Hope is not a plan

It's drawdown time again for the British military. As the Eufor contingent in Bosnia moves from 6,000 troops to 2,500, 600 British troops formerly stationed in Bosnia will be moved out of the area. Once again, the question is whether ths is an intended drawdown following stabilization in Bosnia -- as is the claim -- or if it's an example of "scratching around" as a consequence of military overextension, to paraphrase Liam Fox.

Certainly, the relatively close match in numbers between the British drawdown in Iraq and the planned increases in Afghanistan made those two moves feel like almost a one-to-one switchover. That said, the fact that 600 troops are leaving Bosnia as part of a 3,500-person reduction in Eufor suggests that the Bosnia drawdown, while perhaps timely, was not explicitly done to aid in reinforcing Afghanistan.

Conservative MP Tobias Ellwood, who served in Bosnia, welcomed the statement but there were "lessons to be learned".

He said in Bosnia, there was one Nato soldier for every square kilometre while in Afghanistan, there was one for every 600 sq km.

Although I made the occupation-force-versus-area comparison between Iraq and Bosnia in this discussion of the insanity of our limited Iraq war plan, perhaps the more valid comparison is force to population. When Ellwood refers to "one soldier for every square kilometre", he means the initial NATO force of 60,000 troops that went in in 1995-96. That initial force total amounted to one soldier for every seventy-five citizens. The current NATO Afghanistan force is about 35,000-strong, or one soldier for every 885 citizens. It's not the fifty-fold difference that the area comparison generates, but it's still not good. The rule of thumb for a modern pacification effort is on the order of one soldier per 50 citizens -- Bosnia was right in the ballpark here. That said, Afghanistan actually has reasonably competent, reasonably allied armed forces, so there may well be large areas of the country that can be "written out" of security estimates, much as the Kurdish areas in Iraq typically are.

Unlike in Iraq, I remain cautiously optimistic that an increase in troops in theater will actually help in Afghanistan.

BBC article
al Jazeera article

From Merriam-Webster:

sacrifice

1 : to offer as a sacrifice
2 : to suffer loss of, give up, renounce, injure, or destroy especially for an ideal, belief, or end
3 : to sell at a loss

waste

1 : to lay waste; especially : to damage or destroy gradually and progressively
2 : to cause to shrink in physical bulk or strength : EMACIATE, ENFEEBLE
3 : to wear away or diminish gradually : CONSUME
4 a : to spend or use carelessly : SQUANDER b : to allow to be used inefficiently or become dissipated
5 : KILL; also : to injure severely

Even though McCain has officially regretted it by now, and Obama, while backing McCain's dedication to the troops, also officially regretted his own statement, it's clear that everyone has to actively try not to say "wasted" when talking about what Bush has done to our people in Iraq.

Compare the two words. We have no "ideals" here, unless the neocon fairytale of a magically democratic Middle East after we kill the big, bad wolf were to count as one. There is an end of some kind -- that same fairytale, as well as the additional end of "Bush trying to stall long enough to not have to admit failure on his own watch." In contrast, Bush and his coterie have clearly lain waste to our military. They have caused it to shrink in both physical bulk -- witness the continuing recruiting failures -- and in strength. They have gradually consumed our military, killing off its men and women, breaking its supplies, and grinding down those who yet live. And certainly, blatantly, they have squandered our people, carelessly throwing them into harm's way, choosing not only to go to war, but to do it in the worst, least-organized way possible.

There is a taboo against saying that our soldiers' lives are ever "wasted," as if to admit that would be to dishonor their personal sacrifice -- their choice to serve. This is exactly backwards. By refusing to admit that lives are wasted when we know that's what's happening, we let more lives continue to be thrown away for no reason at all.

It discourages me that both Senator McCain and Senator Obama are so easily bullied as to perpetuate the fiction that good people's lives are not being wasted in Iraq.

al Jazeera reports in this article about parliamentary voting in the breakaway province of Abkhazia, nominally a part of Georgia, but effectively independent since a civil war in the early 90s. Notably, the separatist struggles of both Abkhazia and another Georgian province, South Ossetia, have received substantial backing from Russia. This is a potentially dangerous game for Russia, as they attempt to drive the fragmentation of states such as Georgia and Moldova on one hand to retain regional dominance, yet throw thousands of lives away and cause massive damage trying to retain Chechnya. It becomes especially worrisome when you consider that some of the killers at Beslan may well have been separatists from the Ossetia region in Russia.

Guns and funds don't politely stop at the borders.

In a recent report titled Energy Efficiency: Long-Standing Problems with DOE's Program for Setting Efficiency Standards Continue to Result in Forgone Energy Savings, the GAO reports that DOE's failure to set required standards is costing us a lot in terms of wasted energy.

As a bit of background, the Department of Energy was tasked by the 1975 Energy Policy and Conservation Act (EPCA) with setting energy efficiency targets on a regular basis in key energy-use areas, some industrial, most residential. However, at the moment, DOE is woefully behind in setting new energy efficiency rules, only successfully setting requirements in four major residential applications. DOE has, in fact, missed 34 deadlines in 20 product areas that came up for revision. Of these missed deadlines, only 11 were late -- the other 23 have not yet been issued, with some of these up to 15 years overdue.

On the plus side, the standards that have been set by DOE should account for $125 billion in energy savings by 2030. On the minus side, the standards that are overdue will account for another $28 billion in lost energy savings over the same period if they are not put into place. Also, as the report points out, delays in enacting Federal standards may lead to standards being set at the state level. This uncertainty and potential irregularity in standards nationwide creates a problematic environment for businesses working in the regulated areas.

DOE management has submitted a plan for rectifying these problems and bringing standards up to date by 2011. However, the GAO report indicates that this plan is suspect, as it is based largely on anecdotal reporting on why earlier delays occurred, and assigns a six-fold increase in workload without a matching increase in assigned resources. Here's what the report had to say about management practices at DOE:

The plan lacks critical project management elements. According to leading project management practices, effective project plans have two key components that are lacking in DOE’s plan. First, plans should hold officials and staff accountable for meeting interim and final deadlines. If the officials do not meet these deadlines, they should provide legitimate reasons for the delays. Second, the plan should include provisions for adequate resources. Instead, DOE’s plan increases the workload sixfold over that in recent years without increasing proportionately the resources it will devote to the program. DOE officials told us they plan to rely on increased productivity, with only a marginal increase in resources, to bring the standards up to date. Furthermore, DOE’s plan does not include a means of ensuring that staff and reviewers are accountable for meeting deadlines.

