US Army ousts Halliburton

Originally posted by EastCoastKid
This is also not good for the morale of the soldiers and Marines who work side-by-side with the contractors. They see their civilian counterparts making mad money and not being held to the same standards - while they make meager pay and bear a much heavier burdon.

I always thought people who whined about the military contractors killed and dismembered in Iraq a few years back were so stupid. I mean they were in a war, what'd they expect?

And contractors are making blood money, they should be shredded to bits.

I won't go that far in my judgement of them. Some do it out of the need to make more money to support families. They have the skills and the pay is mad, like I said. There are a lot of contractors, too, who are truck drivers & such. They get caught in the cross-fire.

On the other hand, those who do go purely for thrill and financial enrichment, deserve whatever they get. They know what they're in for. And they take the gamble. I've thought about it myself. I won't lie. I could make a lot of money fast and gain a wealth of experience and acquaintances to use in my writing and photography. But at the end of the day, there's no way I could do that. I oppose the invasion/occupation of Iraq. I would be the biggest hypocrit.

I've even thought of going back in the Army, for similar reasons, plus an old tugging at me to serve b/c troops are needed. And I have the experience. Again, though, I can't and I won't. Its not right. Nothing about it is right.

Originally posted by Skadi_the_Evil_Elf
Like East Coast Kid, I was in the army during the 90's. I was in from 92-96, during the massive post cold war downsizing. What a mess that was. I know what hes talking about.

I remember when I first arrived at Bitburg Air Force Base in 93, all the doctors and service staff at the Air Force hospital were military. When Bitburg was closed down and we relocated to Hanau, only 1/3 of the doctors were military. The rest were civilians. Plus, the administrative branches formerly staffed by 71L (administrative specialists MOS) were more and more becoming civilians. Alot of our support services were being contracted out, including building, engineering, and repair work. Alot of MOS's were getting phased out.

When you say "what a mess," you mean the sole fact the military downsized, or the manner in which the military was downsized?

I believe that the downsizing was not only a good idea, but necessary. There was just no reason to continue to have that sort of a military any longer. Sooner or later the costs would have caught up to us, especially with the economic turmoil of the last two years of the 1980s and the early '90s. Also, as world climate changes, so does the possible contingencies and our military needs to adapt to the situation. Which they did... a little, at least when it came to the raw size of the military. For example, there is just no strategic reason to have U.S. military forces at Bitburg AB any longer. Its a good thing we're not they're anymore.

But, as so many on PTS have shown, the U.S. military downsized, but its basically still a Cold War military force. Its like a spoiled young man just entering the workforce, in that it tries to meet present contingencies, but lacks the maturity and intellectual development to do so, using thought processes that no longer have application in the new world. Along the way, it has also become purely a business, opening up economic opportunies for not just the aerospace/defense industry, but also more mainstream businesses such as Booz Allen Hamilton.

With all that, I believe that downsizing was done extremely poorly. All we did was make cuts, but we never actually rebuilt the military. In fact, we've been in a constant, never-improving state of rebuilding ever since the downsizing began. We've become complacent with the advantages of high-tech innovation to the point the military is purely a business now.

I said it once, I'll say it again, we need to bring our troops home. If we're gonna keep the military small, fine, but we need to revise things like doctrine and training in order to reflect this direction. We need to have our servicemen capable of holding multiple responsibilities effectively and do away with the civilian involvement. Civilians have no place in the military. But most importantly, bring our soldiers home, do away with forward-deploying, and keep our forces lighter and highly mobile. This is not only necessary militarily, but also economically. It'll save us so much money and keep us free from unnecessary civilian influence.

That said, I was quite shocked when I heard the military no longer cooked for itself and instead had Halliburton do it for them.

That's what the downsizing was. There were a lot of MOS's phased out and handed to civilian contractors. It was great for the companies who leach off the military, but bad for the military. Bad for the taxpayers. A lot of those people who got out during that period went straight onto the welfare rolls.

And don't get me started on the security thing pertaining to this...

They say the cold war ended.. but the threat never did. It has only multiplied. The way this administration is using our military is abominable. Its foreign policy is also abominable. And Donald Rumsfeld has been battling to "transform" this military while at the same time decimating it (Army, Marines). The incompetence and greed is staggering.

We should re-deploy our troops out of W. Germany and S. Korea. There are much better places to put them. That is, for anyone who cares about real threats.

Try Afghanistan 2006.

KBR. Its a shambles, with all that money going into the company, and yet no one to do or supervise the work!

There are no set jobs for the Civvies to do, no set orders or work schedules, just a hasty thrown together mess. My friends hubby is out there at the minute, and he is appalled at the utter shambles it is for both him and the military people he deals with.

