Can You Hear Me Now, General?
Average Americans arenít the only ones with crappy cell phone service. According to a story on Slate, "US reconstruction officers in Baghdad could not even talk with U.S. military officers down the street," thanks to Pentagon idiots who awarded the Iraq cellular network contract to WorldCom/MCI. What did WorldCom/MCI do to deserve such an award? Maybe it was perpetrating "the largest financial fraud case" in American business, or maybe it was having "no prior experience at building cellular networks." As could be expected, they've done a simply brilliant job in Iraq:
Not until July did the cellular network in Iraq start up, and it turned out to be less than occupation officials expectedóor needed. According to officials who were there at the time, they could use the phones (which cost a staggering $4,000 a piece) to talk only among themselves. The network did not extend, or link, to Iraqi telephones.According to a Defense Department official, if someone working for the U.S. occupation authority needed to talk with a battalion commander, there was no way to make direct contact. He or she had to call a desk officer back in the Pentagon, who would jot down the message and call the commander himself. If the commander wanted to reply to the message, the same desk officer would jot down the response and call back the occupation authority.
Fee-fi-fo-fum, I smell the sickly cologne of lobbyist-scum. Too cynical for you? Well, there is another explanation: that the people running the Pentagon make their business decisions by shaking a Magic Eight-Ball.
There is an even sadder side to this. In a poor attempt to stop this mis-use of public funds at the highest lever, new rules will be made.
These rules will require low level efforts to increase such as going on competitive bid to buy 3 boxes of garbage bags instead of just going to the near by Wal-mart. The bags will cost 5 times as much and take 10 times as long to buy.
The executives at the top will continue foolishly spending public money.
norm ennis at October 4, 2003 10:22 AM