However, lest this all seem like an issue of pure bad management at DOE, consider the role of Congress and those regulated businesses:

According to the report, Congress’s rulemaking schedule was “rigorous.” As a result, the program staff were unable to meet the deadlines from the beginning. These delays were exacerbated when Congress increased the number of products that required rulemakings. In 1994, DOE attempted to address the backlog by proposing standards for eight products in one rulemaking. However, according to DOE, this rulemaking effort met with strong opposition from industry, drawing over 5,000 responses during the comment period, and DOE withdrew the proposal. Following this experience, Congress imposed a 1-year moratorium on new or amended standards. The moratorium further exacerbated the backlog, according to DOE.

So, to clarify that progression, Congress originally called for rapid assessment of new standards. Then they added additional standards. DOE complied with both requests, and businesses complained vociferously. As a consequence, Congress blocked DOE from setting any new standards for a year.

Representatives from DOE could very reasonably point out that it's hard to comply with Congressional requests when Congress expressly keeps you from doing so.

Other business-friendly practices from DOE were also problematic when it came to meeting deadlines:

Adhere to the deadline for closing public comments. DOE reported that it will only consider comments received before their deadlines in its current analysis. In the past, DOE continued to consider comments after the closing date stated in the Federal Register and responded to those comments with additional analysis, which delayed the issuance of the final rulemaking.

From the overall assessment, it appears likely that DOE will continue to miss these deadlines, both because of a wildly optimistic view of their own ability to set new standards and because of continuing interfering from would-be regulatees and their associated Congressional support.

On the plus side, GAO reports that DOE is largely up to date in its job of evaluating revisions to residential building codes.

"Churchill answers critics on Crete operations during House of Commons debate."

- page 138, 2194 Days of War

More on the battle of Crete.

In their report titled Passenger Vehicle Fuel Economy: Preliminary Observations on Corporate Average Fuel Economy Standards, the GAO surveys the recent history of passenger vehicle fuel standards, and the even more recent attempt to get them moving in the right direction again.

Following the fuel crisis of the 70s, Congress developed the concept of Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE). The gist of the CAFE concept is that on average, the vehicles produced in a given class by an auto manufacturer must meet a National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) fuel efficiency standard, or the company pays a penalty. This is an average, so some vehicles may not meet the standard, balanced out by others that exceed it. Standards for passenger vehicles are divided into the categories of cars and light trucks, the latter category picking up many vehicles that have gained in popularity from the 90s onward, most notably SUVs.

Congress sets the fuel effiency target for cars in CAFE, and the NHTSA is tasked with setting fuel efficiency standards for light trucks at the "maximum feasible level using the same criteria and lead-time requirements used in setting standards for passenger cars". This all sounds pretty good.

Unfortunately, Congress has not mandated any increases in the car mileage standard (set at 27.5 mpg) since 1990. Furthermore, Congressional appropriations acts in the span 1996-2001 actually prevented NHTSA from spending money on updating standards, such that there was no funding available to change the light truck standard. The net effect was no change in fuel effiency standards for cars or light trucks between 1996 and 2001. Remembering who was in power in Congress during that time is left as an exercise for the reader.

The inability to alter light truck fuel efficiency standards was especially destructive, since vehicles that fall into the light truck category (this includes minivans, pickups, and SUVs) have risen from 20% of the passenger vehicle market in 1980 to 50% of the market today. As a consequence of this combined freeze in standards and growth in that sector, the overall fuel effiency of American cars actually declined in the 1990s.

NHTSA was finally able to change light truck effiency standards in 2003, setting a target of 22.2 mpg in 2007 (which would be an increase of 1.5 mpg from the 2004 standard). Subsequently, they reworked their light truck standards to match the standard to a calculation based on the total size of the truck. This metric lets them optimize efficiency while maintaining safety, by not batching in larger and necessarily heavier vehicles with much lighter vehicles.

It's a good sign that NHTSA is finally free to set new standards. Nationwide, we're already lagging on this, and even my own home state of California is starting to have trouble with auto manufacturers who got used to the static 90s and would rather sue than conform to our standards. The GAO has some additional recommendations culled from many experts in the field:

...these experts also identified some further revisions to the CAFE program that could be considered in determining ways to further optimize the CAFE program, including:

• evaluating a size-based approach for cars similar to the one implemented for light trucks to address safety and other concerns and encourage fleet-wide improvements in fuel efficiency;
  
• considering harmonizing light truck and car standards to have an integrated program and reduce incentives to classify vehicles as light trucks;
  
• reassessing the length of time for which standards are set to reduce costs for manufacturers;
  
• allowing trading of CAFE credits between vehicle classes and among manufacturers to provide additional incentives and flexibility in meeting CAFE standards; and,
  
• evaluating the need for the distinction between domestic and foreign vehicles when calculating CAFE to simplify the program and recognize changes in where automobiles are manufactured.

Problems with our military procurement system are a known quanity -- consider the issues with equipping our troops with second-rate body armor, for example. In a report titled Defense Acquisitions: Issues Concerning Airlift and Tanker Programs, the GAO reiterates some concerns about how the Department of Defense -- specifically the Air Force, in this case -- runs procurement.

Briefly, the GAO has looked at both DoD's analysis of our air transport needs for the near future and how it operates procurement, and found that both areas involve insufficient oversight and poor planning.

