Customer Reviews

Betraying Our Troops: The Destructive Results of Privatizing War

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This book will make you mad, and you need to read it anyway.

In Rasor and Bauman's investigation into the tangled world of private defense contracting, I read about KBR's practice of removing all the spare tires from convoy trucks so that when some of them got flats, the contractor would burn them and bill the government (that's you and me, by the way) $85,000, plus costs, and I thought that was bad.

Then I read about the soldiers stuck out in remote bases in the Iraqi desert, running out of food and water, duct-taping their boots; and the contractors who would refuse to resupply them because the roads were dangerous, and I thought that was really bad.

Then I read about the disastrous journey through Fallujah, apparently intentionally bungled by a Blackwater contractor attempting to harass an employee who knew too much. The consequence of that bit of "office politics" was the deaths of thousands of people, including the four Blackwater employees, and a grave worsening of the military situation in Iraq. That's when I began to feel mad.

But I was really grossed out to read about camp Ar Ramadi in northern Iraq where KBR was discovered to be providing untreated wastewater for soldiers to shower with, exposing everyone in the camp to typhoid, cholera and every kind of water-borne parasite and disease. And I began to wonder what kind of people these were to do this to their own soldiers.

How did the military come to be at the mercy of contractors? Why don't contractors provide the services they contract to provide? How did privatizing the Iraq war undermine any chance of its success? Using the stories of real soldiers and contractors, Rasor and Bauman have written a thoroughly documented book about defense contracting in a war zone that is readable and compelling; and it will make you mad.

This is a book that anyone who cares about our soldiers or the future of our military services should read. It is a book that should be read by anyone who cares about the future of the United States.

This is an excellent book for those that do not follow the broader press (I ignore the "mainstream" press, the NYT, Washington Post, and LA Times are largely worthless--the Boston Globe continues to please from time to time). The author has ably catalogued the disgrace to our nation, and the betrayal of our loyal troops, from the outsourcing of virtually every function including some combat operations.

I will honor the author by quoting Ralph Peters, one of the top US military strategists alive, who has said that we have outsourced so much that we have ultimately outsourced our honor (this includes our outsourcing to 42 dictators--there are only 2 we do not love) and to several despotic or illegal narco-regimes, including Colombia, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, and Afghanistan.

The author is careful to identify some real heros that excel at supporting our troops, but on balance he provides a very bleak narrative that could be used to set the stage for Congressional hearings. In my view, Title 10 needs a complete overhaul, to create four joint forces after next: Big War built around Air Force; Small War built around Army and Marines; Peace War built around Navy and Coast Guard, and Homeland Defense, built around a National Guard that shifts toward law enforcement and does NOT go overseas for anything less than World War IV.

Below are a couple of related recommendations:
Licensed to Kill: Hired Guns in the War on Terror
Deliver Us from Evil: Peacekeepers, Warlords and a World of Endless Conflict
Vice: Dick Cheney and the Hijacking of the American Presidency
The One Percent Doctrine: Deep Inside America's Pursuit of Its Enemies Since 9/11
Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil
State of Denial: Bush at War, Part III
A Pretext for War: 9/11, Iraq, and the Abuse of America's Intelligence Agencies
Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq
Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army
Squandered Victory: The American Occupation And the Bungled Effort to Bring Democracy to Iraq

Read this book. It's that simple. Then read Fiasco. Then go to the VA hospital and talk to the soldiers sitting in the waiting areas. The truth is there for those who care to seek it out. One way or another, you'll pay for this book. You'll either read it and have your eyes opened, or not read it and have the wasted tax dollars efficiently extracted from your weekly paycheck. It's your choice. You can ignore it, not read it and say it's just `left wing lies' but I'm writing this review to tell you that if you do that, you're only lying to yourself. I know. I was there with the contributors to this book. I served under them. I went hungry when the contractors failed to supply meals and I drank contaminated water with the rest of the US military while they horded bottled water in their supply depots and their 5 star hotels in Kuwait.

