[This is great. Read this mundane article in the normal fashion. And
then laugh out loud when you come to the buried -- and disavowed -- lede.
These people at the Times have no shame.]
The New York Times In America
March 22, 2004
Delivery Delays Hurt U.S. Effort to Equip Iraqis
By THOM SHANKER
and ERIC SCHMITT
B AGHDAD, Iraq, March 21 Senior American commanders in Iraq are
publicly complaining that delays in delivering radios, body armor and
other equipment have hobbled their ability to build an effective Iraqi
security force that can ultimately replace United States troops here.
The lag in supplying the equipment, because of a contract dispute, may
even have contributed to a loss of lives among Iraqi recruits,
commanders say. A spokesman for the company that was awarded the
original contract said much of the equipment had already been produced
and was waiting to be shipped to Iraq.
The frustration had been voiced privately up the chain of command by a
number of officers, and broke into public debate in recent days.
Training and equipping more than 200,000 Iraqi security forces has
been one of the top stated priorities of the Bush administration.
Maj. Gen. Charles H. Swannack Jr., commander of the 82nd Airborne
Division, praised the work of Iraqi security forces helping to secure
his area of control in western Iraq, which includes the dangerous
region around Falluja and the Syrian border. But he said the effort
had faltered because of a lack of combat gear for the police, border
units and the new Iraqi Civil Defense Corps.
"Not only are the security forces bravely leading the fight against
terrorists, they are in some cases insisting on doing it alone,"
General Swannack said 11 days ago. "They want to defeat these enemies
of a new and free Iraq. If we had the equipment for these brave young
men, we would be much farther along."
He said that in his region of western Iraq, which includes a long
stretch of the Syrian border, foreign fighters, their money and
weapons were suspected of entering Iraq along smugglers' routes. In
this area, he said, "we are still short a significant amount of
vehicles, radios and body armor to properly equip" the new Iraqi
force.
Commanders in other parts of Iraq have also warned of serious
problems. "There are training, organizational and equipment shortfalls
in the Iraqi security forces," said Brig. Gen. Carter Ham, the new
American commander in northern Iraq. "There's no question about that."
The American military also suffered from shortages of crucial
equipment during the war and even into the current phase of stability
operations. In particular, soldiers complained of an insufficient
supply of the newest bulletproof vests and, when improvised explosives
began taking lives, of armored Humvees. Their complaints have been
echoed loudly by members of Congress.
But the equipment for America's combat troops and that for Iraqi
security services is obtained through separate contracting and
procurement processes.
The first batch of equipment for the Iraqis has been paid for and was
to have been delivered under a $327 million contract to a small
company, Nour USA Ltd., of Vienna, Va. But the Pentagon canceled that
deal this month after protests by several competing companies led to a
determination that Army procurement officers in Iraq botched the
contract. Army officials found no fault with Nour.
Sloppy contract language, staff turnover, incomplete paperwork and
stressful combat conditions on the ground led to a badly flawed
process, senior Army officials in Washington said. "I've seen things
go wrong before, but I've never seen anything like this," said a
senior Army official with 28 years' experience in government
contracting. "We messed up."
The Army is rushing to seek new bids for the contract, but officials
said that could take two to three months. In the meantime, officials
are looking to see if they can use other funds and piggyback on
existing contracts for weapons and other equipment that federal
agencies like the F.B.I. already have to speed the delivery of vital
matériel to Iraq.
"Part of it is just the magnitude of how much was needed thousands of
police cars, hundreds of thousands of uniforms," Maj. Gen. Buford C.
Blount III, the deputy director of operations for the Army staff in
Washington, said in an interview. "It was just a lot harder to get
stuff in than we anticipated."
The $327 million contract was to supply several battalions of the new
Iraqi security forces with rifles, uniforms, body armor and other
equipment. The original contract, awarded in January, did not specify
the number of troops to be supplied. Instead it identified specific
amounts of equipment for instance, 200 trucks and 20,000 compasses.
That contract was to be the first of several to equip the Iraqi
forces.
A spokesman for Nour USA, Robert R. Hoopes Jr., said the company had
protested the Army's cancellation of the contract, saying it could
cost $20 million to $30 million in termination cost to the company and
its suppliers.
Mr. Hoopes said much of the equipment in the original contract
including radios, compasses, canteens and body armor had already been
produced and was sitting in warehouses in the United States and
Eastern Europe, waiting to be delivered to Iraq. "The stuff is sitting
on the dock, ready to go," Mr. Hoopes said in a telephone interview.
General Swannack took command of his region in September, and the
required equipment still has not arrived as he turns over his area to
the Marines. To help solve the problem, the general dipped into his
commander's discretionary fund, to buy radios, body armor and vehicles
for Iraqi security forces.
Other commanders have also spent division financial resources to buy
combat equipment already financed by Congress in a supplemental money
package for Iraq.
But those expenditures restrict the commanders' ability to spend money
on things like rebuilding schools, mosques and hospitals, part of what
they view as a critically important effort to stabilize the nation and
build rapport with the Iraqis.
American officers in Iraq responsible for local training even go so
far as to say the slow delivery of equipment may have contributed to
deaths among new Iraqi security forces, who did not have effective
protection and could not radio for backup troops, who in any case may
not have had the vehicles to speed to assist their colleagues under
fire. "Bureaucracy kills," an American military officer in Iraq said.
Other officers in Baghdad who are involved in creating a new Iraqi
security architecture, but who discussed the equipment problem on the
condition that they not be identified, described a new concern: that
they now will be caught between a cycle of famine and feast.
Having gone months awaiting the gear financed by Congress, they fear
that they suddenly may be overwhelmed with equipment and money once
the bottleneck is cleared, and that it may be difficult to manage the
flood of matérial rushed to them haphazardly to solve the problem and
quiet their complaints.
One American division completing its tour in Iraq was able to avoid
those difficulties, simply as a matter of fate.
The First Armored Division, responsible for the security of Baghdad
and central Iraq, took control of an area in which a number of
military warehouses were situated. Using gear captured from the old
Iraqi security forces, division officers were able to equip all seven
battalions of the new Iraqi defense corps that they recruited and
trained.
Nour USA's president, A. Huda Farouki, is a friend of Ahmad Chalabi, a
member of the Iraqi Governing Council who has close ties to several
senior Pentagon officials. But Nour executives and senior Army
officials say that relationship played no role in awarding the
contract to Nour.
Instead, Army officials blamed the small contracting office in
Baghdad, which had little experience in handling contracts of this
size, for several mistakes.
The language used to describe the required work was "so ambiguous, we
just couldn't defend it against the protests," said the senior Army
official in Washington. Several important documents related to
evaluating competing bids were never written, the official said.
"They were overwhelmed, but that's no excuse for not having done the
procurement according to the procurement rules," the Army official
said. He said the new contract, which Nour can reapply for, would be
handled by seasoned contracting officers in Washington.
Thom Shanker reported from Baghdad for this article and Eric Schmitt
from Washington.
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