GAO has this to say about DoD's Mobility Capabilities Study:

For the past several years, we have reported our concerns with the analyses done to support requirements and have recently issued two reports that raise concerns about the quality of analyses underpinning the programmatic decision-making surrounding DOD’s airlift requirements. In September 2006, we issued our report on DOD’s Mobility Capabilities Study (MCS). The MCS determined that the projected mobility capabilities are adequate to achieve U.S. objectives with an acceptable level of risk during the period from fiscal years 2007 through 2013; that is, the current U.S. inventory of aircraft, ships, prepositioned assets, and other capabilities are sufficient, in conjunction with host nation support. In our report, we stated that conclusions of the MCS were based on incomplete data and inadequate modeling and metrics that did not fully measure stress on the transportation system.

Specific problems arose when they reviewed the MCS. GAO analysts found that MCS analysis was often based on severely incomplete information and untraceable assertions. When MCS conclusions were backed by fact, the facts used were probably not the best choice:

For example, the MCS modeled hypothetical homeland defense missions rather than missions for homeland defense demands from a well-defined and approved concept of operations for homeland defense because the specific details of the missions were still being determined, and DOD acknowledged that the data used may be incomplete.

Additionally, the MCS modeled the year 2012 to determine the transportation capabilities needed for the years 2007 through 2013. The year 2012 did not place as much demand for mobility assets in support of smaller military operations, such as peacekeeping, as other years. However, DOD officials considered 2012—the year modeled—as “most likely” to occur and stated that statistically it was not different from other years in the 2007 to 2013 period even though the number of smaller military operations is the least of any of the years reviewed.

Moving from planning to procurement, GAO noted that the Air Force is planning on requiring passenger and cargo transport capacity in its next generation of tanker planes, without having carried out mandated analysis to make sure that capacity is necessary:

Mandatory Air Force policy requires Air Force organizations to use a formal capabilities-based approach to identify, evaluate, develop, field, and sustain capabilities that compete for limited resources. Contrary to mandatory Air Force implementing guidance, however, the Air Force proposal for a replacement refueling aircraft, the KC-X tanker, included a passenger and cargo capability without analyses identifying an associated gap, shortfall, or redundant capability. According to mandatory Air Force implementing guidance, analyses supporting the decision-making process should assess a capability based on the effects it seeks to generate and the associated operational risk of not having it. In this case, the supporting analyses determined neither need nor risk with regard to a passenger and cargo capability. Air Force officials could not provide supporting information sufficient to explain this discrepancy between the analyses and their proposal. Without sound analyses, the Air Force may be at risk of spending several billion dollars unnecessarily for a capability that may not be needed to meet a gap or shortfall.

Specifically, the addition of passenger and cargo capacity will add at least $4.3 billion above and beyond the expected $72 billion price tag of replacing the current tanker fleet.

DoD disagrees with GAO's assertions here:

DOD disagreed with our first recommendation to accomplish the required analyses. In its comments, DOD stated that through the Joint Capabilities Integration and Development System process, the Air Force presented analysis and rationale for the passenger and cargo capability. DOD further stated that its Joint Requirements Oversight Council and the Air Force concluded that the analysis was sufficient justification for the capability and the Joint Requirements Oversight Council validated the requirement. However, as our report points out, DOD did not perform the required analyses and failed to identify a gap, shortfall, or redundancy for the passenger and cargo capability.

It sounds, however, as if they're not quite talking about the same thing. Although one would need to look at the individual documents, the Air Force emphasis appears to be on the rationale for this capacity, whereas GAO is pushing on the topic of whether or not it is necessary. In other words, Air Force may think it would be handy as hell to have passenger space on tankers, but GAO wants to make sure it's not redundant with existing capabilities, and thus wasting money that should be spent on other defense needs.

Finally, GAO points out that lack of good business practices during procurement and development leads to extra costs and delays. Specifically, they point out that "DOD programs often do not capture sufficient knowledge by critical junctures but decide to move forward regardless." This means that a program is neither halted nor reevaluated when it fails to meet a benchmark or makes a cost overrun, but simply continues going -- even though hard requirements and constant reevaluation would not only lead to cost savings, but to faster overall completion in the long run.

Consider the following Air Force programs, all suffering from delays and cost overruns:

This kind of "fuzzy" evaluation and assumption that programs should continue no matter what may come from the feeling that certain defense programs are critical, and can't just be shut down, or even halted. It's true that cost overruns seem acceptable for defense-critical items -- until you realize that by allowing this fuzziness, you actually end up with weaker defense capabilities than if timelines and evaluations were strictly enforced. The report highlights this very problem with regards to the programs shown in the table above:

The net effect of the outcomes to date is that DOD is now paying more to modify or acquire these systems and the warfighter has had to wait longer than initially planned before new capability is delivered. For example, the Air Force now expects by 2011 to have completed the modification of about 135 fewer C-130 airlift aircraft when compared to its plan 2 years ago.

Procurement reform is vital to national defense. By promoting rigor in planning and expenditures, we ensure that our troops will have the support they need faster, at higher quality, and more abundantly than if we just make best guesses and let deadlines slide.

...where the entire small town is rioting, at least numbers-wise.

Several people were injured as up to 20,000 people clashed with 1,000 police in Hunan province on Friday, a local official told Reuters news agency.

The Boxun Chinese news website said the clash was sparked by rising public transport costs. A witness told the BBC sporadic incidents continued on Monday.

These kinds of mass protests are not uncommon in rural China in the last few years.

BBC article

Finances have long been a target of anti-terrorist efforts. We freeze bank accounts of terrorist groups and problem nations. We similarly prosecute domestic sources of funding for external terrorists.

Similarly, we've shown in Afghanistan, and to a lesser extent in Libya in the 80s, that attacking the host nation of a terrorist group can be a valid approach when you cannot otherwise reach that group.

Families of sailors killed in the suicide bombing of the USS Cole (in 2000, if you've forgotten) are combining these concepts to sue the government of Sudan for $105 million in damages. Their assertion is that Sudan facilitated the attac by providing material and diplomatic support for those who actually carried out the suicide bombing. Notably, the government of Sudan has not just blown the case off, and actually has lawyers in court contesting it. I was especially struck by this:

Sudan, which the US has listed as a state sponsor of terrorism since 1993, had sought unsuccessfully to dismiss the civil lawsuit on the grounds that too much time had passed between the bombing and the filing of the lawsuit in 2004.

