Could competition avert accounting fiascos?

• Position: Logistics Civil Augmentation Program - Brief Article

The seemingly endless accounting scandals associated with Halliburton--the contractor in charge of feeding troops and providing overall logistics services in Iraq--could have been prevented if the Army had not restricted industry competition so rigorously, lamented a former commander of U.S. Army logistics operations.

When the Army started the Logistics Civil Augmentation Program in 1992, it never imagined the workload would get so huge and difficult to oversee, the general said. The program was restricted to a single contractor, who would be selected...