Government as General Contractor/ Chief Auditor?

[BigLawMonies]

Thanks for pointing me to the article.

I should have pointed out that I am more thinking about contracting services other than protection services. Also I am thinking about more advanced auditing procedures than used today - good auditing practices will be a major focus of a government that relies more on contracting out for services.

The article itself seems pretty vague; sometimes contracting is good, sometimes bad depending on "the environment"

The author however does not really set any parameters for measuring the suitability of different "environments" of contracting in general, except for that claim that it replaces political checks with market transactions.

Well GOOD I trust market transactions more than bureaucratic executive agencies for quality and efficiency.

The problems in the article seem pretty specific to military contracting - deployment of quasi-military abroad with little oversight and subject to complete discretionary authority by the President. I think the issue is more lack of strong auditing than something inherently wrong with the contract system.


Further it seems that the problem in Iraq with contractors is the fundamental confusion of our policy there, and the article itself identifies the lack of outcomes-oriented standards about relations with Iraqi civil society. Also i dont know how much worse blackwater is than abu grahib regular army [censored], and the article itself mentions that government services can fail to stop genocide...

Overall it just seems that the article is pretty vague and its generalizations don't really seem to me to have a point, i guess is what i am saying.