Lies come from our elected officials both to get elected and to keep their positions of power. Lies come faster from them and make it to TV to decry books like this as `just lies'. But like all lies, eventually the truth comes out. This book sheds light on the real truth that is our military funding system gone amok. Lies now come (sadly) from far too many of our military leaders seeking to protect their careers and their command mistakes and to cover up ever-increasing mission failures because contractors don't have to follow orders, they have to be paid or they leave. Mostly, they leave anyway. I know. I was one of them. I not only quit when the going got tough, I got a bonus for my service! Lies come from criminals seeking to `beat the system'. We all know that. Lies also come from well-connected corporations seeking `any & every means' to increase their business revenue streams for the all-mighty profit. That's what this book is about. It's about the lies that our military lives with now, accepts now, is served by now and is harnessed to by more than 126,000 civilians who live comfortably in combat, not in fox holes with lice crawling on them like the soldiers do, but in air conditioned trailers with TV and internet while they argue with our commanders that they need more (& Bigger!) contracts. They're arguments would get a soldier thrown in the brig. In wartime, it could get a summary execution. In this war, threatening a contractor leads them to quit when the mission gets too dangerous or causes them to `slow down' to make us learn a lesson. We, the soldiers now know the golden rule: Don't bite the hand that feeds you or they'll stop bringing your food. They did it. We went hungry and convoys stopped coming. Not once, but year after year. They stopped in 2003 while I was in Baghdad and again in 2004 when I was in Tikrit.

Lies don't come from the testimonies of the brave souls willing to put their careers on the line for this book. That's not an opinion, that's a fact. I've spoken to one contributor whose career is effectively ended for what he reported. Our first duty is no longer to serve our nation and protect freedom; it's to not make the military look bad by reporting the missions aren't getting through because the civilians won't take the missions.

When I entered Baghdad in April 2003 and initially occupied Saddam's bombed out Ramadan palace to setup the new government, I was their as a civilian contractor. I was thrilled! I made more pay in 4 months as a contractor than in 4 years as a soldier. Months later, when I was called to service by my unit, I didn't respond to serve my country as a soldier because I was already in Baghdad. The army can't admit that's a problem, so they transferred me into the inactive reserves so I could stay in the war and make oodles of money. Again, I was thrilled! I stayed in Iraq and made so much money doing a job ½ as good as a soldier with incompatible equipment impossible to interact with the army needs for 40x the military pay, that I bought a new house in Florida every other month. We didn't accomplish a damn thing as contractors. In fact, we broke more stuff than we brought and lost the rest but who cares? I wasn't responsible for it? The corporation was. Hell, I still have a bullet proof vest my corporation bought for me while soldiers were going into battle w/o body armor. I had the best!

Nevertheless, there's a flipside to living in the emerald city and rubbing elbows with the most powerful people on the planet: During the initial invasion, I saw and read the accounts and could care less because I was getting rich. But when I returned six months later (for another year as a soldier) I was on the receiving end of KBR (and other) contractors. I managed KBR day-to-day operations requests from my soldiers at FOB Speicher and had them routinely denied or agreed to for more money, more contracts. This book documents that well, but not even close to how incredibly dependent we are now on civilians, many now who don't even speak English...

Sure, just for writing this review I'll probably lose my DoD job, my security clearances and my military career as a military police officer. Nevertheless, I'll be in the company of heroes. The fact is that America is about courageous common folk who only seek freedom, truth and justice. Ask any hero and his first response is "I'm not, I just did my duty". Sadly, our leaders, both military and civilian, have no longer any right to remain in the presence of America's true heroes. Their decisions are our nightmares leading to our dead brothers and sisters, our ruined lives, our broken military and our nation's dishonor. They've led us down a path such that we're no better than drug addicts, addicted to civilian contractors. Once we were the fiercest fighting force the world has ever known. Now, we are beggars for goods no less so than those we pass in the streets of Baghdad. Please, Mr. civilian contractor, may we have some more water? What more can I pay you to bring food to my troops in the field? What (drug) deal can I strike with you so that you gain more business and I get fuel for my attack copters?

This book is about how our national security used to be served by civilian contractors and how our leaders now have chosen to sell us out not only to the lowest bidder, but to the highest profiteer knowing they'll be rewarded with yet another six-figure salary as a lobbyist after they're not re-elected. No loss (for them) there! A retired congressman gets $65,000/yr be he a convicted felon or not. I'll get $800 and (maybe) a claim from the VA. The corporations have won. The traitors to America have won. The soldier, the sailor, and you have lost.

