WHY IS THERE NOT BETTER OVERSIGHT OR SERVICE?

The American Spirit of we-can-do-it is a wash-out in Iraq, Kuwait, Afghanistan and elsewhere where international corporations pick off billions of dollars of U.S. taxpayer money due to the military's lack of in intelligience in language and cross-cultural skills. This is why there is a plethora of incapacities to do proper and fair accounting of what things are costing us all in this War on Terrorism.

Moreover, according to Chatterjee's research involving U.S. military brass in Iraq and Kuwait, historically speaking, in times of war, the U.S. military is typically not interested in holding the reigns on corruption and bad policy or procedures as long as things work-i.e. if the system isn't 100% broke, don't fix it.

Why not take this attitude when more and more money floods your weight despite linguistic and intelligence capabilities to see that money and resources are used efficiently?

Chatterjee doesn't mention that one half of the problem with the USA in the Middle East these days is that without proper people in place translating the goings-on around them to every single general and corporal, most American personnel in key positions to improve the status quo will not know what is going wrong until something hits them in the face.

Meanwhile, according to Chatterjee, the U.S. military and the U.S. government outsource so much intelligence gathering it is dangerous.

In other words, bad intelligence leads to people (of the wrong people) getting killed.

Simply put--bad translations and signage communications can do the same thing.

I recall that the U.S. military was until recently shooting on site anyone getting near certain convoy trucks in Iraq, i.e. as the convoys were driving between Kuwait and Iraq. The signs posted on the tractor trailers told drivers to keep more than a couple hundred meters away--but the sign could only be read from less than a hundred meters away-and only if one knew exactly where the sign was posted on the vehicle.

Meanwhile the U.S. military depends on a third world force of hundreds of thousands to get supplies back and forth between Kuwait and Iraq each day. They are paid at a fraction of the cost that Americans would be paid in similar positions.

NOTE: I have written elsewhere of planeloads of Fijians who were told to there surprise on their arrival to work that they would not begin working in a warehouse in Kuwait as they had signed up in Fiji to do. The KBR subcontractor, PWC (Agility)of Kuwait, demanded that they needed to learn to drive long distance trucks because they would be going to Iraq on a daily basis.

How much long distance trucking goes on in the Fiji Islands, guys? Moreover, how much Arabic is learned out in Fiji?

In short, by hiring people from all over the third world, the Pentagon and the U.S. military industrial complex has been able to hide behind great mountains of mismanagement & fraud--and still make a huge profit.

Why and How?

This is naturally, partially because Americans both can't and don't monitor military expenditures very well in Arabic and in other languages. Also, it is because wars are big parties of excess--or at least need to be engineered to seem like parties so as to keep those wars going for very long. Fexample, in describing the "culture of excess", Chatterjee noted, " It's different from what I thought. Basically, the idea of the military here [in Iraq and Kuwait] is to provide as much as possible to the troops so that they have sort of a hometown experience. We're talking about Southern comfort food. You have some menus here, you know, an Easter menu, an Indian night menu. You know, soldiers are provided with, you know, bacon, pork loin, jellybeans, waffle bars."

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