Contractor, Army Office Fell Short, Audit Finds (Aegis Defence Services)

Contractor, Army Office Fell Short, Audit Finds
Report Examines Reconstruction in Iraq

By Griff Witte
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, April 23, 2005; Page E01

A controversial British firm responsible for a $293 million U.S. Army security contract in Iraq could not prove that its armed employees received proper weapons training or that it had vetted Iraqi employees to ensure they did not pose a threat, according to a government audit released yesterday.

In addition to criticizing Aegis Defence Services Ltd., the audit took aim at the Army's contracting office in Iraq for poor oversight. It reported that the official who was supposed to keep watch over Aegis's contract had not been trained in either monitoring contracts or security. The office was also severely short-staffed: At the time of the audit, 41 officials were administering 6,500 contracts and task orders.

The findings mean "there is no assurance that Aegis is providing the best possible safety and security for government and reconstruction contractor personnel and facilities," according to auditors with the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction.

Aegis, an almost three-year-old London-based firm whose chief executive provided military assistance to warring factions in Asian and African conflicts in the late 1990s, received its Iraqi security contract last May. With the award, Aegis was put in charge of providing armed bodyguards for the Army's Project and Contracting Office, which oversees reconstruction projects, as well as coordinating security for 10 other prime contractors in Iraq.

(more)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A10772-2005Apr22.html

connected, you didn't need experience and didn't have to worry too much about someone looking over your shoulder, after all, 2 weeks after invasion the only thing killing our soldiers was supposed to have been pollen from all the flowers the Iraqi's were throwing at them. So you could set up your sham, war-profiteering company, rush in, claim $$ millions in reward for your support of the Chimp, then take your cashola out and no one would have ever known.

But since we had to stick around in that little adventure, people are looking - and finding out what a bunch of crooks you guys are. We still have troops on the ground without armor or other necessities to protect their lives and you folks have gotten all this money and NOT done your fucking jobs?

I hope to see every one of you hanging from a gallows - and I want a contractor more competant than you or Halliburton to build the damn thing!

On one of the very few contracts the Brits actually obtained...

who is a piece of work..

http://www.publicintegrity.org/bow/report.aspx?aid=149&sid=100
From October 30, 2002

snip

After decades of controversial intervention in the developing world, these private military enterprises are seeking legal recognition and standing. They wish for re-branding as peacekeepers and conflict resolvers. Politicians in the West seem quickly to have accepted a convenient if illusory dichotomy just as it has been handed to them – contrasting the old-style (and bad) "dogs of war" with the new-style (and good) private military companies, or PMCs, of the 1990s and beyond.

Although the acronym is now nearly universal, PMC (in the sense of mercenaries) was unheard of in the English language prior to late 1995. The new label has done much to improve the image of private soldiers, if little to affect the reality of their activities. The term has commonly been used to refer to Executive Outcomes and Sandline International, two names used by a single group of British and South African businessmen and ex-military officers. Their interventions in Angola, Sierra Leone and Papua New Guinea during the mid 1990s aroused repeated concern, setting off the current debates on "PMCs." The most prominent figure from those debates was Spicer, a 50-year-old ex-British army officer who signed up as a mercenary in 1996. Although his profile is lower now, Spicer's adventures with Sandline resulted in police and customs investigations, raids on his home and offices, arrest, incarceration and deportation.

snip

In 2002, Spicer pronounced his creed – that the world was waiting for "the speed and flexibility with which they can deploy, rather than wait for the U.N. to form a force." He went further still, arguing that PMCs were ideal vehicles to aid the Northern Alliance forces that fought against the Taliban or the Iraqi resistance to Saddam Hussein. He even suggested that it might be in the international community's interest if PMCs were hired to intervene in long-running conflicts in Sudan or topple leaders like Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe. In short, he proposed the overt shifting of significant foreign policy objectives to mercenary companies – an idea that would have been met with derision only a few years before – yet he received a respectful hearing.

snip

It appears that the company and its associates are able to barter their services for a large share of an employing nation's natural resources and commodities," the report said, concluding that, "On present showing, EO will become ever richer and more potent, capable of exercising real power even to the extent of keeping military regimes in being …. ts influence in sub-Saharan Africa could become crucial."