Pentagon Drops Ball on Contractor Oversight: Report

Though US defense contracting has reached “unprecedented proportions” in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Defense Department isn’t adequately monitoring the contracts, according to an independent watchdog. A report to be presented to Congress tomorrow says the government lacks central records showing the identities, activities, and pay of some 240,000 private workers contracted for tens of billions of dollars, the AP reports.

The 111-page report by the Wartime Contracting Commission, created by Congress last year, says the contracting system is poorly run. One example is a poorly planned $30 million mess hall in Iraq: it’s too late to stop building it, so it will end up a symbol of waste in the war effort. And the report raises the concern that as US troops leave Iraq, supervision of contractors will be even weaker.
(More Pentagon stories.)