27.5 million of his own money in his failed bid for the U.S. Senate, but that did not prevent him and his wife, Arianna Stassinopoulos Huffington, from returning to Washington.

While former congressman Huffington cultivates a low profile in the labyrinthine social world of Washington, his wife is visibly riding on the Republican tsunami that swept over the nation's capital in November.

Welcome to Arianna's world, a constellation of right-wing thinkers and politicians accented with New Age activists, a sprinkling of reconstituted liberals and some who refuse to be classified at all.

Immersed in a flurry of activity, Arianna Huffington is putting the finishing touches on a dinner scheduled for Tuesday, featuring House Speaker Newt Gingrich.

She hopes the dinner will raise about $600,000 to benefit the nonprofit National Empowerment Television, the broadcaster of Gingrich's weekly lecture, "Progress Report," and sponsor of his "Renewing American Civilization." NET also once ran Arianna Huffington's now-discontinued program, "Critical Mass."

Price per couple for a dinner with the speaker: $50,000.

Huffington has also signed on as a senior fellow with the Progress and Freedom Foundation, a think tank closely allied to Gingrich, and she is busy developing a television program called "Beat the Press," featuring herself as a self-styled investigative media critic.

The show would use video clips and commentary to chronicle her discoveries of press blunders and inaccuracies. Guests who have been made "victims" by media harpies will drop by to tell their side of the story, she said.

First media victim guest: Fellow Republican and political soul mate Newt Gingrich.

Huffington takes offense at a New Yorker article likening Gingrich's speech-making style to that of the Ayatollah Khomeini, and she intends to set the record straight. For "Beat the Press" she has edited a video segment of the Ayatollah sermonizing about "streets filled with blood" and combined it with tape of Gingrich talking about welfare.

"Satire is a great way to show bias," she said.

As part of her critique of the American media, she plans to feature a segment of good news. "What the media missed this week," she said. "It's so much more important than some little law that's passed."

Although she has completed much of the pilot, there are no takers for the program yet, but she has an eye on selling the idea to network television or for syndication.

There is also a new book project, Huffington's fifth in 20 years.

This one recounts the Republican revolution with frequent asides about her husband's recent defeat.

"It's about three revolutions, really," she explained. "There's the political revolution that launched the Republican landslide, the cultural revolution without which the political revolution cannot succeed, and the personal revolution in how we see the purpose of our lives."

And Arianna Huffington's purpose these days -- her public-personal purpose -- is to fill the public welfare void that will be left if the Republican majority in Congress succeeds in dismantling the welfare system.

"If you believe, as we believe, that the safety net government provides is full of holes and torn and doesn't really work anymore, then there has got to be something to take its place," she said.

And that is what her monthly lunches in a Georgetown condominium overlooking the Potomac River -- contributed by the Seagram's Corp. -- are all about, she said.

She invites people to a "brown bag lunch" so they can join in intimate discussions about how to replace the welfare state. The fare is not literally brown bag: Guests treat themselves to a beef stroganoff buffet and baby carrots served on blue-rimmed Limoges china.

Twenty-two guests attentively gathered at last month's meeting, including staffers from the Progress and Freedom Foundation, public housing professionals, members of nonprofit organizations and former Delaware Gov. Pete DuPont.

Conservative writers Marvin Olasky and Don Eberly, whose books are on Gingrich's reading list, assisted Huffington in leading the discussion. "I must admit, I have an intellectual love affair with both of these men," she said as she introduced them.

"This is the beginning of a conversation about what needs to be done," Huffington said while the chocolate cake was served. "We've got to get to work.

"Everybody knows that money alone is not going to solve the acute problems facing us," she said as she explained the group's plans to replace welfare programs soon to hit the congressional chopping block. "The question is how do you turn lives around? How do you turn around the lives of addicts and alcoholics and the single mothers?"

The answer, she says, is volunteerism, community involvement, local control and private funding of programs that have little to do with federal government. Huffington wants all facets of the private sector to chip in -- individuals, corporations and churches.

Being married to multimillionaire Mike Huffington makes her ideas an easy target for those less fortunate. But even in liberal camps, Arianna Huffington has her supporters.

"There is so much overlap between liberals and conservatives, and in many cases, we agree more than disagree," said Jane Fortsen, who once worked with the Carter Center in Atlanta. Describing herself as a liberal Democrat with a longtime involvement in public housing, Fortsen recently joined the Progress and Freedom Foundation.

"I'm not a liberal, I'm not a conservative, but they characterize us as a liberal organization," said Andrew E. Taubman, executive director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an organization pushing to apply "Jeffersonian democracy" to the changes being wrought by technology.

Taubman said he was intrigued with the monthly lunch and plans to return. "They say what they think and stick their chin out. If they get hit, they get back up and keep on plugging. I like that."

