QUESTION: Does the Department intend to hire enough private contractors to make up the shortfall of what the military now provides in terms of security, transportation, communications, and all the other services?
MR. TONER: Well, Charley, the responsibility of security, obviously, on the ground there falls under our Bureau of Diplomatic Security. And it’s up to them, obviously, to provide a safe and secure environment. And that’s going to involve, obviously, the use and participation of contractors. These contractors will provide protective services, advice, training, support. And in terms of actual numbers on the ground, I’ll leave that for them to sort of decide what’s appropriate for the security situation.
*****
Despite the grilling that congress gave DoS the other day about this very ambitious new phase, it sounds like they are still pressing forward. Some of the issues they are coming up against is that DoD has not committed to giving them the stuff they want (Blackhawks, MRAPs, etc.). Their past history with managing contracts is giving congress a pause as well. And finally, the missions that contractors could potentially be presented with is causing congress to raise some inherently governmental questions. David Isenberg had a post on the matter.
No word yet on who got what for WPPS/WPS. If this is the current position of DoS though, I would assume that it is all systems go. Although I am sure they would like to do as much as they can to give congress some confidence in their mission. Good luck. lol –Matt
——————————————————————-
Mark C. Toner
Acting Deputy Department Spokesman
Washington, DC
September 24, 2010
(a portion of the briefing is posted below)
QUESTION: Can we stay on Iraq for a second?
MR. TONER: Yeah. Go ahead. Yeah.
QUESTION: Yesterday on Capitol Hill, the State Department came up against some pretty sharp criticism about its ability to oversee reconstruction once the U.S. military pulled out. Special Inspector General Bowen said the State Department had failed so far to oversee a lot of these projects. And today he repeated that and said as far as he could see, the State Department did not have the core ability to oversee reconstruction at, say, tens of billions of dollars of taxpayer money. What’s the State Department going to do?
MR. TONER: Well, we cooperated, actually, on that report and have made every effort to keep Congress informed of additional resources needed or required, rather, for the transition. That is, in fact, ongoing. Certainly we recognize the enormous challenge of, and are devoting considerable effort to, the military-to-civilian transition, working in close collaboration with the Department of Defense. And we’re – obviously, our overarching goal is to ensure the safety and security of our personnel in Iraq, but also ensure an appropriate level of contract and operational oversight, and then thirdly, to make sure that the mission there – our mission, rather, succeeds.
And then finally, I just would say that this is a tremendous challenge, but the State Department does have experience in this. Looking back from an historical perspective, from post-war Germany and Japan, to the unrest in Central and South America in the 1970s, to more recently East Timor and Bosnia, we’ve put staff, personnel in these challenging locations. Their goals were to stabilize the governments, provide foreign assistance, promote stable and functional host governments. And so we believe that we are up to the challenge in Iraq.
