Claire McCaskill

I am not here to say I do not support the mission in Afghanistan, I do, but I question whether all of the money we have spent on contracting in the effort against counterinsurgency, whether or not we have any value for it.

I am trying to figure out who I can talk to that misjudged the security environment by so much.

This is not the first hearing we have had in this Subcommittee on contracting in our contingency operations.

What do you think we are going to spend next year on building projects for the Afghan people?

Do you think the CORs are doing a better job in terms of contract oversight than 4 or 5 years ago?

I mean, I spent some time in Afghanistan and I am hopeful that neither one of you will test us here and not acknowledge that bribes have been an essential part of us doing business in Afghanistan, regardless of what we are doing.

I think it is a terrific program.

Do you think we should have built this road, Mr. Walker?

But once you figured out it was, why did you not go back to the drawing board and do what you had done in the previous incident?

Does the Department of Defense, does the American military have data that would lay over where CERP money has been spent versus hot spots to determine whether or not the CERP money is actually being spent in areas where there are hot spots…

If this is the priority for the military command, then why is that not transferring to make it the priority of the State Department?

Make no mistake about it. The people who have worked on many of these projects are in as much danger as many of our military

I cannot figure out why in the world is Department of Defense building provincial justice centers.

Recently, I joined Senators Reid and Schumer and Lautenberg in asking Research in Motion, RIMM; Google; and Apple to stop selling dangerous apps that enable drunk drivers to evade law enforcement.

But it seems to me on some of these apps that if I had a choice, you can either get it for free and see some ads, or you can pay $2.99 and be ad free and track free.

You don't think you need more people to----

Of course, I want privacy.

I just want to make sure that we have looked carefully at what the costs are and carefully at what impact it is going to have on the most successful part of our economy in this country.

It is what has made the whole Internet free is behavioral marketing.

I think that might be something you all could do as an industry that might forestall some unintended consequences by aggressive government regulations.

The value of being able to locate where this is, is very important to my privacy because they now have the technology that if this gets stolen from me or if it gets left somewhere, I can remotely go and wipe it clean.

Retiring C-5As would save DOD approximately $9 million per aircraft per year in annual flying hour cost.

DOD currently has more airlift than it needs, and thus there would be no reason to replace C-5As with C-17s.

I am a little worried about what I have learned, that there may be a situation where you call something other than a Post Office so that you get around some of the requirements in terms of notice to the community.

I think a lot of it is very, very strong, and I know how hard you have worked on this.