Besides, it's good networking. "It's fascinating to think that Newt Gingrich could be president someday and these people around him could be his advisers," he said.

Phinney writes for States News Service.

GRAPHIC: Photo, Arianna Huffington, shown strolling in Santa Barbara last year, is immersed in a flurry of activity. Associated Press

LOAD-DATE: February 6, 1995

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January 03, 2007

Energy Independence in 10 Years

Imagine President Bush announcing a national plan to achieve US energy independence by 2011 the day after the 9-11 attack in 2001. We may have already been half way there in reaching the goal.

Bush could have muscled all of his political capital and the collective national will to support the development of energy efficient products and alternative fuels. Much of the money that has been spent in Iraq -- $350 billion and counting -- could have been spent on developing better automobiles, light bulbs, refrigerators, computers, and a sweeping catalog of other consumer products that would supply a whole new generation of high-tech exports for the United States economy.

Need the oil companies and other corporate interests to buy into the program? Well, corporations have done very well financially with the war on terror and the invasion of Iraq. Presumably, they would buy into a program at home -- especially if you paid them anything close to the money they are billing in Iraq.

Cynical? Perhaps. But a program for national energy independence also would create more jobs in the US as well. That in turn, would nurture further broad-based support for a national energy program.

Think of it as being similar to the US space program after the Soviet Union successfully launched Sputnik in 1957, the world's first artificial satellite. It was the size of a basketball, weighed 183 pounds, and took about 98 minutes to orbit the Earth on its elliptical path.

The modest little orb spurred Congress to fast-track the National Aeronautics and Space Act and create NASA on October 1, 1958. So began the multi-billion-dollar, decade-long U.S.-U.S.S.R space race.

The Communist achievement was a competitive humiliation that President John F. Kennedy and his administration would not tolerate. Kennedy's new 1961 commitment to landing "a man on the moon," not only gave us the powdered orange drink, Tang, and the laptop computer, but it also reinvigorated public education and sparked other lasting political, military, technological, and scientific developments.*

An energy independence program would do the same things. According to one group, the Apollo Alliance, a 10-year national investment of $313 billion would spark $1.43 trillion in economic activity, $953.87 billion in personal income and over 3.3 million new good-paying jobs.

Landing a man on the moon in may have been more possible than making the United States energy independent in 10 years, but even if the United States were 50 percent successful, the progress would have enormous impact. Oil producing nations would come begging for business while cutting prices on their barrels.

*Sputnik also inspired San Francisco Chronicle columnist Herb Caen to coin the term "beatnik" in an article about the Beat Generation on April 2, 1958.

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January 02, 2007

Shrinking Violets

They foresaw a New American Century and it was as if they planned to pump up US foreign policy with steady injections of steroids. ... Then again, maybe they just were metaphorically whacked out on the drug themselves.

Adelman will be giving a tell-all talk at Nathan's in Georgetown Jan. 11, noon.

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Insuring Wartime Risks

It's one of the priciest items on a contractor's bill when doing business on the battlefield: insurance.

Calculations estimate that premiums range from $10 to $21 per $100 of salary paid to a civilian contractor, according to the investigative arm of Congress, the Government Accountability Office.

"That means taxpayers were paying up to $21,000 a year to insure a worker with an annual salary of $100,000, which is not unusual pay for a private contractor," writes reporter Joseph Neff McClatchy Newspapers.

Neff's story, Iraq Contracts Burden Taxpayers, lucidly explains how insurance companies may very well be making a financial killing in war.

Interestingly, insurance rates for a Pentagon contractor are higher than those paid by a contractor with the State Department -- even when both are working in Iraq.

Neff explains:

The State Department has put its contractors' insurance out for bid; the winning bid provides the insurance anywhere in the world at the same price. The U.S. Agency for International Development, the government's foreign aid agency, also bids its insurance. The rates in Iraq are very good, said Sara Coyne, an insurance broker at Rutherfoord International, which manages the contractors' insurance programs for the State Department and USAID.

All of this adds up to a lot of money when considering there are 100,000 or more contractors working in Iraq for the US government. That's 10 times the number of the Gulf War.

Insurance is taking center stage in the lawsuit filed against the security company, Blackwater USA, by the families of four contractors whose mutilated bodies were burned and dragged through the streets of Fallujah in March 2004.

In seeking damages, the families contend that Blackwater sent the contractors on a dangerous mission without proper equipment or preparation. Blackwater, based in Moyock, N.C., has said the families are entitled only to the $1,073 weekly benefits paid under the contractors' Defense Base Act policies.

The insurance industry agrees and has urged federal judges to dismiss the lawsuit and force insurance companies to pay the benefits. Any other decision will hurt the insurance industry and deprive the United States of the use of private contractors, AIG wrote in a friend-of-the-court brief. AIG didn't cover Blackwater.

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