Administration still failing

Friday, July 4, 2008 | 2:06 a.m.

One of the more amazing reports to come out of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan was released last fall under the title “Urgent Reform Required.” The report documented the grossly dysfunctional way in which the U.S. Army contracts for goods and services.

The report was ordered by Army Secretary Pete Geren last summer after an Army major, stationed in Kuwait as a contracting officer, and his wife and sister were charged with taking $9.6 million in bribes.

It was hardly the first time corruption charges or allegations had surfaced in the awarding of war-related contracts. Geren, seeking explanations for why such reports were so widespread, appointed a study commission headed by Jacques Gansler, who ran the Pentagon’s procurement department in the latter years of the Clinton administration.

A major finding was that no one had thought to ensure that the Army’s acquisition procedures were adapted to its new wartime footing. Under the Bush administration, civilian contractors were engaged to provide most of the Army’s support services — yet the staff for hiring the contractors was not enlarged and neither was it adequately trained or supervised, the report found.

“Army contracting personnel face over a 600 percent increase in workload, while performing more complex actions than ever before. Yet, the number of Army civilian and military in the contracting workforce is stagnant or declining,” the report said.

One of the report’s top criticisms was that not a single general officer had been assigned to oversee Army contracting. It recommended that five new positions be created, so that two major generals and three brigadier generals would have that responsibility.

After months of resistance, the White House this week finally agreed to support that sensible recommendation.

The report, in our view, served as one more confirmation that the Bush administration failed in its obligation to properly plan for the war in Iraq, where much of the contracting fraud has taken place. That the White House would still fail, by stalling rather than quickly acceding to “urgent reform,” is typical.