I'm not clear why they're playing ball by even sending lawyers, but it may or may not be telling that they actually tried to get the case thrown out on a statute of limitations claim, as it were.

al Jazeera article

In a report titled Maritime Security: Public Safety Consequences of a Terrorist Attack on a Tanker Carrying Liquefied Natural Gas Need Clarification, the GAO surveyed a group of experts and the current unclassified literature on liquid natural gas (LNG) spills to determine just how safe ships full of LNG are.

This is an area of growing concern because imported LNG is expected to grow from 3% to 17% of our natural gas supply in the next twenty or so years. As a consequence, new LNG offloading facilities are being planned, as shown in the graphic above. It's occurred to some folks in the last few years that, although LNG tankers have a solid safety record and as a consequence there have been no LNG spills, someone might get it into their head to go and try to blow one up while it's in port.

Intuitively, it feels like a ship full of compressed gas ought to be able to kick up a devastating explosion. However with supercooling as a prerequisite to move the gas into liquid form, it's not so much an issue of explosion as it's one of a spill followed by a fire. The current "worst case" estimate generated from research at Sandia National Laboratories suggests that an LNG spill could generate what's known as a "cascading tank failure" and a substantial fire, under the right circumstances. In a cascading failure, LNG leaking from one tank leads to a breach of several other tanks in the tanker. They estimate that an LNG fire resulting from this kind of accident would burn people to a distance of over a mile (that is, the heat of the fire would cause burns in people over a mile away from the fire itself). That certainly suggests some functional limits on placing LNG offloading facilities near residential areas.

The expert reviewers couldn't agree on whether or not this "worst case" is an over- or underestimate. Thus the title of GAO's report. They want to make sure we neither over- nor underspend on safety for our new LNG import facilities. In the meantime, you have something to chew on should someone ever try to stick an LNG facility within a mile of your home.

In their report titled Stabilizing Iraq: Factors Impeding the Development of Capable Iraqi Security Forces, the GAO takes stock of the current status of security forces in Iraq, and why their impact on the violence in that country has been less than astonishing.

This chart compares the increase in total numbers of Iraqi security forces with an apparently matching increase in violence. If you look more carefully at the violence track, you'll notice that the biggest "gains" come in attacks on civilians and security forces. In a way, the second part is logical -- the more security forces there are, the more there are to attack. One might expect things to reach a tipping point, however, and see attacks finally decrease. As the GAO notes, the exact opposite has happened so far, with the daily attack rate more than doubling from 70 (in January of 2006) to 160 (in December of that year).

GAO identifies several roadblocks standing in the way of effective security forces in Iraq. First, despite the monicker "security forces," only 40% of the reported numbers -- the Iraqi army, specifically -- are tasked to counterinsurgency. The rest are, in short, cops, and one does not effectively pit cops against insurgents. Second, it's hard to say exactly how many of the reported 327,000 trained security forces are really still on the job, or on the job at any one time. Although Iraqi Ministry of Defense figures exclude soldiers who are AWOL, Ministry of Interior figures include them. Military units deployed outside their home area report up to 50% absentee rates. In addition, GAO estimates that about a third of the Iraqi army is on leave at any one time.

So for the army, that's a starting tally of 130,000 troops, with 44,000 on leave, and up to 50% absentee rates among the 86,000 left on the job. It's hard to say where to begin with the Ministry of Interior, since they don't even bother to track absentee rates.

Third, and a big one, is the problem of sectarian "influence" in Iraqi police units. This has hit the news repeatedly in the last year, with American and British raids conducted against Iraqi "police" stations to rescue kidnap and torture targets.

Finally, GAO notes that Iraqi security forces are still quite dependent on coalition forces for logistical, command, and intelligence support. Their effectiveness is limited by their dependence.

GAO caps its report by reiterating an earlier complaint. Chiefly, DOD continues to balk at handing over to GAO its TRAs -- readiness reports on each of the Iraqi units trained and equipped by us. Without these, it's especially hard to say whether an Iraqi security unit should really be counted among the "ready" responders to the insurgency.

Valerie Plame Wilson is testifying today before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. Her opening statement is captured in this CNN article, and is critical reading for anyone who wants to understand just how malicious and unpatriotic our current administration was in seeking to punish her husband through her.

I worked on behalf of the national security of our country, on behalf of the people of the United States until my name and true affiliation were exposed in the national media on July 14, 2003, after a leak by administration officials.

I raced to discover solid intelligence for senior policymakers on Iraq's presumed weapons of mass destruction programs.

...

My name and identity were carelessly and recklessly abused by senior government officials in both the White House and the State Department.

The CIA goes to great lengths to protect all of its employees, providing at significant taxpayers' expense, painstakingly devised and creative covers for its most sensitive staffers.

...

The harm that is done when a CIA cover is blown is grave but I can't provide details beyond that in this public hearing.

Furthermore, testimony in the criminal trial of Vice President Cheney's former chief of staff, who has now been convicted of serious crimes, indicates that my exposure arose from purely political motives.

The BBC recently posted this snapshot of life in post-invasion Iraq. It would be sobering, if one did not already know how bad things were.

It's clear from this snapshot that infrastructure is simply not advancing in Iraq. The GAO has already reported that a lot of the money tasked to infrastructure simply isn't being spent. As a consequence, oil exports remain low, and electrical generation simply fluctuates around prewar levels -- well below contemporary requirements.

The BBC overview cites the official figures for Iraqi security forces, placing their numbers at about 320,000. Again, the GAO tells us that these numbers simply aren't accurate. Optimistically, it's maybe a third of that number. Maybe.

It's worth looking at the oil overview to see why alert sunnis in the middle of Iraq don't want the country split into three independent units.

Finally, make sure you check out the cost of living and wage comparison.

In addition to providing reports for Congress on a wide range of topics, the GAO handles legal challenges made after contracts are awarded. These challenges typically involve an assertion by one of the non-winning bidders that the contract was improperly awarded. They're also typically denied by the GAO.

