Today's Washington Post has an important article about the private military contractors in Iraq, but it only tells part of the story. Here's what the Post says:
Private security companies, funded by billions of dollars in U.S. military and State Department contracts, are fighting insurgents on a widening scale in Iraq, enduring daily attacks, returning fire and taking hundreds of casualties that have been underreported and sometimes concealed, according to U.S. and Iraqi officials and company representatives.
While the military has built up troops in an ongoing campaign to secure Baghdad, the security companies, out of public view, have been engaged in a parallel surge, boosting manpower, adding expensive armor and stepping up evasive action as attacks increase, the officials and company representatives said. One in seven supply convoys protected by private forces has come under attack this year, according to previously unreleased statistics; one security company reported nearly 300 "hostile actions" in the first four months.
The majority of the more than 100 security companies operate outside of Iraqi law, in part because of bureaucratic delays and corruption in the Iraqi government licensing process, according to U.S. officials. Blackwater USA, a prominent North Carolina firm that protects U.S. Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker, and several other companies have not applied, U.S. and Iraqi officials said. Blackwater said that it obtained a one-year license in 2005 but that shifting Iraqi government policy has impeded its attempts to renew.
Billions of our tax dollars given to private companies operating outside the law? How very Bush Administration. I'm sure they wish they could do that with all aspects of government. They're certainly trying.
As Gwen Ifill pointed out, on PBS, in February of this year, the number of such private contractors is thought to exceed 100,000. In the same article, Robert Young Pelton describes these forces as:
Absolutely unaccountable to anyone.
As the Washington Post reported, last November:
Critics say that because of legal loopholes, flaws in the contracting process, a lack of interest from Congress and uneven oversight by investigative agencies, errant contractors have faced few sanctions for their work in Iraq.
And the inspector general's office credited with doing the most to root out waste and fraud is scheduled to go out of business by next October.
Senators from both parties said yesterday they would push to extend the work of the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, which has uncovered such problems as shoddy construction and bribery schemes
And the results are what you'd expect. Let's just say that these private contractors aren't merely making supply runs. As Peter Singer of the Guardian reported, as the torture scandals broke, in 2004:
Among the most stunning decisions taken is the handover of the interrogation of prisoners of war to private firms. Employees from the firms Caci and Titan now reportedly fill such roles as interrogators and translators. The work can be quite lucrative. Titan just won a $172m deal to supply "analytical support" for US military operations; its employees can make over $100,000 a year.
The lack of rules and regulations for the industry has serious ramifications. A US army investigation found behaviour that went well beyond accepted interrogation tactics, including making prisoners perform simulated sex acts and putting glowsticks in bodily orifices. The perpetrators even took over 60 pictures, including the infamous shot of an Iraqi prisoner standing on a box with his head covered and wires attached to his hands. He was told if he fell off the box he would be electrocuted. One civilian contractor is accused of raping a young man.
And when they're not so engaged winning the hearts and minds of imprisoned Iraqis, they're doing the same to the general Iraqi public. As the News & Observer reported, in March 2006:
Security contractors supporting the U.S. effort in Iraq regularly shoot into civilian cars with little accountability, according to a News & Observer analysis of more than 400 reports contractors filed with the government.
In the documents, which cover nine months of the three-year-old war, contractors reported shooting into 61 vehicles they believed were threatening them. In just seven cases were Iraqis clearly attacking -- showing guns, shooting at contractors or detonating explosives.
There was no way to tell how many civilians were hurt, or how many were innocent: In most cases, the contractors drove away. No contractors have been prosecuted for a mistaken shooting in Iraq.
And that was before the 2007 escalation. It's probably a safe bet that things haven't improved, since.
As Jeremy Scahill wrote, in Salon:
The 145,000 active-duty U.S. forces are nearly matched by occupation personnel that currently come from companies like Blackwater USA and the former Halliburton subsidiary KBR, which enjoy close personal and political ties with the Bush administration. Until Congress reins in these massive corporate forces and the whopping federal funding that goes into their coffers, partially withdrawing U.S. troops may only set the stage for the increased use of private military companies (and their rent-a-guns) that stand to profit from any kind of privatized future "surge" in Iraq.
From the beginning, these contractors have been a major hidden story of the war, almost uncovered in the mainstream media and absolutely central to maintaining the U.S. occupation of Iraq. While many of them perform logistical support activities for American troops, including the sort of laundry, fuel and mail delivery and food-preparation work that once was performed by soldiers, tens of thousands of them are directly engaged in military and combat activities. According to the Government Accountability Office, there are now some 48,000 employees of private military companies in Iraq. These not-quite GI Joes, working for Blackwater and other major U.S. firms, can clear in a month what some active-duty soldiers make in a year. "We got 126,000 contractors over there, some of them making more than the secretary of defense," said House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee chairman John Murtha. "How in the hell do you justify that?"
House Oversight and Government Reform Committee chairman Rep. Henry Waxman estimates that $4 billion in taxpayer money has so far been spent in Iraq on these armed "security" companies like Blackwater -- with tens of billions more going to other war companies like KBR and Fluor for "logistical" support. Rep. Jan Schakowsky of the House Intelligence Committee believes that up to 40 cents of every dollar spent on the occupation has gone to war contractors.
In June 2005, the Washington Post reported that defense contractors, overall, owe more than $3 billion in back taxes! And for the amount of defense related fraud and overbilling, just check the CorpWatch War & Disaster Profiteering page.
In March of this year, Senator Patrick Leahy proposed the War Profiteering Prevention Act of 2007 (S. 119). Few pieces of legislation should be higher priorities. Let your Senators and Congressional representatives know. Also let them know that our government should not be financing private military contractors who work outside the law.