Frank Newgent
26th June 2003, 09:02 AM
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article3905.htm
The Army says KBR got the Iraqi oil-field contract without having to compete for it because, according to the Army's classified contingency plan for repairing Iraq 's infrastructure, KBR was the only company with the skills, resources and security clearances to do the job on short notice. Who wrote the Army's contingency plan? KBR. It was in a position to do so because it holds another contract that is poorly understood yet in many ways more important, and potentially bigger, than the one to repair the oil fields: the Logistics Civil Augmentation Program, or Logcap, which essentially turns KBR into a kind of for-profit Ministry of Public Works for the Army. Under Logcap, which KBR won in open bidding in 2001, KBR is on call to the Army for 10 years to do a lot of the things most people think soldiers do for themselves -- from fixing trucks to warehousing ammunition, from delivering mail to cleaning up hazardous waste. K.P. is history; KBR civilians now peel potatoes, and serve them, at many installations. KBR does the laundry. It fixes the pipes and cleans the sewers, generates the power and repairs the wiring. It built some of the bases used in the Iraq war.
Writing the oil-field contingency plan was only one of a thousand things KBR did for the Army last year under Logcap. (KBR has a similarly broad contract with the Navy, under which it built, among other things, the cages for suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay .) The technical term for Logcap is ''cost-reimbursement, indefinite-delivery/indefinite quantity,'' or ''cost-plus,'' meaning KBR spends whatever it believes necessary to get a job done, then adds from 1 to 9 percent as profit. There's practically no limit on how lucrative Logcap can be, and as the awarding of the Iraqi oil-field contract -- by KBR, to KBR -- demonstrates, Logcap can become a generator of yet more contracts. Nothing like it exists elsewhere in government. That KBR wrote the oil-field plan wasn't considered by the Army a disqualifying conflict of interest -- in fact, just the opposite. ''They were the company best positioned to execute the oil-field work because of their involvement in the planning,'' said Lt. Col. Gene Pawlik, an Army spokesman.
Do they still have to drink Odoul's?
The Army says KBR got the Iraqi oil-field contract without having to compete for it because, according to the Army's classified contingency plan for repairing Iraq 's infrastructure, KBR was the only company with the skills, resources and security clearances to do the job on short notice. Who wrote the Army's contingency plan? KBR. It was in a position to do so because it holds another contract that is poorly understood yet in many ways more important, and potentially bigger, than the one to repair the oil fields: the Logistics Civil Augmentation Program, or Logcap, which essentially turns KBR into a kind of for-profit Ministry of Public Works for the Army. Under Logcap, which KBR won in open bidding in 2001, KBR is on call to the Army for 10 years to do a lot of the things most people think soldiers do for themselves -- from fixing trucks to warehousing ammunition, from delivering mail to cleaning up hazardous waste. K.P. is history; KBR civilians now peel potatoes, and serve them, at many installations. KBR does the laundry. It fixes the pipes and cleans the sewers, generates the power and repairs the wiring. It built some of the bases used in the Iraq war.
Writing the oil-field contingency plan was only one of a thousand things KBR did for the Army last year under Logcap. (KBR has a similarly broad contract with the Navy, under which it built, among other things, the cages for suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay .) The technical term for Logcap is ''cost-reimbursement, indefinite-delivery/indefinite quantity,'' or ''cost-plus,'' meaning KBR spends whatever it believes necessary to get a job done, then adds from 1 to 9 percent as profit. There's practically no limit on how lucrative Logcap can be, and as the awarding of the Iraqi oil-field contract -- by KBR, to KBR -- demonstrates, Logcap can become a generator of yet more contracts. Nothing like it exists elsewhere in government. That KBR wrote the oil-field plan wasn't considered by the Army a disqualifying conflict of interest -- in fact, just the opposite. ''They were the company best positioned to execute the oil-field work because of their involvement in the planning,'' said Lt. Col. Gene Pawlik, an Army spokesman.
Do they still have to drink Odoul's?