A news story at the New
York Times site has a computer industry tie-in, so we
thought we'd lay it out for you. First you need to know that
the government wants another $600 million to fund more
searching for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, this on
top of the $300 million already spent. The Army is jealous,
too, and for good reason.
These facts are relevant because all along there have
been two different teams of experts looking for the elusive
WMDs: the Pentagon's 75th Exploitation Task Force, a
military group, now superceded by the larger Iraq Survey
Group, headed by former United Nations weapons inspector
David Kay, which reports to the C.I.A. The news of the
additional $600 million request, intended to increase the
staff of the Iraq Survey Group to a total of 1,400
personnel, comes on the heels of months of bitter
complaining by military sources who resent what they
consider the underfunding of their own Exploitation Task
Force.
Apparently the additional funding request for the
C.I.A.'s Iraq Survey Group was too much for the unnamed
Pentagon officials cited in the article. Speaking of the
Iraq Survey Group, the Times reporters write:
The group has also concentrated on installing
an unnecessarily elaborate infrastructure to support its
operations, said several military officials who
complained there was a disparity between the resources
allotted to the two programs.
While the Exploitation Task Force worked out of an
abandoned palace and the servants' housing quarters near
Baghdad airport and remained short of vehicles, air
support, computers and even electricity during the
initial months of the weapons hunt, the Iraq Survey Group
spent its first weeks installing air-conditioned
trailers, a new dining facility, state-of-the-art
software and even a sprinkler system for a new lawn,
according to officials and experts who worked with the
group this summer.
"They kept unloading crates and crates of new Dell
laptops," said one Pentagon official who complained that
the exploitation force lacked resources.
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