His contract was for a year, but he has thrown in the towel after 7 months and is coming home. He was hired to be the boss man at Khandahar in charge of engineering,yet got there to find an empty office, no company paper work, no company bosses, no any thing. His boss, get this, was on holiday - in the UK, flown at American tax payers expense..... because he was with KBR!!

Private companies and the military do not mix. The day the UK NAAFI went private was a bitter blow for UK forces, and DOWN went the standards and UP went the prices.

sweetmonicaido,
this is another human being you are talking about.


"And contractors are making blood money, they should be shredded to bits."

really you think that? well shame on you - Ever seen the effects of torture on a human? seen a chain saw injury to the face and back? No, till you have, I really strongly suggest you keep comments like that to your self. I am a nurse, and pain and suffering appalle me, but torture and its condonement sickens me to the very core. I suggest you watch the video of the 'shredding to bits' of those men whilst they were still alive. then come back and post crap like that.

Shredded? Your sick. Thats another humans life your tossing away like trash with that talk....




[edit on 26/7/06 by GSA]

Originally posted by EastCoastKid
They say the cold war ended.. but the threat never did. It has only multiplied. The way this administration is using our military is abominable. Its foreign policy is also abominable. And Donald Rumsfeld has been battling to "transform" this military while at the same time decimating it (Army, Marines). The incompetence and greed is staggering.

Well, I wouldn't call them "threats." Technically, they don't really threaten America's existence as a whole. They do affect our economy though and the diversity of those threats have increased.

Originally posted by GSA
sweetmonicaido,
this is another human being you are talking about.


"And contractors are making blood money, they should be shredded to bits."

really you think that? well shame on you - Ever seen the effects of torture on a human? seen a chain saw injury to the face and back? No, till you have, I really strongly suggest you keep comments like that to your self. I am a nurse, and pain and suffering appalle me, but torture and its condonement sickens me to the very core. I suggest you watch the video of the 'shredding to bits' of those men whilst they were still alive. then come back and post crap like that.

Shredded? Your sick. Thats another humans life your tossing away like trash with that talk....

First off, its blood money the contractors were making. To me, its as good as some punk decked out in bling bling rolling in cash thanks to drugs and murder on the streets of Philadelphia.

Second, I don't ever condone the killing of another human being. However, I also don't condone judging our enemy's behavior (except for a few things) and I do not approve of finding ways of justifying contractors making that blood money. To quote Ellen Ripley from Aliens, "You know Burke, I don't know which species is worse. You don't see them #ing each other over for a goddamn percentage!"

And, I'm tired of telling you this, but its WAR. For you to expect war to fit this fantasy of yours is incredibly naive.

Third, I am a Firefighter I/EMT-B. So you can swallow your lecture.

Originally posted by sweatmonicaIdo

When you say "what a mess," you mean the sole fact the military downsized, or the manner in which the military was downsized?

The manner in which it was downsized. And the fact that not only was our force size reduced, but our commitments internationally grew instead of shrinking as well.

The downsizing could have been a good thing. Instead of totally wiping out alot of MOS's and giving them over to civilians, they could have consolidated some. For some MOS's, they did indeed consolidate. But not nearly as much as they contracted out alot of support jobs and such.

Example. In Saudia Arabia on the Air Force base, they used local civilian cooks to work the Mess Hall instead of using the Air Force cooks, who basically sat back and watched. Not good for security at all, since I do not consider Saudi Arabia a trustworthy or secure country, and you only need one extremist sympathizer to slip something nasty in the soup...........

We also had a private local laundry service who washed our uniforms and ironed them. Normally, back in most garrisons, we either washed our own uniforms and ironed them ourselves, or some places had quartermaster soldiers who did just that. The service was optional. However, I did not use it, as I was never comfortable with others doing my dirty laundry anyway.

Out at our tac site in Saudi, we had four civilian large generators that ran the site that I only maintained and serviced. We seldom used our own generators, even though we had enough generators to run everything just fine, as the system was set up like that. When something went wrong with a generator, it was sent off to a civilian plant instead of higher eschelon military maintainence. I often wondered why they hell they even bothered to deploy us in the first place.

Then of course, during the drawdowns of the 90's, we should have also withdrawn from our foreign bases as well. Europe has the EU, I felt it was high time they be left to deal with their own military matters. Yet we got caught up in the Balkans. We still have many US bases on foreign soil that should be closed down.

But nothing changes. THATS whats wrong with thye downsizing and the contracting out of military positions.

Originally posted by Skadi_the_Evil_Elf
Example. In Saudia Arabia on the Air Force base, they used local civilian cooks to work the Mess Hall instead of using the Air Force cooks, who basically sat back and watched. Not good for security at all, since I do not consider Saudi Arabia a trustworthy or secure country, and you only need one extremist sympathizer to slip something nasty in the soup...........