Reading this book, and others by true investigators, true American heroes; willing to tell the truth no matter what their own personal consequences, should be mandatory for everyone to become a US citizen or even to receive a driver's license or a movie ticket to the next big blockbuster summer hit. Sadly, most of us vote our politicians into their arrogant, powerful positions by being artfully deceived by their catchy sound bites, their Cheshire cat smiles and their well funded corporate campaigns. We get what we got sold: Tragic civilian leadership.

But after reading this book, life for you will be different. You'll be informed, and you'll have to make a choice. You'll still sit down to your dinner tables, and speak of how well we all support our troops. But now you'll know you're lying with the leaders or fighting for the truth. Sadly, if you choose the former, the more you speak, the more you'll believe you're telling the truth and that's not something you should teach your children. Sure, you'll make yourself feel better by putting a yellow ribbon on your bumper, as we all do who are either unaffected by the war or actually are affected because our son, daughter, husband or wife is `over there' putting their lives on the line for our freedom and shaking their heads in wonderment of their supply contractor's wage comparisons and lack of accountability.

In the end, one fact remains. It's inescapable. We are all individually responsible for this woefully wrong new path our nation has set forth upon. We're responsible because we are free. -Free to either not vote and stand idly by as the ideal that is "America" fades into history or free to vote uninformed buying into the self-interests and deceits of the people we've voted into power who talk much, promise more, but haven't supported our troops a damn bit w/o the first wave of rage coming from us, the people.

This book is about accountability. Yours. Mine. Everyone's. It starts when you read it. It accelerates when we actually begin to hold both our civilian leadership & our military leadership fully accountable for what they've done to our men and women in uniform. It shows progress when we re-learn and remember to return to the pursuit of our nation's ideals rather than fall victim to its leaders political spin and profit. Our greatest nation world status will follow again, if we choose wisely. Maybe, even peace will follow. But if it's world peace you truly seek, tell the civilian leadership to tell the civilian contractors to get the hell out of our war zones. Ask the soldier, the airmen, the sailors to sacrifice their lives for your freedom and we will. Not because we have some motive of profit, but because our true agenda, proven over the test of time, is defending America's freedom for everyone here now, who has come before us, and who shall surely follow in the generations to come.

Becoming a true patriot means remembering America's past with honor, and honoring that past by sending our military needs to our defense contractors who have so aptly supplied us in uniform for two hundred years with what we need to go to war with. Tell our leaders to have them do that again. Then, when the contractors have produced what our military needs, tell them to stand on the tarmac at our nation's airfields and wave American flags as we soldiers & sailors go off to fight for their freedom and win again their right to make oodles of money safely back here in the good old USA.

BTW, while you're thanking the contractors who truly are helping build the war materials we desperately need, you could mention they should support the USO. That USO sends some damn fine musicians, actors and models to us in battle that boost our morale and make our missions a little easier to fight for. Fighting for contractors to make six figure incomes for the same work we're trained to do, will never equal the morale boost a good USO tour delivers. If you've read this whole review, God Bless you! -As God has blessed America and how, even in death, he blesses our troops.

A good look inside the contracting process. However, one suspects that the authors purposefully ramped up the rhetoric in order to sell a few more books.

A book about a mammoth bureaucracy inefficiently managing its subcontractors wouldn't sell many units. Yet, as one who has been a government contractor (education, not military) for many years, I interpret Risor and Bauman's tale as just par for the course Bureaucratic Bumbling.

Outsourcing certain pieces of work and managing those contractors is specialized work. The list of private corporations who've gone under by failing to manage that process is legion. So the military bureaucracy's inability to manage this process well is no surprise.

Risor and Bauman indict the whole system of private contracting as somehow 'betraying' the troops. But as you read their book the picture they paint is that the fault lies with the Pentagon's management contact oversight and not the contractors. One gets the sense that if the Pentagon insourced and moved a lot of these functions inside the military that the outcomes would be just as bad.

Anyway, a good look at some of the problem. However, not a convincing case.

