Soak the taxpayers, that is.

First, this from the New York Times:

"[T]o arm the Afghan forces that it hopes will lead this fight, the American military has relied since early last year on a fledgling company led by a 22-year-old man whose vice president was a licensed masseur.

The tale involves charges of domestic abuse, a plea bargain to avoid losing a firearms license, drunkenness, trading sex for government contracts and procuring inferior munitions for a U.S. ally in the war against Al Qaeda.

Second, this from the Washington Post:

Government auditors said yesterday that the Pentagon relies too much on contractors who often work alongside their government counterparts, cost more and sometimes take on responsibilities they are not supposed to. 

The audit, a GAO report, found, "The only apparent distinction [between government employees and contractors] is their different badge color." Oh, yeah, and the fact that "some contractors are paid $74.99 per hour -- 27 percent more than government employees who are doing the same work."

In case we haven't learned the lesson yet, it's simple: An administration that recklessly promotes outsourcing and ignores its obligation to monitor government contracts not only invites waste, fraud and abuse, but undermines the government, including, in this case, the U.S. military.

For those of you scoring at home, AEY, the munitions contractor written up in the NY Times article, has no contracts with the Department of Ed (no surprise there).  However, CACI, the contractor highlighted in the WaPo article, has gotten more than $4 million from the Department of Ed since 2000. But I'm sure everything is on the up and up there. CACI employees working on Department of Ed contracts are probably a bargain. No worries.