Defense Contractors Robbing Us Blind

What's New? it's been happening the last 8 years of the Bush Cheney administration.

Washington; During a routine check of a watch tower at a U.S. military base in Kuwait, an Army sergeant found the guard leaning back in a chair, his sunglasses on, apparently sound asleep. When the soldier woke the guard, an employee of a defense contractor named Combat Support Associates, he denied he'd dozed off while on duty.
"It's so weird that I can close my eyes for one second and then you appear out of nowhere," the guard said, according to the sergeant's March 2008 inspection report.
The episode illustrates the problems between the U.S. armed forces and the industrial army supporting military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Demand for contractor services is heavy, while oversight of their work isn't. That means problems often aren't discovered until long after the payments have been made.
A major trouble spot is the business systems and procedures that companies use to bill the government. The numbers are eye-popping. Defense auditors have found at least $6 billion in questionable charges generated by sloppy accounting or, worse, contractors trying to bilk the military.
Yet, the Pentagon has done a poor job of recovering the money and forcing companies to improve, according to the independent Commission on Wartime Contracting. The panel cites dysfunction among auditors and contract managers, a shortage of personnel and a failure to be more confrontational with contractors who don't measure up.
Based in Orange, Calif., Combat Support Associates is a largely unknown enterprise that, since 1999, has held an Army contract worth $2.7 billion to support U.S. troops at bases in Kuwait as they move in and out of Iraq. The company's responsibilities include vehicle maintenance, warehousing, computer repairs and post security.
Between 2003 and 2007, when the U.S. invaded Iraq and then became ensnared in a lengthy counterinsurgency, there was little government scrutiny of the company's business systems, according to interviews and government records obtained by The Associated Press through the Freedom of Information Act.
In late 2007, the military belatedly began paying attention. Numerous contract violations were found, several of them serious, leading to a flood of what contracting officials call corrective action requests. Last fall, the Army Criminal Investigation Command opened an inquiry to determine if Combat Support Associates overbilled the government. The case is ongoing. LinkHere