The authors' thesis is that we (USA) should not be out-sourcing to the private sector critical military functions, primarily logistical. Some of the trigger-pulling has also been outsourced (e.g., Blackwater). I agree wholeheartedly with the authors' political position. But the major point is illustrated only anecdotically with a relatively small number of snafus in the current undeclared war (or battle for the peace, if you will) in Iraq. I do not mean to belittle the illustrations. Real people, true patriots, have lost real lives in tragic, preventable circumstances. Real people, real patriots (e.g., Rick Lambreth) have tried to expose the failures of the war service industry. The idea is that by outsourcing supply functions that should have been carried out by the military, the troops have been denied, at the private sector's (mostly Dick Cheney's former employer, Halliburton's) profit, adequate food, water and spare parts necessary to fight the war. I wouldn't call that betrayal of the troops. If true, that's betrayal of the nation. The difficulty is that the book treats a serious subject (only the future of our country, that's all) superficially. Thirty pages or so of material, maximum, a nice magazine article, has been blown into a 200 plus page book. (Beyond that, St. Martin's Press and Palgrave Macmillan, publishers, apparently out-sourced the proofing (to prove a point?) -- I cannot recall reading a book with more proofing errors, ever.) A quick book for a quick profit (heard of that before?). There have been other books about the same subject, and there will be more, and, I predict, much better ones.

P.S. I finished reading the book on a flight from Phoenix to Charlotte at the end of the Thanksgiving holiday, sitting next to a 19 year old Marine infantryman stationed in eastern North Carolina who said he was scheduled for his first tour to Iraq in April '08. On his trip west he said he'd walked along the freeway and through the neighborhoods seven miles or so from the Charlotte Greyhound station to the Charlotte airport at 2:00 a.m. in the rain. On our arrival in Charlotte, we gave him a ride back from the airport to the Greyhound terminal in downtown Charlotte to catch the bus back to his base. True story. I don't want to overplay this, but think about it. I have.

I know from first-hand experience that it can be shockingly difficult to nail down the facts behind stories that took place in a war zone, even when the documentation is readily available and the participants are happy to discuss events. That Dina Rasor and Robert Bauman have been able to assemble the stories they have for "Betraying Our Troops" is almost amazing, considering the current environment surrounding the Iraq war. In an environment where government and corporate secrecy prevails, and where people resist speaking out for fear ruining their careers or becoming the targets of corporate, legal or government retaliation, just getting the stories on the record is an impressive feat. Were the stories included here simply unique anecdotes about scattered problems - contaminated water made worse by contractors, troops whose worn boots are duct-taped together because replacements are nowhere to be found, troops in the field living in squalor while others in the green zone enjoy flat-panel TVs and Xbox 360s, safe houses abandoned because contractors won't venture out to repair their generators - they would be infuriating. When these are put in the context of an armed forces supply framework that has no fiscal controls, and apparently no concern for the well-being of the troops it is supposed to serve, it is downright criminal. The contracting companies cited in this book - Kellogg Brown & Root, its parent Halliburton, Blackwater Security and the comically, tragically inept Custer Battles, among others - have two things in common: an almost gleeful eagerness to steal taxpayer's money through any means necessary (including the threat of a work stoppage), and a blatant disregard for human life, whether it's that of Iraqis, GIs or their own employees.

The book has a few flaws; tighter copy editing and a greater emphasis on the writing could have given the presentation more finesse. But the rough edges are more than made up for by the first-hand accounts of the effects of this disastrous logistics system. The whistleblowers who go on the record here have little more to gain than helping out those still stuck in Iraq suffering at the mercy of this hopelessly mangled supply system. This is the kind of book that usually comes out only after a war's end, when it is too late to do anything about the injustices described inside. The authors do a huge service by providing a nearly "real-time" look at a tragic situation exacerbated by greed, cronyism and simple callousness when there is still opportunity to address it.

I began reading this book for a course I was taking on outsourcing for master degree program while taking night school in the Army. I started to read the book Licensed to Kill because I needed to write a research paper on the concept of privatization or outsourcing and I wanted to write a paper on something I was interested in and would hopefully help me later on in my career in the Army. I finished License to Kill and I was so interested in this topic, I looked for books on KBR of which I had some interaction with in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Prior to reading this book, I never really thought about the ramifications of outsourcing our supply chains and even though I had deployed I never really considered the ramifications of how much control they had at the begining of the war with pushing ammunition forward. At the time, I knew it was happening, but I never considered how grossly serious this can be. I considered the poor logistics to what I had in Iraq in OIF 1 and 2 as normal until I read this book and started consulting with some of my colleagues who had similiar experiences. One of these colleagues was part of the 3ID push forward and experienced the same issues as Captain Kimball having to use AK47s and enemy ammunition to keep the push forward as through the Karbala Gap because he was left asking where his supplies were when he should have had standard army issue ammunition.

