Shock and Awe, Indeed.

ed note: I wasn’t sure I’d write about the war and other political issues on this blog, but I just can’t help it this morning. I don’t want it to become a focus here, but sometimes, well…

The New York Times is reporting that shoddy electrical work at US bases and outposts in Iraq — outsourced to KBR, naturally — is killing and injuring many more soldiers than previously admitted.

During just one six-month period — August 2006 through January 2007 — at least 283 electrical fires destroyed or damaged American military facilities in Iraq, including the military’s largest dining hall in the country, documents obtained by The New York Times show. Two soldiers died in an electrical fire at their base near Tikrit in 2006, the records note, while another was injured while jumping from a burning guard tower in May 2007.

And while the Pentagon has previously reported that 13 Americans have been electrocuted in Iraq, many more have been injured, some seriously, by shocks, according to the documents. A log compiled earlier this year at one building complex in Baghdad disclosed that soldiers complained of receiving electrical shocks in their living quarters on an almost daily basis.

As I was reading this article and growing more and more furious, I heard NPR report the story in their top of the hour newscast. I’m hopeful this means the story will be a major focus of the news cycle today. But that doesn’t assuage my anger.

Perhaps if the current administration had done ONE THING right in the past five years in Iraq this story wouldn’t have legs. But every single step they have taken during this ill-conceived folly has been a disaster. This latest example is especially enraging because it demonstrates both the danger of relying on contractors like KBR for everything and the extent to which the government lacks the resources to handle the scale of the operation in Iraq:

Officials say the administration contracted out so much work in Iraq that companies like KBR were simply overwhelmed by the scale of the operations. Some of the electrical work, for example, was turned over to subcontractors, some of which hired unskilled Iraqis who were paid only a few dollars a day.

Government officials responsible for contract oversight, meanwhile, were also unable to keep up, so that unsafe electrical work was not challenged by government auditors.

Several electricians who worked for KBR have said previously in interviews that they repeatedly warned KBR managers and Pentagon and military officials about unsafe electrical work. They said that supervisors had ignored their concerns or, in some cases, lacked the training to understand the problems.

(emphasis mine)

I’ve never seen a more costly and tragic example of failing up in my entire life.