Murphy's Law: September 21, 2003

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The U.S. armed forces have always used a certain number of civilian specialists in the combat zone. But the number of civilian contractors being used has been rising rapidly over the last two decades, to the point there nearly ten percent of the "troops" under army control in Iraq and Kuwait are actually civilians. Moreover, the army commanders realized that no one person in the army was responsible for knowing how many contractors were operating in a particular area, what they were doing and who they were reporting to. This was because there were hundreds of different contracts involved, involving many different civilian firms, jobs and conditions of employment. So the army is doing what army's are good at, setting up a chain of command for contractors. A ten million dollar contract has been issued so a contractor can figure out how to do this.

 

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