Yay tedious angry liberal blogging! Check your email (assuming I got the address right).
I was reading your post and thinking, geez, that's pretty bad, electricuted in the shower...but mistakes can happen. I've done electrical, and it can get tedious. So, bad, but I was inclined to be lenient, but this:
During just one six-month period -- August 2006 through January 2007 -- at least 283 electrical fires destroyed or damaged American military facilities in Iraq, including the military's largest dining hall in the country, documents obtained by The New York Times show. Two soldiers died in an electrical fire at their base near Tikrit in 2006, the records note, while another was injured while jumping from a burning guard tower in May 2007.
Holy fucking shit. Like I said, I've done electrical. It's not brain surgery. I can only imagine that it's a) people not sufficiently trained combined with b) no inspections. Which is just stupefyingly unacceptable. I'm sure I could find, within a couple of hours, a pair of 16-year-olds who could run the operation better.
christ, it also wasn't clear to me that the guy electrocuted in the shower (Staff Sgt. Ryan D. Maseth) died from it. Sorry to make relatively light of that.
There's no need for inspections, the free market will police itself. If this company's malfeasance causes the collapse and/or bankruptcy of the US government, it'll be out of business soon enough, you can count on that.
I imagine it's even harder to take when the story is absurd. "He was killed in a firefight with the enemy" is one thing; "he died in the shower because we had lousy electricians" is another.
Even harder than 'he died due to a training accident' or 'was killed by friendly fire', too.
'Failing to protect' is making me cry.
As far as the issue of female "employees" who were supposedly sexually "assaulted", that's the kind of thing that an Iraqi-based shari'a law system is better able to handle.
Does anyone have anything happy or fun to link to?
Please?
It's that things like this have to happen *sometimes* in any large complex operation. Sure, there are accidents. But as Oscar Wilde said, you lose one soldier to bad wiring, it's a tragedy. You lose many, it begins to look like you're horribly callous war profiteers. (This is funnier in the original English.)
i recalled a joke, OT, maybe people know it
so chukchi and chinese are going to fight a war
chinese: we are billions, we'll fight you till death!
chukcha: scary, where to bury all of you, however?
I'm guessing what happened was that when KBR needed to get the electrical done, the management team was a couple young MBAs (if that) who posted their resumes at the Heritage Foundation and who knew absolutely nothing about electrical (No one with any familiarity with electrical could have been so careless). The article mentions they hired unskilled Iraqis for cheap, which was probably their brilliant idea to reduce costs. Pull some poor guys off the streets, hand them a couple bills and some pliers. It's not like it's a skilled labor position or anything.
So, I'm curious: what does it take, exactly, to *lose* a contract to provide logistical support to the military? How can these contracts not include a clause like, "If your shitty shoddy work causes the death of more than a handful of our soldiers, get the fuck out of here"?
7: Not to link to, but I'll share my happy moment. I picked up a copy of my medical records this morning to bring to a new doctor. In thumbing through, I found this line: "Patient continues to look significantly younger than her reported age." [/ego boost]
8: Nice try, but I'm still depressed.
I'm pissed that safeguards are put in place to prevent problems and then without the problems idiots whinge about the safeguards.
My diploma is officially in EE and yes, regular electrical wiring is not rocket science. Even so, after wiring my basement I had it inspected just like the pro's do.
One of the big challenges to people doing tedious but extremely important work is to remain vigilant and to find the mistakes before they are fatal.
Why do pilots have mandatory checklists for God's sake? Aren't they experienced? Aren't they talented?
Yeah, and they are also smart enough to know why they still need to use the checklists. Every time.
I hope that Sargent's family sues the contractor for zillions so some idiotic libertarian can cry me a river.
What I don't understand is why whoever is in charge hasn't been tracked down and shot in the knees. Or maybe they've just kept that quiet.
Di,
Hubba hubba! So are you now going back to that first doctor? I would.
I can only imagine that it's a) people not sufficiently trained combined with b) no inspections
.... along with c) customary "good enough for government work mentality"; d) no reason to fear losing out on future contracts for poor performance; e) deliberate and near-total insulation of the contractor from legal liability; f) [speculatively] diversion of valuable materials intended for construction to the local black market.
Under the circumstances, it's a wonder that the mortality rate has been so low.
had it inspected just like the pro's do.
good for you. I don't mean to knock it, it takes discipline and a real effort to do it right and fend off mistakes.
And since this is the internet and we are allowed to speculate with no information, I bet the electrician wired the ground to the water pipe which was not really grounded. And didn't use GFI. Or worse yet wired the 'neutral' to the water pipe as a supposed ground. Or even worse yet, wired what he thought was the neutral but was actually the hot to the water pipe which wasn't really grounded.
Or maybe he had the power off while doing some work and someone else turned the power on, although that usually would fry the electrician, not someone showering. Any other ideas?
Hey, read, what did you make of the Mongol elections last month? I couldn't figure out what the conflict was over, and what the pros/cons of the newly elected party were.
Does anyone have anything happy or fun to link to?
Yay, puppies.
What stories are wrapped up in "failing to protect."
Well, being "in town" it was a legal requirement, although I could have easily skipped that step and saved the fee and no one would know. It still would be stupid.
Here's some good news - Di is available and medically certified - Guyz?!
That makes the world a brighter place right there!
