Remember folks: Don't trust the government, trust the for-profit companies to Get the Job Done Right!! 
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Excerpt:
WASHINGTON — For several years, Afghan police recruits under the tutelage of private U.S. government contractors couldn't understand why their marksmanship never improved.
The answer became clear earlier this year. Italian contractors also helping to train Afghan volunteers showed them that the sights on their AK-47s and M-16s had never been adjusted.
"We're paying somebody to teach these people to shoot these weapons, and nobody ever bothered to check their sites?" Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri said, after relating that story at a hearing Thursday.
To McCaskill, who chaired the hearing of the Senate Contracting Oversight panel, it illustrated why the U.S. has spent more than $6 billion on private contractors, but the police-training program remains rife with problems.
"It is an unbelievable, incompetent story of contracts," she said. "For eight years we have been supposed training the police in Afghanistan . We've flushed $6 billion ."
Improving and expanding the 90,000-man Afghan National Police to maintain stability and protect the population is crucial to the Obama administration's plan to begin reducing the American military presence in July 2011 .
But the training contracts have been plagued by mismanagement. Investigations by the Government Accounting Office and the inspector generals from the Departments of State and Defense have sharply criticized both the contractors and the government oversight. They detailed a lack of supervision and controls over spending, among other failures.
"Just about everything that could go wrong here has gone wrong," Defense Department Inspector General Gordon Heddell told the subcommittee.
Moreover, the job of an Afghan police officer is exceedingly dangerous. The death rate has risen from about two dozen per month in recent years to about 125 each month, Heddell said.
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Excerpt:
WASHINGTON — For several years, Afghan police recruits under the tutelage of private U.S. government contractors couldn't understand why their marksmanship never improved.
The answer became clear earlier this year. Italian contractors also helping to train Afghan volunteers showed them that the sights on their AK-47s and M-16s had never been adjusted.
"We're paying somebody to teach these people to shoot these weapons, and nobody ever bothered to check their sites?" Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri said, after relating that story at a hearing Thursday.
To McCaskill, who chaired the hearing of the Senate Contracting Oversight panel, it illustrated why the U.S. has spent more than $6 billion on private contractors, but the police-training program remains rife with problems.
"It is an unbelievable, incompetent story of contracts," she said. "For eight years we have been supposed training the police in Afghanistan . We've flushed $6 billion ."
Improving and expanding the 90,000-man Afghan National Police to maintain stability and protect the population is crucial to the Obama administration's plan to begin reducing the American military presence in July 2011 .
But the training contracts have been plagued by mismanagement. Investigations by the Government Accounting Office and the inspector generals from the Departments of State and Defense have sharply criticized both the contractors and the government oversight. They detailed a lack of supervision and controls over spending, among other failures.
"Just about everything that could go wrong here has gone wrong," Defense Department Inspector General Gordon Heddell told the subcommittee.
Moreover, the job of an Afghan police officer is exceedingly dangerous. The death rate has risen from about two dozen per month in recent years to about 125 each month, Heddell said.
