PANEL REPORTS ON WAR CONTRACTS THAT WENT BAD
Poor planning, weak oversight and greed combined to soak U.S. taxpayers and undermine U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, government watchdogs are telling a new commission examining waste and corruption in wartime contracts.
Since 2003, the Pentagon, State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development have paid contractors more than $100 billion for goods and services to support war operations and rebuilding. There are 154 open criminal investigations into allegations of bribery, conflicts of interest, defective products, bid rigging and theft stemming from the wars, according to Thomas Gimble, the Pentagon's principal deputy inspector general.
The Associated Press obtained the prepared testimony of Gimble and Stuart Bowen, special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, in advance of today's first hearing by the Commission on Wartime Contracting.
Congress created the bipartisan panel a year ago. Styled after the Truman Committee, which examined World War II spending six decades ago, the eight-member panel has broad authority to examine military support contracts, reconstruction projects and private security companies. The panel has until August 2010 to produce a final report. Along the way, it can refer to the Justice Department any legal violations it finds.
U.S. SOLDIER DIES; TOLL NOW AT 4,237
The U.S. military said a U.S. soldier died Saturday of a noncombat injury in the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk. No details were provided. The death brings to at least 4,237 the number of U.S. military members who have died in the Iraq war since it began in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.
OPIUM POPPY CROP FALLS WITH PRICES
Afghanistan's production of opium poppies is expected to decrease in 2009, but cultivation of the illegal crop remains entrenched in the country's most unstable southern provinces, the United Nations said in a report released Sunday.
The falling price of opium and rising price of wheat -- along with drought and pressure from the government -- brought production down in most of the country in 2008, the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime said in its annual winter survey. The survey anticipates a further decrease in opium cultivation and yields this year but doesn't predict how much it will drop.
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