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The Pentagon awarded three contracts this week, potentially worth up to $300 million over five years, to companies it hopes will inject more creativity into its psychological operations efforts to improve foreign public opinion about the United States, particularly the military.
Three private contractors hired by the U.S. military to help make commercials, write news stories and produce TV shows aimed at foreign countries will tell the truth -- not lies, said the Army officer overseeing the contracts.
Abt Associates was found to have been little, if any, help to Iraqi health care. Its funding was cut, but it has won new pacts.
A defense contractor with ties to Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham took a $700,000 loss on the purchase of the congressman's Del Mar house while the congressman, a member of the influential defense appropriations subcommittee, was supporting the contractor's efforts to get tens of millions of dollars in contracts from the Pentagon.
The Pentagon suspects vast overcharging for workers' compensation in war zones. A financial giant has fought a proposal to cut rates.
The Marine Corps has banned at least 16 men from U.S. bases in western Iraq because they were allegedly part of a security convoy accused of speeding through Fallujah and indiscriminately firing unauthorized weapons.
Iraq's interior ministry said it wanted to impose legal boundaries on the private security business after American contractors twice opened fire on US marines. The move may be supported by the US military, whose patience with the contractors has been tested.
The jailing of private security guards reflects the long simmering tensions between the military and private business in Iraq. Even though the government has hired private companies to perform many functions in Iraq -- including security -- it does not formally oversee their activities, allowing misunderstandings and disputes to fester.
A North Carolina company has repatriated its private security contractors, including eight former U.S. Marines, after they were accused and detained in Iraq for purportedly shooting at American troops in Fallujah.
A group of American security guards in Iraq have alleged they were beaten, stripped and threatened with a snarling dog by US marines when they were detained after an alleged shooting incident outside Falluja last month.
' believe that critical gaps in this report have placed a cloud over it and indeed over the Inspector General's office. In my view, the report fails to discuss critical issues, omits critical material, and redacts key portions of the report in a manner that raises serious questions about whether this report meets applicable requirements for the independence of Inspectors General.'
The U.S. Defense Department's weapons buying chief and senior Air Force officials sidestepped regulations in a $23 billion proposal to lease and buy as many as 100 Boeing Co. tankers, the Pentagon's inspector general said. The acquisition process takes on added importance as the Pentagon plans to boost annual spending on new weapons by 52 percent during the next six years, as at least 13 programs move into production, to $118 billion in fiscal 2011 from $78 billion this year.
Global military spending in 2004 broke the $1 trillion barrier for the first time since the Cold War, boosted by the U.S. war against terror and the growing defense budgets of India and China, a European think tank said Tuesday.
Hart Security Ltd., a Cyprus-based British security firm, announced that a convoy of trucks its employees were escorting had been "ambushed by insurgents" near Habaniyah.
They looked so local that they risked drawing friendly fire if they attempted to move up to shelter under the American guns. So they sat in no man's land, chit-chatting by radio as they willed on the Americans to reopen the road before their cover was blown.
U.S. Marines forcibly detained a team of security guards working for an American engineering firm in Iraq after reportedly witnessing the contractors fire at U.S. troops and Iraqi civilians from an armed convoy. The employees have said that the incident was a case of mistaken identity. Several have accused the Marines of verbally and physically abusing them while they were in custody.
Striking Filipino workers employed in a US military camp have returned to work for International (PPI) and Kellogg Brown and Root. They were protesting against the delayed payment of their wages, inadequate food, and poor accommodations, which were violations of the contract signed by the workers prior to their deployment.
There are 50,000 to 100,000 contractors working in Iraq, experts say, though reliable estimates are hard to come by. The number of contractors killed is just as difficult to pin down, partly because the employers often keep the deaths quiet. The U.S. military death toll, now over 1,620, would be higher but for the number of military tasks contracted out to the private sector, analysts say.
A dispute between Filipino workers and a US group in Iraq over working conditions has been resolved, said a spokeswoman for US contractor Kellog Brown and Root.