Adam Weinstein

Engagement Editor

I'm Mother Jones' engagement editor and Tumblrizer, specializing in explanatory journalism and new-media reporting. As a Navy vet and ex-Iraq contractor, I'm also committed to articulating all things martial—good, bad, and weird—to new audiences.

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Adam Weinstein is Mother Jones' engagement editor, having previously served the magazine as its national security reporter and copy editor. Before that, he worked at the Wall Street Journal, the Village Voice, and the Tallahassee Democrat. He's written for the New York Times, New York magazine, GQ, and Newsweek. A Navy veteran, two-day Jeopardy champion and ex-political scientist, he also did a recession-fueled stint as a military contractor in Iraq. For more about Adam and his writing, click here.

Yodeling Echo of R. Kelly (VIDEO)

—By Adam Weinstein

| Mon Mar. 29, 2010 10:05 AM PDT

Ever wonder what's going on with R. Kelly, onetime White House visitor and all-time master of the R&B sex jam, who was once jammed in the slammer for sex (with a minor)? He introduced his new video, "Echo," via Twitter late last week and it's certainly gone viral—though not in the way one might associate Kelly with that term.

"Echo" is the typical R. Kelly hook, a stereophonic display of his confusion between a metaphor for sex and the sex itself. Here there is no one to remind him of his jeep, no key for his ignition, no belief in flight, no closet in which to be trapped. There is only Robert. And The Sound of Music.

It's true: R. Kelly yodels. He brings the hills to life with the sound of his music. (That's a literal, not metaphorical, compliment—watch the video.)

In this strangely earnest twist on the Julie Andrews camp classic, R. Kelly is somehow endearing—ever the suave, sweet misogynist with a sex craze ready to objectify anything that moves...or fails to move quickly enough. In our pomographic, sex-addled, pop-edge music world, he is the male yin to Lady Gaga's yang, right down to the ridiculous glasses.

Here's a sampling of his lyrics, with the full video below:

[Read more in the Riff blog]

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Iraq Vote's Real Winner: Chaos

—By Adam Weinstein

| Fri Mar. 26, 2010 2:53 PM PDT

After a tense few weeks of ballot-counting and political posturing, the results of Iraq's parliamentary elections were released Friday, and the country's political future looks as murky as ever, with no party coming close to a majority of the body's 325 seats. And with the status of US troops hanging in the balance, it looks as if an Iran-friendly firebrand cleric—and antagonizer of America—will play the role of kingmaker.

A few minor players got boosted to the big leagues in the Iraqi vote, held March 7. The biggest winner was the secular Shiite party of former Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, whose faction gained 91 seats. That was just two more than the number retained by current Prime Minister Nuri al Maliki and his Shiite Dawa party, which means Maliki's likely to lose his job. (As our own Kevin Drum pointed out yesterday, his coalition had already been preparing to throw him under the bus.) He's not giving up without a fight, though, announcing his intentions to pull a Norm Coleman. "No way we will accept the results," he told the New York Times. "These are preliminary results. We will challenge the results through the law and courts."

Besides the electorate's apparent rebuke to Maliki, a number of interesting story lines arose out of the election—whose turnout of about 60 percent is the highest ever recorded in post-Saddam balloting:

[Read more in the MoJo blog]

Conservatives Fire David Frum

—By Adam Weinstein

| Thu Mar. 25, 2010 12:23 PM PDT

[UPDATE: We've added in a reference to DC bureau chief David Corn's Sunday night dispatch, which highlights the incendiary remarks David Frum made about health care politics as Republicans' "Waterloo"—possibly the remarks that led to his ouster from the conservative fold.]

David Frum, the enigmatic young mandarin of the GOP who speechified many of George W. Bush's most manichaean lines, just dropped a bomb over on his blog: He's been dumped by his significant other of seven years, the right-wing American Enterprise Institute. And it doesn't sound like it was a pleasant breakup. Said Frum:

"I have been a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute since 2003. At lunch today, AEI President Arthur Brooks and I came to a termination of that relationship. Below is the text of my letter of resignation."

Dear Arthur,

This will memorialize our conversation at lunch today. Effective immediately, my position as a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute is terminated. I appreciate the consideration that delays my emptying of my office until after my return from travel next week. Premises will be vacated no later than April 9.

I have had many fruitful years at the American Enterprise Institute, and I do regret this abrupt and unexpected conclusion of our relationship.

Very truly yours,

David Frum

So what gives? How could one of the best-known fellows at one of the best-known Beltway opinionators end up on the outs? Well, back in December, our own Kevin Drum said that Frum "has been estranged from the hard-right wing of the Republican Party for a while." And on Monday, the MoJo blog reported that Frum's recent activities had included a poll that exposed the general ignorance of Tea Partiers about US politics and taxes, which couldn't have sat well with his overseers at AEI. They do loathe them some health care reform and love them some irate patriots. But perhaps most damningly, as MoJo's DC bureau chief David Corn reported Sunday, was an incendiary Frum blog post describing health care as the GOP's Waterloo. Corn writes:

He noted that "it's a good bet that conservatives are over-optimistic about November" because "by then the economy will have improved and the immediate goodies in the healthcare bill will be reaching key voting blocs." Frum's j'accuse! blamed "conservatives and Republicans ourselves" for making a poor strategic decision: "We would make no deal with the administration. No negotiations, no compromise, nothing...We followed the most radical voices in the party and the movement, and they led us to abject and irreversible defeat." Republican legislators who wanted to cut a deal, he notes, were trapped and pinned down by "conservative talkers on Fox and talk radio."