In reading this book, I even found out why I had to do a logistics convoy in Iraq in August 2004 as a platoon leader with my platoon to the border of Turkey which is documented in this book, because a contractor decided not to perform the work on the contract of which I was pulled of to support the requirements in the contract because we could not survive with out the supplies.

I'm a veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Books like this and the more I read other books similiar to this, Corporate Warriors, and articles from Peter Singer, the more and more I am convinced that the nation is making a huge mistake. I've always considered myself a patriot and a firm believer that our nation would support the troops under any cirumstances. I used to consider myself a Republican and now because of this topic, I no longer know where I am on the political spectrum. Of course I knew before that neither party was perfect, but know I see the cronyism and the profit that just sickens me to the core. I'm questioning the very beliefs I have as a leader in the Army leading soldiers that our nation truly cares to support the troops. Having seen this type of activity go on and having led soldiers at the platoon and company level in both wars, I'm starting to question why I serve as any reasonable soldier would whose read multiple books and articles on this subject. The only consolation, I give myself is that if I'm ever in a position of influence later on in this profession that I must be apart of the solution. Books like this must be read. This issue must be discussed. We cannot hollow out the foundation of our Armed Forces. Logistics is the foundation for winning wars. Read any great military leader. "Logistics ... as vital to military success as daily food is to daily work." "My logisticians are a humorless lot ... they know if my campaign fails, they are the first ones I will slay."
- Alexander

I doubt the same could be said if contractors similar to KBR fail our nation in the name of profit. As always, the burden of war falls on the Armed Forces. The will make their profits and the blood sweat and tears of our soldiers will stand defenseless. This subject must be discussed.

I would agree that this book is somewhat poorly written and biased at some points as other reviews stated. However, when read with other books and articles on the subject of privatization and outsourcing of inherenthly governmental functions and war fighting functions to win our nations wars, you will see particularly if you've served in a leadership capacity in the Army or on the ground at war that this is an extremely bad idea for our nation. We are seriously putting our future as a nation at risk all because politicians do not want the nation to know the true cost in personal numbers how much it takes to be successful in Iraq and Afghanistan. Right now, in Afghanistan there are 140,000 contractors supporting approximately 100,000 soldiers. How can this be? How can we have more contractors than soldiers? How can this be? If you do not believe me, google it.

Read it and read other books like it. Read Peter Singer's "We can't win with them, we can't go to war without them." I'm not saying all privatization is bad, but with Iraq and Afghanistan we may have gone to such an extent that we might jeopardize losing the next conventional war because we are too afraid of the political costs of calling up the reserves and national guard who were traditionally the supply chains that supported the warfighter instead of the contractors.

Excellent book. The information is clear, objective, precise, well documented, and makes the reader learn for a fact where we are with the war in Irak concerning the utilization of contractors for logistic support for our troops. It reveals the huge money being paid to contractors and the lack of accountability and appropriate auditing of their operations in Irak. It also shows the unnecessary and high risks that our soldiers have to endure due to having entrusted private contractors with operations previously and traditionally performed by the army during a war. I highly recommend this book to all.

This is a good book in that it opens your eyes to the corruption and greed that occurs through government contracting. I have a problem with the book though. It is poorly written. There are many typos and punctuation errors throughout the text. Also, alot of the supporting details aren't there. The book has many references listed, but throughout the reading there are many statements such as "he felt" and "he was suspicious." With statements as such, it takes away from the power of the argument.

I question Amazon's choice here to allow blogs of the authors' opinions to fill the space where independent book reviews normally appear.

And I question the authors' predisposition, evident in their search for and characterization of scandal, to distrust for-profit corporations for, of all things, earning a profit. Their writing style also is infused with a bias that americans-in-uniform are more capable and more efficient problem solvers than americans formerly in uniform and now working as professionals. The authors pose a false dichotomy: use troops or betray them. The reality is that, having downsized its military, the US has bigger policy questions: re-institute the draft, betray reserve forces by using them beyond their call-up periods, or not work overseas. The privatization of the US military began decades ago and was not invented by the Iraq conflict. The largest decrease in size of the US armed forces occured during the early 1990s, mostly during the Clinton administration, with American voters and Congress watching.