US Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur made some interesting comments on the Pentagon’s contract with Tim Spicer at a House Committee hearing on Friday:
I will say this, both in closed door meetings and in public, I have yet to find a person other than the auditor, who is able to shed any light on how it was that Aegis, a foreign corporation, was given a contract where now we have the second-largest force in Iraq, larger than the Brits, headed by someone named Tim Spicer.
Who signed that contract, and what are those 20,000 people doing, many of whom are foreign mercenaries? What are they doing? Why can’t I get any answers out of our Government? What is happening inside the Department of Defence? What are those people doing over there?
The last answer I got was, well Congresswoman, you”ll have to go over to Central Command over in Baghdad. OK, I’ll go, but why can’t I get answers on that as a member of this committee?
Friday’s hearing was attended by Army Secretary Francis Harvey and
Chief of Staff General Peter Schoomaker, and was webcast by C-Span.
Kaptur’s contribution starts about 1 hour 38 minutes in. The above
quote is from 1 hour 48 minutes in.
There is some interesting material that may be relevant to Kaptur’s questions in Robert Young Pelton’s book Licensed to Kill.
Ohio Democrat Kaptur is the first woman to serve on the House Appropriations Subcommittee, chaired by John P Murtha, which is currently considering a request for $93.4 billion
in supplementary funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Murtha
hopes to use this leverage to halt the planned troop surge in Iraq.
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