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Shining a Light on the Mercenary Army
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by Kathy Stone, W A M M
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Did you know the ratio of military contractors to U.S. soldiers in Iraq is nearing 1:1 about now?
The day after author Jeremy Scahill (author of Blackwater: Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army) testified at Rep. John Murtha’s May 10 House Appropriations Subcommittee about military contractors, he was at the U of M’s Humphrey Center in Minneapolis speaking about the new mercenary army.
With hundreds if not thousands of government and university experts eager to talk about the military and its goings-on in Iraq, one might wonder why an author of a political/foreign policy book and an independent filmmaker would be testifying before a House Committee.
The answer may be that Scahill and his cohort Robert Greenwald (Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers), a documentary filmmaker who also testified before Murtha’s committee, and select others have done the job that U.S. corporate-run media have refused to do. The influential news monopoly does not inform the public about the growth and damage private military contractors play in Iraq. Independent journalists are pressing to get the truth out.
Because the corporate media censors news that is detrimental to big business and the White House (essentially now one and the same) many people have scant knowledge about the $20 to $30 billion private security business and how it keeps the war going, despite a nation clearly opposed to continuing the Iraq misadventure.
Scahill, Greenwald, and others are trying to shine a light on the privatization of the military and its close ties to the Bush Administration. One noticeable thing that has changed since Congress came under Democratic majority: Representatives Murtha, Conyers, and Waxman, all new committee chairs, are giving Bush and Cheney’s dirty laundry a long-overdue public airing.
Here is some of the newsworthy information that the talking heads at CNN and MSNBC and our shrinking newspapers should be bringing before the public, so that we can demand accountability from our representatives.
The number of private military contractors is estimated at 126,000, but no one knows the exact number. So far the U.S. Army has compiled a database of 50,000. But according to the new commander of United States Central Command (CENTCOM), Adm. William Fallon, “I have no idea how many are actually there.” UPI: “US: No Idea How Many Contractors in Iraq.” April 24, 2007.
The killing and mutilation of four Blackwater private security guards in Fallujah on March 31, 2004, gave the U.S. military an excuse to conduct a brutal attack on the citizens of Fallujah. It also gave us our first glimpse of the numbers of mercenaries operating throughout Iraq.
Under Order 17, issued by Paul Bremer, head of the Coalition Provisional Authority before he left Iraq in 2004, contractors are immune from prosecution in Iraq. While 64 U.S. soldiers have been court-martialed on murder-related charges, no individual armed contractor has been prosecuted for a crime against an Iraqi.
It’s insupportable that military contractors are saving U.S. taxpayers money. They are saving the Bush Administration political capital by having a shadow army whose losses are not included among the war dead. With contractors subcontracting to sub-subcontractors and so on, we’re paying for an awful lot of administrators and middlemen who, unregulated, often are at odds with the enlisted troops.
There is no organization within the Department of Defense (DOD) responsible for managing, providing oversight, or aggregating the numbers and types of contractors in Iraq. When Multi-National Force-Iraq began to plan the construction of a consolidated base, officials could not determine how many contractors were deployed in Iraq. The potential for over-building or under-building is enormous. Government Accountability (GAO) Report May 10, 2007
Casualties among private contractors in Iraq have soared to record levels this year, setting a pace that seems certain to turn 2007 into the bloodiest year yet for civilians who work in the war zone, according to new government numbers. At least 146 contract workers were killed in Iraq in the first three months of the year, by far the highest number for any quarter since the war began in March 2003, according to the Labor Department. That brings the total number of contractors killed in Iraq to at least 917, along with more than 12,000 wounded in battle or injured on the job, according to government figures and dozens of interviews.
In Iraq alone there are more than 150 private military companies or private security contractors. Here are the top four:
Aegis, a British security company, was awarded an Army contract valued at approximately $292 million to coordinate security teams operating in Iraq and to protect the Green Zone. Its contract was extended. Blackwater USA first won a $21 million contract to protect U.S. Ambassador Bremer until June 2004. Today Blackwater has more than $750 million in diplomatic security contracts, providing security to visiting members of Congress, the U.S. ambassador, and other officials. Blackwater was contracted through a Kuwaiti company, ESS, with ties to KBR/Halliburton. Erinys, a British company, has a $50 million contract to protect the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in Iraq. Some of its guards earn $1,000 a day. KBR, Halliburton’s engineering and construction subsidiary, obtained $12 billion in contracts to provide various services in Iraq. The bulk of the contract, for the ten-year Logistics Civil Augmentation Program (LOGCAP), was won in December 2001 (Frontline: Private Warriors). Was former Halliburton CEO Dick Cheney prescient in knowing it would be a “long war” just two months after September 11?
Robert Greenwald, a documentary filmmaker who recently released a new film titled “Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers” presented testimony at a hearing that took place in early May on Capitol Hill led by Representative John Murtha’s (D-Pennsylvania). The Subcommittee on Appropriations heard Greenwald recall an interview with a young Halliburton worker named James Logsdon who told the filmmaker about burn pits, large dumps near military stations where they would burn equipment, trucks, trash, etc. According to Logsdon, if they ordered the wrong item, they’d throw it in the burn pit. If a tire blew on a piece of equipment, they’d throw the whole thing into the burn pit. The burn pits had so much equipment they even gave them a nickname: “Home Depot.” He referred to one that he had seen that was 15 football fields large and burned around the clock. It infuriated the Halliburton employee to have to burn stuff rather than give it to the Iraqis or to the military. Yet Halliburton was being rewarded each time they billed the government for a new truck or new piece of equipment. With a cost-plus contract, the contractors receive a percentage of the money they spend.
Background screening of military contractors is inadequate. Contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan provide a wide range of services, from maintaining advanced weapon systems to preparing meals for the troops. In many cases, contractor employees need not be U.S. citizens. Many of the mercenaries in Iraq are from other countries, including India, Pakistan, the Philippines, and several African nations. The screening companies that are on contract to do the screening say that screening third-country prospects is difficult because some countries lack criminal records, the records may be unreliable, or privacy laws limit access to data. GAO Report, September 2006.
The mercenary army should be on the short list of things alarming about the corrupt Bush Administration, right along with the pro-torture policy, the war for oil, signing statements, shredding of habeas corpus, domestic surveillance, and refusal to act on global warming. |
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Word UP
A common and natural result of an undue respect for law is that you may see a file of soldiers, colonel, captain, corporal, privates, powder-monkeys, and all marching in admirable order over hill and dale to the wars, against their wills, ay, against their common sense and consciences, which makes it very steep marching indeed, and produces a palpitation of the heart. They have no doubt that it is a damnable business in which they are concerned; they are all peaceably inclined. Now, what are they? Men at all? Or small movable forts and magazines, at the service of some unscrupulous man in power?
—Henry David Thoreau
The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.
—Henry A. Kissinger, advisor to George W. Bush, former Secretary of State, Nobel Peace Prize winner and war criminal
There are people in Washington . . . who never intend to withdraw military forces from Iraq and they’re looking for 10, 20, 50 years in the future . . . the reason that we went into Iraq was to establish a permanent military base in the Gulf region, and I have never heard any of our leaders say that they would commit themselves to the Iraqi people that 10 years from now there will be no military bases of the United States in Iraq.
—Former President Jimmy Carter, Feb. 3, 2006
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© 2007 Women Against Military Madness. All rights reserved.
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Complete June 2007 Index - click here
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