Your Taxes at Work: 21 Months to write 19 Pages

[chlamor]

How Many Government Agencies Does It Take To Teach Soldiers Arabic?
A pathetic case of Pentagon incompetence.
By Fred Kaplan
Updated Wednesday, April 6, 2005, at 3:47 PM PT


Remedial education: Does Rummy know what "urgent" means?
I've just read one of the funniest and saddest government documents I've run across in years. Published by the Pentagon (the source of most such things) under the title "Defense Language Transformation Roadmap," it details the official plan for improving foreign-language skills among U.S. military personnel. The plan is meant to fill an urgent need. It was ordered by the deputy secretary of defense, administered by the undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness, and coordinated with the service secretaries, combat commanders, and Joint Chiefs of Staff. And to read it is to see, with your own increasingly widening eyes, the Pentagon's (or is it the federal government's?) sheer inability to get anything done on time.

<snip>

The document—only 19 pages, so take a look—traces, all too clearly, the project's shameful chronology. It got under way in November 2002—over a year after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks—when the undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness was directed to have the military departments review their requirements for language professionals (interpreters, translators, area specialists, and so forth). This review was a bust—or, in the document's more delicate language, it "resulted in narrowly scoped requirements based on current manning authorizations instead of … projected needs."

<snip>

From June through August, 2004, the steering committee oversaw the development—and on Aug. 31, approved—the "Roadmap," and submitted it to the undersecretary of defense.

So, by the end of last summer, it had taken 21 months simply to draw up a 19-page plan.

It gets worse.

http://slate.msn.com/id/2116330/

[Zenlitened]

1. Well, first they had to round up the gay soldiers who already...

... are trained in Arabic translation, and toss them out of the service. Witch-hunts take time, you know. Then there were the hours spent cutting off their own noses to spite their faces, as the saying goes. That's a couple months of work, right there.

:crazy:

[anarchy1999]

2. That's it for me! Stop the spinning, Earth, Mother Nature, whoever.

We want off, please. I don't want to stay on this "ferris wheel" anymore! We want off NOW!