Waste, Fraud, Corruption & Erosion Of Our Defenses

Ships That Don’t Dare to Sail

Our National Guard is deployed elsewhere. Our Border Patrol is understaffed and hamstrung by the rules our leaders have imposed upon them. Civil Defense no longer exists and FEMA is not only under assult for not performing properly, but for existing at all. The state of our national defnse is in serious disaaray and our lives are at significant risk.

The level of widespread fraud, overbilling and poor performance of defense contracts in Afghanistan and Iraq is depleting limited resources and hard-earned tax dollars. Corporatism and fascism is overwhelming our governmental processes. And now corruption and mismanagement has depleted another national defense resource: Our Coast Guard ships and boats.

The Coast Guard, supposedly our first line of defense against water-borne terrorists and drug smugglers, has been staggered by a shipbuilding scandal of enormous proportions. A long-term modernization program to replace nearly all of the Coast Guard’s ships, planes and helicopters — begun four years ago in the wake of 9/11 — is foundering while its projected costs are skyrocketing. In Iraq, lax government oversight and incompetence or profiteering by contractors have disabled reconstruction efforts. Now the same disease is undermining our coastal defenses.

The Coast Guard fiasco was laid out in depressing detail by Eric Lipton in The Times last Saturday, and in a similar article in The Washington Post. The misjudgments and slipshod work would be grist for slapstick comedy if the consequences, in cost and weakened defenses, were not so serious.

Geez... What other resource can we deplete while wasting our tax dollars in an extreme manner?

As described by Mr. Lipton, the estimated costs of the project, known as Deepwater, have ballooned from $17 billion when it started in 2002 to $24 billion today. The plans call for 91 new ships, 124 small boats, 195 new or rebuilt helicopters and 49 unmanned aerial vehicles. But don’t count on any of the new vehicles working.

The initial venture — converting the Coast Guard’s rusting patrol boats into bigger, more versatile cutters — has been canceled because hull cracks and engine failures made the first eight ships unseaworthy. Plans for a new class of ships with an innovative hull design were halted after the design was found to be flawed. And even the radios placed in small open boats proved faulty; they shorted out because they had not been made waterproof.

In the latest chapter in this disgraceful performance, Mr. Lipton reports in today’s paper that the Coast Guard did not inform Congress that it was warned two years ago by its chief engineer that a proposed National Security Cutter, meant to be the flagship of its fleet, had “significant flaws” in its structural design and should not be started until the problems were addressed. The Coast Guard began construction anyway. It plans to reinforce the first two versions that are being built and change the design on the remaining six.

How many more fiascos are we going to entertain and condone before we demand some accountability? Impeachment on mismanagement alone is in order, but demanded by the illegal actions and violations of the Constitution. Let us hope someone in congress find the integirty to call for accountability.