FOR US troops in Iraq, service is dangerous enough even without having to worry about dying from shoddy wiring in their base facilities. But that has been the fate of at least 13 US service members, according to the Pentagon. Moreover, from August 2006 to January 2007, there were at least 283 electrical fires that damaged or destroyed US facilities. Two soldiers died in an electrical fire near Tikrit, according to Army documents obtained by The New York Times.
As ghastly as this problem is, the Pentagon and Congress did not begin to show much interest in it until the electrocution death of a Green Beret sergeant in January. To make sure the issue gets the scrutiny it deserves, Congress should bring officials at the Pentagon and at KBR, the main military contractor for troop housing in Iraq, before the public at a formal hearing.
What's already known is disturbing: Last week, a Senate panel heard from former KBR electricians who said the company used employees with little electrical experience to supervise subcontractors in Iraq.
KBR spokeswoman Heather Browne told the Times that the company has found no evidence between the work it was hired to do and the electrocution deaths. The company is circulating an e-mail it received from a former National Guard member who worked on electric power grids in a portion of Iraq before and after the area came under KBR supervision. "We found the KBR electricians to be very competent and professional," Mike Heiman wrote, "but tended to be understaffed."
Understaffing might be key to the problems since, according to US officials cited by the Times, contractors like KBR were so overwhelmed with work that they subcontracted to Iraqi firms with unskilled workers earning a few dollars a day.
Representative Henry Waxman of California, chairman of the House Oversight Committee, has demanded that Secretary of Defense Robert Gates provide by Friday all documents the Pentagon has compiled on the electricity problems and that Gates make available for interviews by Waxman's staff two Defense Department officials cited in the Times article. Waxman had originally asked for the documents in March and has still not received all of them.
The time is past for buck-passing on this issue. Whether US troops stay in Iraq another two years or 100 years, they should not be exposed to the lethal hazards of bad wiring.