I'll add something that's a little more unpopular, though--this is where military families and post-service military have got to take the political lead and say, without euphemisms, that you don't get to claim to "support the troops" unless you not only spend money but take an aggressive line on diligence and competence in every aspect of military deployment. A lot of military families and former service don't want to do damage to the executive through this kind of criticism and in so doing appear to oppose the war itself, so they somewhat passively allow the Bush Adminstration and its political allies to claim "support for the troops" through empty flag-waving and politics-of-fear horseshit. Loudly insisting that the US government gets what it pays for in logistical and infrastructural support and that it hits failing contractors hard in every way possible doesn't intrinsically amount to opposition to the war--allowing the Administration to squelch complaints by letting them play endless number of patriotism cards is guaranteeing that they can be feckless incompetents in every aspect of their management of national security from the electrical and sewer installations in military bases to key deliberations and decisions made inside the Oval Office.
26: I'm with you Timothy, but to shorten your excellent statement - the people with the least power need to revolt.
20:Hell, with 283 failures maybe they used fabric-insulated wire or insulation that couldn't handle Iraqi heat.
KBR has done an outstanding job of making sure they are the only firm available for deployable missions. Much like Bechtel did earlier. Shoddy work happens, and there is little recourse. The USS George Washington is crippled by an electrical fire.http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/military/20080606-2051-bn6carrier.html
8: Nice try, but I'm still depressed.
So, I'm curious: what does it take, exactly, to *lose* a contract to provide logistical support to the military?
It seems you have to say something off the party-line on TV, or otherwise piss of the admin nabobs (or just make them look bad)
Job performance doesn't seem to have anything to do with it. Nor does accurate accounting.
22: Puppy! That's what I needed.
Puppy! That's what I needed.
Bring it on, apo!
When the whole basis for a war is to enable war profiteering, it is not surprising that the resulting war profiteering is pursued with less than full diligence. For instance in a barely reported* story at the time, in 2003 L Jean Lewis , the partisan low-level RTC investigator who pretty much singlehandedly launched Whitewater (with able assist from serial liar Jeff Gerth of the New York Times) was hired into the Pentagon inspector's general office. I wonder if she is still there?
Lewis has been given a $118,000-a-year job as chief of staff in the traditionally nonpartisan Defense Department's inspector general office. With 1,240 employees and a budget of $160 million, this office is the largest of its kind in the government. It investigates fraud and audits Pentagon contracts, including the billions of dollars being awarded in Iraq to companies like Halliburton and Bechtel.
*For which, given their participatory malfeasance in the 90s surrounding the story she launched, all of the practitioners of High Broderism in the press corps deserve to be knee-capped.
22 thank you for asking, Lw
i check unfogged in-between doing something, so i'm sorry for not responding at once
so i think the elections were fair, the ruling former communist party won 46 our of 76 seats in the parliament, the opposition won the rest
i think that's the real situation and it's the best for the country
if it splits exactly 50/50, like it was for the last 4 yrs, nothing gets done, it's like a deadlock
and there were some vote count fraud they say, so they're now doing recount of the votes i believe
i didn't know anything about the riot, called home as usually in the evening, my people were like what, have you worried much, i was really shocked
now it's all quiet
it's pity people abroad can't vote, almost 150 thousand of us, still, i would vote for the individuals, not the party, if one is an honest person and keeps the country's interest above all
and that riot thing was just really not for any good, it reinforced the presidential power and the ruling party's authority, some people even question whether it was like some kind of staged thing, but i doubt it
Things like this make me think that perhaps if KBR and company are going to act like the Mafia, perhaps the proper approach is to meet them on their own terms. If a few KBR senior execs were beaten half to death by returning Iraq war veterans, perhaps they'd think twice about pulling this kind of shit.
I am going to make this short because I really don't want to talk about, although i have some information to share.
My daughter has recently returned from Iraq (third deployment) and has nothing good to say about KBR, the Bush administration, or the war itself. It seems KBR is at the top of the peck order and beyond accountability or reproach. A KBR employee, on average, earns 3 times more than a U.S. Army officer, yet treats our enlisted folks like crap. Two of these electrocution incidents happened in my daughter's camp. She says the work was always sloppy, and the KBR people are always haughty and disrespectful.
There were also two suicides in her camp, another under-reported problem in the military. Protocol requires every scrap of exploded brains to be scraped off walls and returned with the body. The KPR folks shun the dirty work, leaving our underpaid and overburdened troops to do it.
Mince on this thought for awhile.
i check unfogged in-between doing something
I think I just got some insight into my productivity level.
Swampcracker, glad to hear your girl is back safe.
22: I can't see your puppy. And now, rather than just being sad, I'm enraged. God, you're a jerk. And a tease.
And now that I've read 39, I'm seething.
swampcracker: first off, glad to hear she's back safe (for now? Is she out?)
second thought: it really depresses me that your tale not only doesn't surprise me, but seems par for the course now.
Agree with #41; really glad your daughter is home.
Tedious angry liberal blogging... /earnest
You don't have to repeatedly apologize whenever you decide to write about something other than stand mixers, you know.
Also: sucks to be the American soldier who gets his guts wrecked by corrupt and incompetent military contracting; sucks worse to be the Iraqis who have to live with the results of that contracting for the rest of their lives. The soldier, I'm assuming, at least has some medical benefits back home to try and fix what KBR and company did to him; the Iraqis, not so much.
Or you can forget the second half of my comment; the linked article says nothing about work outside of military bases that I can see.
Ari:I am not good with email, but thanks and appreciation for yours. I have no problems or resentments. with you or your fellows. All over.
Blaming KBR seems beside the point. The pentagon is a powerful rich organization, if they wanted competent contract workers they could hire them, they don't give enough of a shit to do so. The military isn't forced by the laws of nature to hand contracts out to idiots.
26: Agreed.
you can forget the second half of my comment
Yes, let's please do.
49 makes no sense, as if only one party to corruption can be blamed for it.
Hey, huccome I can't see the puppy? I WANT PUPPY
To see the puppy
I really think To build a fire is the superior story, I have to admit.
Thank you for admitting your thought, Bunny.