Pentagon pays $720M in late fees for storage containers for Iraq and Afghanistan

Folks, this is $750 million for late fees on storage containers! Why? They use the excuse Afghanistan and Iraq were "planned" to be brief but when you look back at the history of both nations, thinking anything would be "brief" was stupid. The Russians were in Afghanistan, along with other nations trying to take it over. As for Iraq, well, they need only look back to the Gulf War for what Cheney and Rumsfeld already knew. It would be a "quagmire" and they knew exactly what would happen. It is all in the history books and they can't wipe any of it away with their own books now.

Pentagon pays $720M in late fees for storage containers
By Tom Vanden Brook, USA TODAY

The Pentagon has spent more than $720 million since 2001 on fees for shipping containers that it fails to return on time, according to data and contracts obtained by USA TODAY.

The containers — large metal boxes stowed on ships and moved from port on trucks — are familiar sights on bases in Iraq and Afghanistan where troops use them for storage, shelter and building material. Yet each 20-foot container returned late can rack up more than $2,200 in late fees.

Shipping companies charge the government daily "container detention fees" after the grace period ends for the box to be returned.

The $720million represents a thin slice of the Pentagon's $553billion budget. Yet military spending is under intense scrutiny as the Defense Department has been ordered to trim $350billion in spending over the next 10 years and could face steeper reductions from budget cutters.


The cost stems from the mistaken belief that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq would be brief and late fees would be minimal, said John Pike executive director of Globalsecurity.org, a defense policy group.
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But it looks like this keeps getting worse

Ten years after 9/11, wasteful Pentagon war contracting still under fire
By KEVIN BARON
Published: August 29, 2011
WASHINGTON – The Pentagon's use of no-bid contracts meant to field urgently needed war goods like counter-IED devices has tripled since 9/11, despite promises to reform the controversial practice once justified by military planners at the outbreak of war ten years ago, a new watchdog report finds.

After repeated pledges and orders from President Barack Obama and Defense Department leaders to clean up the no-bid trough, “Campaign pledges and memos have made little headway in combating the problem,” writes Sarah Whitmire, in the Center for Public Integrity's first installment of a five-day investigative report on war contracting, released Monday. What was a $50 billion worry in 2003 has ballooned to $140 billion in 2011.

The report is the latest dispatch in the Center’s “Windfalls of War” series, which in 2003 accounted for the explosion of war spending in the buildup and aftermath of the Iraq invasion and early Afghanistan fighting. (Full disclosure: I was a writer on the original project.) At the time, when U.S. officials refused or could not say how much money the wars were costing taxpayers, through Freedom of Information Act requests the Center discovered billions of dollars were being doled out to huge defense firms, like Halliburton. The Pentagon, in some cases, simply modified previously existing contracts for unrelated goods and services instead of opening up a new bidding process to competition, sometimes adding tens of millions to the potential value of the original contract.

The Pentagon and other contracting agencies said the practice was justified because the need to troops was too urgent. Some of the contractors, DOD said, were the only ones capable of providing unique and uniquely large services, like rebuilding Iraq’s electrical system. The Center found that was untrue in many cases.
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