Not in this case, however. In this report, ITT Federal Services International Corporation, October 11, 2005, ITT Federal Services protested as improper the awarding of a contract to provide logistics support in the European theater to the Army Corps of Engineers. You'll recall that KBR is a subsidiary of the best-known Iraq war profiteer, Halliburton, and a frequent winner of shady contracts (including some big no-bid ones).

In evaluating ITT's protest, GAO identified some key flaws in the way the contract was awarded.

First off, KBR cheated to make their staffing seem appropriate:

In the evaluation, the agency concluded that ITT had understated the hours necessary to perform this functional area by 198,963 hours, LSA Summary Report, supra, at 8, and that this understaffing resulted in its FFP proposal being understated by $3,068,179. SSEB Briefing, June 3, 2005, at 213. In contrast, since KBR’s offer of 570,076 hours was only approximately 3 percent below the estimate, the agency found that its proposed staffing was reasonable and realistic to satisfactorily perform all aspects of the requirement, LSA Summary Report, supra, at 10, and found no price/cost understatement for this aspect of the requirement.

The agency’s argument misses the point. The fact that KBR’s total labor hours number aligned with the agency’s estimate for total labor hours was irrelevant, since that number was calculated using a number of occurrences figure lower than that provided in the RFP. Using a lower number of occurrences resulted in an artificially low number for KBR’s total labor hours. Since the contractor will have no control over the number of occurrences, that number should have been the same for all offerors--indeed, it appears the agency understood this when it provided a specific figure in the RFP. Based on its own proposal, KBR will need additional hours to perform the work where all occurrences are accounted for; in fact, as the parties acknowledge, KBR would need 938,561.8 more hours to perform all occurrences. Thus, the agency should have concluded that KBR understated its staffing.

To boil that down, the RFP (request for proposal -- the document on which you base your bid) required staffing able to provide a certain level of service. To make their lowball staffing estimates seem to make sense, KBR actually reduced those numbers. Imagine going into a grocery store and saying, "Can you give me ten apples for five bucks?" and the grocer says, "Sure, we can give you apples for five bucks" while secretly scribbling out your "ten" and replacing it with a "six". The Army contracts folks acknowledged this fibbing by KBR, but then, stunningly, said "but their total estimate was lower."

Well, naturally. They cheated to make it lower.

In that vein:

We note as well that KBR estimated in its FPR that it would need 6.99 and 6.32 hours, respectively, to perform Tactical Vehicles repairs and services and CAP repair and services, compared to the agency’s figure of 5 hours per occurrence in each category. In its preceding proposal revision, KBR estimated that it actually needed some 20 percent more time per occurrence in these areas, and used figures of 8.57 and 7.74 hours per occurrence respectively. KBR FPR, at 6dd-6ee. It appears that KBR’s FPR reduction was merely in response to a discussion question in which the agency noted that its staffing in this area was approximately 20 percent above the government estimate. However, KBR’s proposal offers no meaningful explanation of how it was able to achieve these further efficiencies in light of its technical approach. Id. This was inconsistent with the instructions in the RFP:

The offeror shall provide a concise narrative summary for each priced CLIN/SCLIN of the contract base program year discussing the technical approach used to satisfy the PWS requirements. The offeror should provide detailed rationale and explanation to support the level of manhours and the skills and skill mixes . . . proposed.

KBR was told initially "your estimates are too high." KBR solved this problem by lowering their estimate, no reason given. Magic.

Perhaps more galling is that fact that KBR came up with the initial staffing estimate in the RFP in the first place:

However, the agency’s explanation for arriving at the number of FTEs required to perform these functional areas is problematic. The record shows that the agency used KBR’s proposed staffing approach as the basis for arriving at the distribution of FTEs among the various SCLINS. Specifically, the cognizant agency personnel determined that, because KBR’s staffing approach was similar to the IGCE staffing approach, they would use KBR’s proposed staffing to arrive at the appropriate number of FTEs for the various program management functional area SCLINS; they concluded that this would provide a more realistic FTE and hour count for the government standard. Amended KTR Program Management Document, May 27, 2005, at 1.

The agency’s actions were improper. The agency’s use of an offeror’s staffing approach to arrive at the government’s standard was not a reasonable substitute for an agency-generated estimate based on historical workload data and the PWS requirements. While the agency’s estimate and the staffing approach proposed in the KBR proposal could be similar, in the absence of an analysis from the agency reconciling the two, there was no reasonable basis for the agency to use the KBR staffing approach as its benchmark for evaluation purposes. Using the KBR staffing approach without such an analysis had the effect of possibly giving KBR an improper competitive advantage since, obviously, KBR’s staffing automatically would be deemed acceptable, while ITT’s would not.

Yup. The Army used KBR's staffing estimates in the initial bid development. And KBR still failed to meet them. And the contracts people involved chose KBR anyway.

Seems fair.

I check into, but do not really listen to, KPFA, for much the same reason I only check in with Fox. Reporting with bias I can deal with, but in listening to either, you have to work around chains of buzzwords that the speakers can't help but choke out every time they mention a topic.

That said, there's more value to be found in KPFA than in Fox, by far.

The KPFA program Flashpoints featured a story yesterday about a policy of strip-searching at checkpoints in Israel and the Palestinian territories, with an emphasis on this having been done to children. While I was doing some follow-up reading at If Americans Knew -- the site of the those who compiled that report -- I found an article they'd included that made an interesting point. The problematic yield of American support for Israel is not just a matter of antagonizing Arab nations. It's also a matter of funding industries that compete directly with ours, including arms sales to countries we won't deal with (and given our own armament promiscuity, that may be saying a lot).

In general, this entire line of thinking highlights the lack of good cost-benefit analysis for everyone involved. The checkpointing policies described in the report aren't particularly helpful, and, like many semi-punitive measures, may tend to generate enemies rather than control them. Similarly, we aren't doing a good evaluation of our role vis-a-vis Israel. A friend suggested that our policy would be sounder if we cut our military aid to Israel and replaced it witha promise that we would not fall to an attack from outside. If we then went on to spread some of that money around the area, that would help reduce key pressures that lead to violence, such as poverty and lack of hope. And that, in the end, would even help Israel.