Strong stuff—and Frum didn't back away from it the next day in his commentary to the New York Times on GOP political nihilism:

[Read more in the MoJo blog]

KBR: What the DOD Detectives Saw

—By Adam Weinstein

| Thu Mar. 25, 2010 10:36 AM PDT

As a journalist, as well as a military veteran and former Iraq contractor, I try to keep abreast of the latest developments in America's warfighting forces—public and private. Which is why I was unsurprised to find a new report this month by the DOD inspector general on KBR's lazy Iraq contracting. But I was surprised when I found no references to the report in the mainstream media—even as KBR won a new $2.3 billion-plus contract for five more years of "services" in Iraq.

Here's what the big news organizations missed: In 2008 and 2009, KBR got $5 million for its mechanics to maintain tactical vehicles (Humvees, big rigs) on a base north of Baghdad. (It's the same base where ex-KBR employee Jamie Leigh Jones says she was raped, and where KBR burn pits are reportedly killing soldiers.) At the end of that time, when the Pentagon poked around, it found that by KBR's own (slapdash) estimates, the firm's workers only did work about 7 percent of the time they were on duty (and billing) for. When DOD investigators tried to run their own numbers, it got worse: In one month, 144 mechanics did an average of 43 minutes of work each.

The undiscovered report is likely to become bigger news soon: a commission set up by Congress to deal with waste and accountability in wartime contracting is meeting on Capitol Hill Monday, and its members want to know why KBR hasn't offered a real plan to draw down its ranks in Iraq, even as US soldiers are withdrawing. By one estimate, KBR alone could cost taxpayers up to $193 million between now and August by keeping more people in the desert than we need. But even that estimate may be optimistic: One member of the wartime contracting commission, Charles Tiefer, tells me, "If KBR has underutilized rates in many of its operations anywhere near the rates found by the inspector general study...that would support a search for savings on the order of $300 million." Tiefer told me: "You're the only [journalist] who's read the inspector general's report."

Check out the full story here. And pass it around. Maybe soon the mainstream media will start asking some questions, too.

KBR Bills $5 Million For Mechanics Who Work 43 Minutes a Month

And as more GIs come home, the waste could get even worse.

—By Adam Weinstein

| Thu Mar. 25, 2010 4:30 AM PDT

It was just a single contract for a single job on a single base in Iraq. The Department of Defense agreed to pay the megacontractor KBR $5 million a year to repair tactical vehicles, from Humvees to big rigs, at Joint Base Balad, a large airfield and supply center north of Baghdad. Yet according to a new Pentagon report [PDF], what the military got was as many as 144 civilian mechanics, each doing as little as 43 minutes of work a month, with virtually no oversight. The report, issued March 3 by the DOD's inspector general, found that between late 2008 and mid-2009, KBR performed less than 7 percent of the work it was expected to do, but still got paid in full.

The $4.6 million blown on this particular contract is a relatively small loss considering that in 2009 alone, the government had a blanket deal worth $5 billion with KBR (formerly known as the Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root). Just days before the Pentagon released the Balad report, KBR announced it had won a new $2.3 billion-plus, five-year Iraq contract. But the inspector general's modest investigation offers new insight into just how little KBR delivers and how toothless the Pentagon is to prevent contractor waste. Moreover, the government's own auditors predict that as the military draws down its forces in Iraq, KBR will keep most of its workforce intact, enabling it to collect $190 million or more in unnecessary expenses. Much of any "peace dividend" from the war's gradual end—potentially hundreds of billions of dollars—could wind up in the hands of contractors.

On March 29, the bipartisan Commission on Wartime Contracting—which Congress set up in early 2007 to investigate waste and corruption in the military private sector—will hold a hearing to examine whether contractors are doing their part to prepare for leaving Iraq. Some commissioners are raring for a showdown with KBR over its drawdown plan—or lack thereof. The commission's co-chair, former Republican congressman Christopher H. Shays, said in a statement: "Considering that KBR was just awarded a task order—now under protest—that could bring them up to $2.3 billion in new [Iraq-related] revenues, it's very important that we get a clear picture of the quality of planning and oversight during the Iraq drawdown."

The Balad report is likely to be a hot potato at the hearing. Commissioner Charles Tiefer tells Mother Jones the report is a "dynamite critique" of the firm's practices. "The numbers translate into an astonishingly large pool of KBR employees standing around idle and having the government be charged," he says.

What the DOD investigators found in Balad was astounding. Army rules require that its civilian maintenance employees are actively working 85 to 90 percent of the time they are on the clock. Yet KBR's own records showed that its workers were only engaged in labor an average of 6.6 percent of the time they were on duty. The DOD ran its own numbers, and its findings were even worse. In September 2008, for example, KBR had 144 maintenance employees at Balad, available to work 16,200 hours. Their actual "utilization rate" was a paltry 0.63 percent—which means that each of the 144 KBR employees averaged about 43 minutes of work for the entire month.

[Read the full article]