Could a Judge force our pullout ? We have been told that the mercenaries in Iraq number about equal in size to our own troops. By not letting this contract go forward will Bush have to get out ? It's possible.
A federal judge yesterday ordered the military to temporarily refrain from awarding the largest security contract in Iraq. The order followed an unusual series of events set off when a U.S. Army veteran filed a protest against the government practice of hiring what he calls mercenaries, according to sources familiar with the matter.
This article only mentions 20,000 mercs, but I believe we know that number to be much higher. Blackwater and Erinys Iraq, a British firm are now already out of the running on this one because the GAO dropped them from the running. WaPo link
Brian X. Scott, a 53-year-old Colorado man, filed the complaint in early April. He argues that the military's use of private security contractors is "against America's core values" and violates an 1893 law that prohibits the government from hiring quasi-military forces
Until now the GAO has said that the Anti-Pinkerton Act of 1892 did not apply because the mercs weren't being used as Strike breakers. From a article of last yr I found this reasoning.
GAO wrote that in 1978, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals interpreted the statute to mean that an organization was similar to the Pinkerton Detective Agency if it offered for hire the services of "mercenary, quasi-military forces as strikebreakers and armed guards."
The court declined to define the term "quasi-military forces," GAO noted in a 1978 memo to federal agency heads on the decision. But, GAO wrote, "it seems clear that a company which provides guard or protective services does not thereby become a 'quasi-military armed force.'"
In the recent cases, the protester proposed to define that term as "private sector contractors that are hired by the U.S. government to engage in or be prepared to engage in offensive or defensive combat." But GAO rejected that proposal as unrelated to any statutory or regulatory definition. link
Now it seems this Judge thinks otherwise. Sanity at last. This does not seem to put a end to all the Mercenaries contracts, but it could spell the beginning of the end or end up in the courts for yrs. Keep your fingers crossed on this one.