BBC World Affairs Editor John Simpson writes in his column about an intelligence official who now says it is "one of the great regrets of his career" that he did not challenge how intelligence on Iraq was publically presented by Tony Blair in 2002.

I've gathered from government sources over a period of time that British intelligence had two or three agents on the fringes of Saddam Hussein's inner circle here.

But that wasn't the impression Mr Blair gave to Parliament. As we've seen, he called the intelligence "extensive, detailed and authoritative".

Although their human intelligence sources were indubitably better than ours -- we were just believing whoever Ahmed Chalabi threw our way -- they still weren't providing any kind of information that suggested Iraq represented a clear and present danger to the UK or the US.

It's surpassingly unfortunate that no one called Blair or Bush on their misrepresentations. I wonder to what extent compartmentalization in intelligence contributes to this. You may not have the inside track, but you figure the President or Prime Minister is talking to someone who does.

Except, of course, if you know you're in charge of the top British agents in Iraq, you should suspect that you do, in fact, have the inside track.

Things are not going well for Somali government and Ethiopian troops in Mogadishu. The most recent round of violence feels like a return to the failed American mission there, minus the extensive casualties dished out by our troops as they protected themselves over the course of a day.

There's a suggestion that this is a consequence of hit-and-run attacks by Islamic Unions partisans. Given the prior record in Mogadishu, it's hard to say whether it's likely to be that, or just a natural consequence of not having the firm hand of Islamic law in charge in the area. In short, is it intentional chaos or random chaos?

CNN article

The ever-update Korean Central News Agency of the DPRK tells us that:

Alexsander Kempshall, chairman of the Central Committee of the New Communist Party of Britain, in his key speech said that socialism is now successfully being built in the DPRK. He stressed that though socialism collapsed in some countries, Korean socialism is emerging victorious.

Meanwhile, reality tells us that 70% of North Koreans are starving.

So successful socialism leads to starvation? I'll sit that one out.

In light of the recent problems at Walter Reed, I was very interested in hearing what the GAO had to say about the VA. In a report titled Veterans' Disability Benefits: Processing of Claims Continues to Present Challenges, the GAO tells us that the VA has actually improved its procedures over the years, but that filing claims and appeals is still an arduous, overlong process, and that the VA's disability policies are probably out of step with the modern world.

As the following chart shows, the VA actually reduced its pending claim backlog in the early 2000s.

However, following a commendable low in 2003 -- the year of the Iraq invasion -- the backlog started to pile up again. By the end of last year, initial compensation claims took an average of 127 days to be processed, up 16 days from the year before, and appeals resolution took an average of 657 days.

Consider that this means that our veterans are currently waiting just over four months to have claims processed, and potentially another two years if they try to appeal a rejected claim. That's a long time to hang out, disabled, waiting for help.

The VA notes that they're receiving quite a few more claims than they used to, due to our pair of wars and other causes:

The increase in VA’s inventory of pending claims, and their average time pending is due in part to an increase in claims receipts. Rating-related claims, including those filed by veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts, increased steadily from about 579,000 in fiscal year 2000 to about 806,000 in fiscal year 2006, an increase of about 39 percent. While VA projects relatively flat claim receipts in fiscal years 2007 and 2008, it cautions that ongoing hostilities in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the Global War on Terrorism in general, may increase the workload beyond current levels. VA also attributes increased claims to its efforts to increase outreach to veterans and servicemembers. For example, VA reports that in fiscal year 2006, it provided benefits briefings to about 393,000 separating servicemembers, up from about 210,000 in fiscal year 2003, leading to the filing of more original compensation claims. VA has also noted that claims have increased in part because older veterans are filing disability claims for the first time.

Newer claims also take longer to process because they involve harder-to-substantiate conditions, all neurological -- post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and brain injuries (the latter a notable consequence of near hits by IEDs). In processing PTSD the VA runs into specific roadblocks based on the need to substantiate the causative incident(s):

Additionally, claims-processing timeliness can be hampered if VA cannot obtain the evidence it needs in a timely manner. For example, to obtain information needed to fully develop some post-traumatic stress disorder claims, VBA must obtain records from the U.S. Army and Joint Services Records Research Center (JSRRC), whose average response time to VBA regional office requests is about 1 year. This can significantly increase the time it takes to decide a claim.

The VA, aware that its improving outlook has taken a retrograde turn since the invasion of Iraq, has a number of plans to fix the situation. Their fiscal year 2008 staffing request is a 6% increase over 2006 levels. They intend to bring the additional staff up to speed quickly using overtime from regular staff and training led by retired VA employees. They also want to capture more of a servicemember's military records electronically at discharge, so they can cut down on problems such as that one-year wait time from JSRRC. They're also trying to cut down on problems that lead to appeals.

The GAO applauds these efforts, but points out that the VA may have an antiquated idea of just how disability works these days:

Specifically, our research showed that the disability programs administered by VA and the Social Security Administration (SSA) lagged behind the scientific advances and economic and social changes that have redefined the relationship between impairments and work. For example, advances in medicine and technology have reduced the severity of some medical conditions and have allowed individuals to live with greater independence and function in work settings. Moreover, the nature of work has changed in recent decades as the national economy has moved away from manufacturing-based jobs to service- and knowledge-based employment. Yet VA’s and SSA’s disability programs remain mired in concepts from the past, particularly the concept that impairment equates to an inability to work.

If I'm reading that correctly, GAO is pushing in a good direction here. The ability to work in some capacity should not, alone, be a metric that a veteran is no longer in need of assistance and care. We want our injured veterans to return to a real life, not just to survive.

Republican Representative Christopher Shays was quoted today as saying that Congress should not "micromanage" the war in Iraq.

"Congress is not the commander in chief, and it shouldn't be," Shays said in an interview on Capitol Hill with The Associated Press.

"What happens if we stayed four more months (after the fall 2008 deadline) and we could win it?" he said. "A lot can happen in a year."

