Following the Project on Government Oversight's report that the guards, who work for ArmorGroup, regularly run around naked, get drunk and act out juvenile homoerotic fantasies, Sen. Claire McCaskill has called on the State Department to launch a full-fledged investigation. The State Department, meanwhile, has called the allegations "very serious" and promised that they will talk to ArmorGroup about "addressing deficiencies in their performance." Nor will Secretary of State Hillary Clinton tolerate such antics.

That is, in a word, doubtful.

In fact, the State Department has been investigating ArmorGroup since the beginning of its contract, in July of 2007, when it was found to be "deficient" and the group was said to "gravely endangers performance of guard services."

A related Senate report also found problems, like the fact that the childlike contractors were abandoning posts. It went on to label the scenario as "a case study of how mismanagement and lack of oversight can result in poor performance." State Department spokesman Ian Kelly confirmed that yesterday at a press conference:

We've been investigating this organization for some time now. We understand that we have made some – we have pointed out to them some of the deficiencies. And I can't answer right now from this podium exactly what they have done in response to this letter.

The Department again raised concerns in 2008 and then, later, a Senate probe also found problems, like the fact that contractors were abandoning posts. Yet, despite these misgivings, the contract went on and was reaffirmed earlier this summer. Obviously the State Department isn't taking things too seriously.

Of course, the Department has very little choice, because, frankly, they need contractors like a junkie needs a fix.

As of March this year, contractors made up 57 percent of the Pentagon's force in Afghanistan, and if the figure is averaged over the past two years, it is 65 percent, according to the report by the Congressional Research Service.

Our military's so depleted and overstretched, the Department has come to rely on these contractors, even if they are man-beasts who get off on eating chips from one another's ass cracks. The Department relies so much on them, in fact, that it has yet again renewed its contract with Blackwater, which was previously banned from operating in Iraq, where its agents are, among other things, accused of killing 17 civilians.

At best, the men involved in the most recent contractor scandal will be dismissed, only to be replaced by more buffoons who will then find even more outlandish ways of entertaining themselves.

These photos were provided to us by the Project on Government Oversight, which has just written a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton detailing its investigation into the "Lord of the Flies environment" that has overtaken the private contractors who guard State Department employees in Kabul, Afghanistan. According to POGO, employees of ArmorGroup North America—a unit of contracting giant Wackenhut—get their jollies off by "deviant hazing [that] has created a climate of fear and coercion, with those who declined to participate often ridiculed, humiliated, demoted, or even fired."

What sort of hazing? The traditional desperately homoerotic frat boy kind, mostly involving eating and drinking things off of other men's butts. Also some nipple-biting, as you can see below. One POGO whistle blower described it thusly [PDF link]: "They have a group of sexual predators, deviants running rampant over there. No, they are not jamming guys in the ass per say [sic], but they are showing poor judgenment [sic]." Most of it appears to have been voluntary, but those who didn't really want to drink vodka shots out of the clenched butt-cheeks of their male co-workers were penalized and reported barricading themselves in their rooms. And sometimes the behavior extended to the locals:

An Afghan national employed as a food service worker at the guard corps' base at Camp Sullivan submitted a signed statement dated August 16, 2009, attesting that a guard force supervisor and four others entered a dining facility on August 1, 2009, wearing only short underwear and brandishing bottles of alcohol. Upon leaving the facility, the guard force supervisor allegedly grabbed the Afghan national by the face and began abusing him with foul language, saying, "You are very good for fXXXing." The Afghan national reported that he "was too afraid of them I could not tell them any thing."

So anyway, these are the people who are guarding our national security in Afghanistan, being paid vast multiples of what soldiers, sailors, and marines get with your tax dollars. Are these guys asking, or telling?

[Via Mother Jones.]

The personality summary:

Tucker Max is an asshole but the kind of asshole that all of his asshole friends love because his antics distract them from the thinning hair and gentle mediocrity that characterize their post-college years.

The victim's personality:

Most Tucker Max stories involve him doing or saying crazy/offensive things, getting into trouble for them, and then going home with one of those girls who, when a guy says something sort of awful to her, hits him on the shoulder and says “you asshole” but also smiles and sticks to him like glue for the rest of the night. My dad was nice to me, so I don’t have this reaction, but I guess it takes all kinds.

The methodological analysis:

Invariably in Tucker’s stories, someone gets pissed off and says his jokes aren’t funny, and if that someone is a woman, she’s dismissed as ugly and/or fat and therefore too bitter and angry to get the joke, while if that someone is a man, he’s dismissed as being a meathead and therefore not cool or smart enough to get the joke. If you are confused by this last, let me clear it up for you: Tucker Max is unaware that he is the definition of a hazey, rapey, fratty meathead.

In the course of one paragraph, the author has summarized everything you will ever need to know about Tucker Max. The script—which, yes, involves midget sex—is called "Godawful" and "terrible" and many other things, although those two will suffice. We're looking into getting a copy of it ourselves; if you have one handy, email us.

[Read the entire takedown by The Script Reader. Somebody inform Michael Ian Black that his nemesis is open to attack.]

"In economic terms, you are a depreciating asset and I am an earning asset," he wrote, because "your looks will fade and my money will likely continue into perpetuity." The Times asks incredulously, "Would someone with a big job at a prestigious company really have linked his name to a message that read in part: 'You're 25 now and will likely stay pretty hot for the next 5 years, but less so each year. Then the fade begins in earnest. By 35 stick a fork in you!'" Um, seriously?

We're not sure who they're hiring over at the Times these days, Pollyanna herself perhaps, but we're guessing they've never actually hung out with male i-banker types, otherwise they would know that perfecting such a fratastic attitude is practically a requirement in the employee handbook.

We do have a bone to pick with DealBreaker's John Carney, however, who told the Times he thought it unlikely the i-banker author would come forward because "In the age of ultrasensitivity to sexual harassment, people might think that this guy's response about women being depreciating assets is not exactly how they want their firm to be perceived by the public." We totally get you John, it's so annoying when women overreact to being told their looks are their only assets.