Panel finds big snafus in Iraq war spending

WASHINGTON — The Wartime Contracting Commission, an independent panel investigating contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan, presents a bleak assessment of waste and inefficiency in a report to be made public Wednesday at a hearing by the House Oversight and Government Reform's national-security subcommittee.

The 111-page report on how tens of billions of dollars have been spent since 2001 documents poor management, weak oversight and a failure to learn from past mistakes.

As one example, construction of a $30 million dining facility at a U.S. base in Iraq is to be completed Dec. 25. But the decision to build it was based on bad planning, failure to review the need for the project and botched paperwork.

Work is too far along to stop.

U.S. reliance on contractors has grown to "unprecedented proportions," says the bipartisan commission, established by Congress last year.

More than 240,000 private-sector employees are supporting military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Thousands more work for the State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development.

But the government has no central database of who all these contractors are, what services they provide and how much they're paid.

The Pentagon has failed to provide enough trained staff to watch over them, creating conditions for waste and corruption, the commission says.

In Iraq, the panel worries that as U.S. troops depart in larger numbers, there will be too few government eyes on the contractors left to oversee the closing of hundreds of bases and disposal of mountains of federal property.

The commission cites concerns with a massive support contract known as "LOGCAP" that provides troops with essential services, including housing, meals, mail delivery and laundry.

The main office managing the work for both Afghanistan and Iraq has only 13 government employees. For administrative help, it must rely on a contractor.

KBR, the primary LOGCAP contractor in Iraq, has been paid nearly $32 billion since 2001. Defense auditors challenged KBR after it billed the government for $100 million for private security even though the contract prohibited the use of for-hire guards.

KBR has defended its performance and criticized the commission for making "biased" statements against the company.

KBR is also linked to the dining-hall snafu, although the commission faults the military's planning, not the contractor.

With American forces scheduled to be out of Iraq by the end of 2011, the U.S. will use the new facility for two years at most.