Ignoring the gambler's mentality of "just one more play, maybe I'll win this time" that he's espousing, return to 1993 and take a look at what Senator John McCain had to say about the situation in Somalia:

What is the criteria and what should be the criteria is our immediate, orderly withdrawal from Somalia. And if we do not do that and other Americans die, other Americans are wounded, other Americans are captured because we stay too long--longer than necessary--then I would say that the responsibilities for that lie with the Congress of the United States who did not exercise their authority under the Constitution of the United States and mandate that they be brought home quickly and safely as possible. . . .

Similarly, from Republican Senator Dirk Kempthorne:

But, Mr. President, the longer we leave United States troops in Somalia under U.N. command, the longer we leave United States troops in unjustified danger. I owe my allegiance to the United States, not to the United Nations. It is time for the Senate of the United States to get on with the debate, to get on with the vote, and to get the American troops home.

For the record, Mr. Shays did not speak on Somalia in Congress in 1993 -- largely because the debate on Somalia was held entirely in the Senate. So he may be on solid ground peronsally, as much as Republican members of Congress may not be on such ground generally. However, it's worth mentioning that while John McCain spoke up defending the power of the president to commit troops, he similarly spoke up to defend Congress's right to defund a war of which it disapproved:

My concern is based on constitutional grounds. The President is the Commander in Chief. As such, he has the power to commit U.S. troops to meet any contingency. The Constitution grants the Congress the power of the purse. With the powers given it, the Congress may end those military operations by cutting off funding. The Constitution does not give the Congress the power to prevent the President from committing forces.

He also had this to say. See if it feels like it might apply a little more to today's Administration (except, perhaps, the idea of "assertive multilateralism"):

Let me stress, Mr. President, that I sympathize with Senators Dole and Nickles as they seek to impose some guidance for American foreign policy in an environment where little guidance, as well as little consultation with Congress on these matters, is forthcoming from the administration. There is a vacuum in foreign policy leadership in Washington at the moment, and that is a dangerous situation for this Nation to risk at such a challenging moment in history. Neither would I like to see a repeat of the administration's inattentiveness, miscalculations and vague inclinations toward assertive multilateralism that result in our recent misadventure in Somalia. Understandably, Senators Dole and Nickles have sought some action which would reduce the likelihood of future repetition of this kind of folly.

One would hope that with adequate consultation with Congress, the administration would avoid future blunders that needlessly put at risk the lives of our troops. If they do not avoid such mistakes, Congress has the right to refuse to fund them. However, I do not believe Congress should preclude or circumscribe the President's foreign policy leadership in advance of the policy's formulation. Congress should work closely with the administration to help keep the President from making future mistakes like the debacle in Somalia. But should he persist in making them, our legislative resources should be to terminate them as quickly as we can by denying them funds for further implementation once they have been made.

These later McCain quotes are from the Congressional record for the Senate, October 19, 1993.

So remember, kids -- John McCain says it's Congress's right to terminate erroneous wars "as quickly as we can by denying them funds."

In a paper in the Lancet published in October of last year -- which I reported on here, Burnham et al made a survey-based estimate of violent deaths in Iraq since the invasion. Their estimate of 390,000-942,000 deaths (best guess 600,000) spurred a lot of complaint, and was dismissed out of hand by Bush, Blair, and the government of Iraq. Even Iraqi health minister Ali al-Shemari's quiet revision of his own estimate up to 150,000 did not dissuade Bush from our excessively conservative estimate of 30,000.

Note the horror of thinking 30,000 civilian deaths is swell, as long as it's not 600,000.

As it happens, a BBC freedom of information request filed in November of last year finally bore fruit, and in this report they reveal that the British Ministry of Defence's chief science advisor, Sir Roy Anderson, had this to say about the Lancet study:

"The study design is robust and employs methods that are regarded as close to "best practice" in this area, given the difficulties of data collection and verification in the present circumstances in Iraq."

Other internal memos revealed by the BBC request show that Blair administration officials accepted the methodology of the study while simultaneously denying its results, thinking they were "too high." How you accept the methods yet question the results is not clear, but probably has something to do with the results being uncomfortable.

Some have also expressed worries that the study might have "mainstreet bias," as explained below:

Some scientists have subsequently challenged the validity of the Lancet study. Questions have been asked about the survey techniques and the possibility of "mainstreet bias".

Dr Spagat has previously conducted research with Iraq Body Count, an NGO that counts deaths on the basis of media reports and which has produced estimates far lower than those published in the Lancet.

This would be a stronger argument against the results of the study if the majority of deaths came from bombings. However, 31% of reported deaths were by gunshot, and only 7% by bombing (you can check these numbers by reading the study yourself). So the potential "mainstreet bias" effect can only account for 42,000 deaths, leaving a whopping 560,000 or so, still over eighteen times the official figure.

Also note that Iraq Body Count and others who rely on media reports are guaranteed to massively undercount casualties. As I mentioned before, media and government reporting of deaths in wartime typically catches only 5-20% of actual deaths. Even taking the conservative 20% reporting estimate, we'd have a casualty figure of 150,000 -- which matches al-Shemari's estimate.

Finally, it's farcical to complain that "they were only able to sample a small sliver of the country". They used sampling methods and numbers equal to any Gallup poll or other rock-solid, reliable surveying method employed on a regular basis to determine public mood and needs in the United States.

The methods are sound, and the results, while hard to fathom, are reasonable.

A series of constitutional changes that will make it easier to exclude religious groups from government and that include a number of "anti-terrorism" measures were voted into effect in Egypt this week in what was, by almost all accounts, a tremendously shady voting process.

The Egyptian justice ministry placed the turnout at an already low 27.1%, but conflicting observations from various NGOs put the actual turnout at 3-9%. Rights-oriented groups were not happy with the outcome:

Amnesty International describes the changes as the greatest erosion of human rights in 26 years.

Human Rights Watch said the amendments "effectively remove basic protections against violations of Egyptians' rights to privacy, individual freedom, security of person and home and due process"

To clarify just how shady the actual voting was, consider the following:

Ayman Mohyeldin, an Al Jazeera correspondent, said he spoke to voters who did not understand why they were voting and even found people who voted though they were ineligible to vote.