Whoa... that's a big shocker right there. Has that ever been brought up the chain of command? That's pretty much a blatant violation of common sense security measures. It sounds a lot like the illegal immigration thing. If we can provide jobs, then to hell with security.

And we also can't forget the issue with U.S. servicewomen being forced to conform to standards and restrictions placed on Saudi Arabian women. That was just absurd. Our servicepeople did not want to go there, they were ordered there.

For those interested, check out this article written by the great Carlton Meyer:
Coming Home from the Cold War

I will cite one thing in that article, and it is the claim made by Meyer that U.S. military forces stationed in Germany actually have a much tougher time deploying to the Middle East than CONUS units. If that is true, and he makes a very compelling case for it, then that only proves the obsolescence and unnecessity of having U.S. forces deployed in that region. As you say, Skadi, the EU is a very powerful force. We need to rid of NATO and have EU be in control of their own destiny, as it should be with every country and political entity.

He also cites economics as the major motivation for forward-deployments, and he is 110% right about that.

I think we need to create a lobby group or something, called "Bring Them Home" or "No More Permanent Tourists" to try to station 100% of all U.S. military forces in CONUS. Aside from lets say Iraq or during wartime, all military forces should be stationed no further than Hawaii.

Thanks for the article. It reflects my sentiments very well.

Most troops I knew in Germany really did not enjoy being there anyway. We missed the good ol US of A. Germany, despite being a western country, was very alien in its culture and structure to us, like most of Europe was. And it IS expensive to keep bases there. For example, in order to do convoys, we had to file in advance with the German authorities and pay money to get approval to do convoys, which were a vital part of our training. It was VERY expensive. Not only that, but other training suffered as well. Since most US bases in Germany did not have a good sized chunk of land belonging to them, we usually had to rent land from the Germans, which was VERY expensive, and thus, very seldom did we use it. Alot of our field training exercises (FTX) only lasted three days, which is pitiful, it really didn't advance our skills and improve our readiness in anyway. More money thrown away and troop readiness comprimised.

So yeah. We definitely need to bring them home. Not only will the troops not have to put up with insulting or abusive behavior from the locals in the countries they are stationed in, but their readiness, their skills, and overall morale will greatly benefit from being on their own soil, spending their money to support American communities, and overall, defending the land they actually LOVE and signed up to defend in the first place.

I know for a fact when I signed on that I didnt do it to help out all these other countries.

Originally posted by Skadi_the_Evil_Elf
Thanks for the article. It reflects my sentiments very well.

Most troops I knew in Germany really did not enjoy being there anyway. We missed the good ol US of A. Germany, despite being a western country, was very alien in its culture and structure to us, like most of Europe was. And it IS expensive to keep bases there. For example, in order to do convoys, we had to file in advance with the German authorities and pay money to get approval to do convoys, which were a vital part of our training. It was VERY expensive. Not only that, but other training suffered as well. Since most US bases in Germany did not have a good sized chunk of land belonging to them, we usually had to rent land from the Germans, which was VERY expensive, and thus, very seldom did we use it. Alot of our field training exercises (FTX) only lasted three days, which is pitiful, it really didn't advance our skills and improve our readiness in anyway. More money thrown away and troop readiness comprimised.

So yeah. We definitely need to bring them home. Not only will the troops not have to put up with insulting or abusive behavior from the locals in the countries they are stationed in, but their readiness, their skills, and overall morale will greatly benefit from being on their own soil, spending their money to support American communities, and overall, defending the land they actually LOVE and signed up to defend in the first place.

I know for a fact when I signed on that I didnt do it to help out all these other countries.

The worst part, people will never hear of the true nature of our overseas deployment of military forces and the effects it can have on both the foreign populace as well as the soldiers and the families themselves. Most of the civilians and the blind will say "That's great! You get to live in another country, its a great experience, blah blah." They don't realize how pissy it can get. I was at a UPS Store once and saw a naval officer who was probably in his late 30s or early 40s shipping like 15 boxes of stuff because he had to take a position in Yokosuka for four years. He had a wife and two daughters. I'm not sure how they felt about it, but whatever they felt, it still had to be rather difficult to all of a sudden be forced to live in a foreign land, in a country that has one of the best defensive militaries in the world, and has South Korea right in front of it. All for what? Bigger profits for the U.S. Postal Service and working people in Japan and Germany? I tell you I wouldn't be excited about being deployed overseas for FOUR YEARS.

Not to mention the limitations persistent overseas deployment has on the military itself, as you showed. Perhaps even the great V Corps and VII Corps of the 1980s were in worse levels of readiness than the propagandists would lead us to believe.

I hope when I'm in the military, I get stationed no further than Hawaii.

[edit on 27-7-2006 by sweatmonicaIdo]