There is no guarantee that the ballot will be tallied but the incident highlights major loopholes in the voting system, Mohyeldin said.

al Jazeera article

Yesterday, Senator John Cornyn (R - Texas), said this on the Senate floor:

Madam President, I agree with the Senator from Arizona that the consequences of playing politics with this important funding for our troops is simply the wrong strategy; that what we have is a game of chicken between the House of Representatives, which is larding up a supplemental appropriations bill with a bunch of extraneous pork, and the President, recognizing that there are nonsecurity provisions in that supplemental appropriations, has said if that and the timetable for withdrawal from Iraq is included as part of this emergency supplemental, he will veto it. So this is a high-risk game of chicken, with the impact of delaying passage of the supplemental being felt directly by our troops on the ground, if that is in fact the result.

He's expressing agreement with Senator Jon Kyl, (R - Arizona). One wonders if perhaps he's not so hot about agreeing with the other Senator from Arizona, who, as I mentioned this week had this to say about defunding a war in progress:

One would hope that with adequate consultation with Congress, the administration would avoid future blunders that needlessly put at risk the lives of our troops. If they do not avoid such mistakes, Congress has the right to refuse to fund them.

Mr. Kyl is not on the record from 1993 on his views on Somalia and Congress's control over war funding because he wasn't a Senator at the time. Instead, he was over in the House, arguing for a reduction in the capital gains tax.

He probably is the safer one to agree with, if you're going to argue for this fundamental change in the Republican position on the powers of Congress over war.

Judge Thomas Hogan of the DC District Court has dismissed a lawsuit against Donald Rumsfeld and others on the grounds that nine people who were tortured on Rumsfeld's watch did not have American constitutional rights, and that Rumsfeld was immune to such lawsuits anyway.

Hogan simultaneously accepted that the evidence demonstrated that the nine men -- five Iraqi, four Afghan -- had, indeed, been tortured while being held in American facilities. This torture included:

• Being hung upside-down and beaten unconscious
• Being stabbed
• Being electrocuted
• Sleep deprivation
• Being attacked by dogs
• Sexual humiliation

I have no idea if courts elsewhere care about things being on the record in the US, but it's there now. The case was dismissed on expected procedural grounds, but the torture evidence was firm enough to convince a judge.

BBC article

Yesterday, in opposing a planned withdrawal date from Iraq, John McCain said this:

You might not know it from reading newspapers or watching the evening news, but in Iraq today there are real signs the new strategy is working. I wish to spend a few moments outlining some of this progress, not to paint an overly rosy scenario but, rather, to correct what has become an almost single-minded focus in the Congress on the prospects of defeat. The debate in Congress has an ``Alice in Wonderland'' quality about it: We are debating efforts to micromanage a conflict based on what the conditions were 3 months ago, not on what the reality is today. Conditions have changed in Iraq. The Baghdad security plan--the ``surge''--is working far better than even the most optimistic supporter had predicted. The progress is tangible in many key areas despite the fact only 40 percent of the planned forces are in Iraq.

In Baghdad, the military has reported an increase in real-time, actionable intelligence provided to U.S. and Iraqi forces by a newly confident population. Prime Minister Maliki, who prevented U.S. troops from conducting certain Baghdad operations last year, has given the green light to American incursions throughout the city, including Shiite strongholds. All of the Iraqi army battalions called for under the plan have arrived, many at or above 75 percent of their programmed manning levels. Bomb attacks and murders are down since the surge began. Civilians killed in Baghdad numbered 1,222 in December, 954 in January, and fell to 494 in February. There are reports of Sunni and Shia moving back into neighborhoods from which they had fled constant and horrific violence. Markets that have been subject to horrific car bombings have been turned into pedestrian malls that facilitate commerce and thwart terrorists.

That does sound impressive -- that would be a 60% drop in civilian deaths in just two months.

Let's take a longer look back. Now, these are all-Iraq numbers, so they'll be a little higher. That said, most death totals for Iraq largely reflect deaths in Baghdad. It's also hard to actually untangle civilian and police deaths, since they tend to be reported together, so these numbers include both. I've also appended a percentage change from the preceding month to the listed month.

I'm really not sure where McCain managed to find stats suggesting that 60% drop, by the way. I suspect very creative accounting at work there. Applied to deaths, that's fairly obscene.

March 2007: 1,396 (-9%)
February 2007: 1,531 (-15%)
January 2007: 1,802 (+3%)
December 2006: 1,752 (-6%)
November 2006: 1,864 (+20%)
October 2006: 1,539 (-56%)
September 2006: 3,539 (+19%)
August 2006: 2,966 (+230%)
July 2006: 1,280 (+47%)
June 2006: 870 (-22%)
May 2006: 1,119 (+10%)
April 2006: 1,009 (-7%)
March 2006: 1,092

So, the first troops of our new surge arrived in Baghdad in late January. Perhaps they're responsible for the drops seen in February and so far in March (although March isn't done yet, and the totals may not include the revenge mass murder in Tal Afar yesterday, or the truck bombing that precipitated it). That said, the record shows far bigger variances that were apparently independent of any change in our strategy. The drop between May and June of last year is about the same as that one we've seen across the entire "surge" period to date, and the drop between September and October is positively precipitous compared to the current mild decline.

John McCain also appeared on television saying that Baghdad was so safe that General Petraeus moves around in a normal HMMWV -- this is part of McCain's repetition of the tired assertion that Donald Rumsfeld used to pull out to insist that "things are going better than you think" in Iraq. CNN Baghdad correspondent Michael Ware had this to say when asked to reality check McCain's remarks:

It's unclear what part of Neverland that Senator McCain is talking about, where Americans can stroll the streets of the capital, Baghdad. If al Qaeda doesn't get an American, if a Shia militia isn't tipped off, if the Sunni insurgents don't grab him, then a criminal gang will see dollar signs and take him immediately.

Also note that American military casualties since the surge began have been higher than all but two months of 2006.

Casualty figures for Iraqis and Americans are taken from icasualties.org. Remember, as they indicate as well, Iraqi deaths are chronically underreported.