Outsourcing the War

Outsourcing the War

by JEREMY SCAHILL

[posted online on May 11, 2007]

Editor's Note: Jeremy Scahill, bestselling author and investigative reporter for The Nation, testified May 10 before the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense on the impact of private military contractors on the conduct of the Iraq War. This is the full text of his remarks.

My name is Jeremy Scahill. I have submitted my full remarks and request they be entered into the record. I am an investigative reporter for The Nation magazine and the author of the book Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army. I have spent the better part of the past two and a half years researching privatized warfare. I have interviewed scores of sources, filed many Freedom of Information Act requests, obtained government contracts and private company documents of firms operating in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.

As this Committee is well aware, we are now in the midst of the most privatized war in the history of our country. This is hardly a new phenomenon, but it is one that has greatly accelerated since the launch of the "global war on terror" and the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Many Americans are under the impression that the US currently has about 145,000 active duty troops on the ground in Iraq. What is seldom mentioned is the fact that there are at least 126,000 private personnel deployed alongside the official armed forces. These private forces effectively double the size of the occupation force, largely without the knowledge of the US taxpayers that foot the bill.

But despite the similarity in size of these respective forces in Iraq, there are key differences with the way our government approaches the active-duty military and these private war contractors. For instance, we know that nearly 3,400 US soldiers have been killed in Iraq and more than 25,000 wounded. We do not know the exact number of private contractors killed or wounded. Through the US Department of Labor, we have been able to determine that at least 770 contractors had been killed in Iraq as of December 2006 along with at least 7,700 wounded. These casualties are not included in the official death count and help to mask the human costs of the war. More disturbing is what this means for our democracy: at a time when the administration seems unwilling to subject its war strategy to oversight by the Congress, we face the widespread use of private forces seemingly accountable to no effective system of oversight or law.

While tens of thousands of these contractors provide logistical support, thousands are heavily armed private soldiers roaming Iraq. We do know that there are some 48,000 employees of private military companies in Iraq alone.

These forces work for US companies like Blackwater, Triple Canopy and DynCorp as well as companies from across the globe. Some contractors make in a month what many active-duty soldiers make in a year. Indeed, there are private contractors in Iraq making more money than the Secretary of Defense and more than the commanding generals. The testimony about private contractors that I hear most often from active duty soldiers falls into two categories: resentment and envy.

They ask what message their country is sending them. While many soldiers lack basic protective equipment--facts well-known to this committee--they are in a war zone where they see the private soldiers whiz by in better vehicles, with better armor, better weapons, wearing the corporate logo instead of the American flag and pulling in much more money. They ask: Are our lives worth less?

Of course, there are many cases where war contractors have hoarded the profits at the top and money has not filtered down to the individual contractors on the ground or the armor to protect them.

The second reaction is that the active-duty soldiers see the "rock star" private contractors and they want to be like them. So we have a phenomenon of soldiers leaving active duty to join the private sector.

There is slang in Iraq now for this jump. It is called "Going Blackwater." To put it bluntly, these private forces create a system where national duty is outbid by profits. And yet these forces are being used for mission-critical activities. Indeed, in January Gen. David Petraeus admitted that on his last tour in Iraq, he himself was protected not by the active-duty military but by private "contract security."

Just as there is a double standard in pay, there is a double standard in the application of the law. Soldiers who commit crimes or acts of misconduct are prosecuted under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. There have been some 64 courts martial on murder-related charges in Iraq alone. Compare that to the lack of prosecution of contractors. Despite the fact that tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, have streamed in and out of Iraq since March of 2003, only two private contractors have faced any criminal prosecution. Two. One was a KBR employee alleged to have stabbed a co-worker, the other pleaded guilty to possession of child pornography images on his computer at Abu Ghraib prison. In four years, there have been no prosecutions for crimes against Iraqis and not a single known prosecution of an armed contractor.

That either means we have tens of thousands of Boy Scouts working as armed contractors or something is fundamentally wrong with the system. Brig. Gen. Karl Horst of the 3rd Infantry Division became so outraged by contractor unaccountability that he began tracking contractor violence in Baghdad. In just two months he documented twelve cases of contractors shooting at civilians, resulting in six deaths and three injuries. That is just two months and one general.

They have not been prosecuted under the UCMJ, under US civilian law or under Iraqi law. US contractors in Iraq reportedly have their own motto: "What happens here today, stays here today." That should be chilling to everyone who believes that warfare, above all government functions, must be subject to transparency, accountability and the rule of law.

These are forces operating in the name of the United States of America. Iraqis do not see contractors as separate from soldiers--understandably, they see them all as "the occupation." Contractor misconduct is viewed as American misconduct.

While there is currently a debate in Congress about how to hold these private forces accountable, the political will to act remains shockingly absent.

Given the vast size of this private force, spread across the most dangerous war zone in the world, it is not at all clear how effective oversight would work. We already know that auditors cannot visit many reconstruction sites because of security concerns. Journalists are locked in the Green Zone. The army is stretched to the max. So what entity then is supposed to have the capacity or ability to oversee the men who have been brought to Iraq to go where no one else will?

Members of Congress tell me they have been stonewalled in their attempts to gain detailed information about the activities of these companies. I think it is a disturbing commentary that I have received phone calls from several Congress members asking me for government documents on war contractors and not the other way around.

In the current discussion in the Congress on this issue, what is seldom discussed is how this system, the privatization of war, has both encouraged and enabled the growth and creation of companies who have benefited and stand to gain even more from an escalation of the war.

In closing, while I think this Congress needs to take urgent action on issues of oversight, accountability and transparency of these private forces operating with our tax dollars and in the name of the United States, there is a deeper issue that often gets overlooked. This war contracting system has intimately linked corporate profits to an escalation of war and conflict. These companies have no incentive to decrease their footprint in the war zone and every incentive to increase it.

As the country debates current and future Iraq policy, Congress owes it to the public to take down the curtain of secrecy surrounding these shadow forces that often act in the name and on the payroll of the people of this country. Thank you for your time. I am prepared to answer any questions.

http://www.thenation.com/docprint.mhtml?i=20070528&s=scahill

 

too bad we cant use our tax money to pay our soldiers more rather than giving lucrative contracts to blackwater.

 

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0401-14.htm

Published on Thursday, April 1, 2004 by The Village Voice
U.S. Turns to Mercenaries
by James Ridgeway


WASHINGTON — The four "civilians" killed, burned, and dragged through the streets of Fallujah, Iraq, on Wednesday morning weren’t really civilians. Or were they? They were employees of Blackwater Security Consulting, a rural North Carolina subsidiary of Blackwater USA, one of several dozen firms taking over the duties of the regular American military in Iraq, protecting buildings and grounds as well as officials.

In fact, Blackwater itself is in charge of protecting L. Paul "Jerry" Bremer, the U.S. official who now runs Iraq as head of the Coalition Provisional Authority. In the coming weeks, hundreds of American civilian workers who really are civilians will be entering Iraq to work on private contracts let by the Bush government. Their security will be provided by guards (like the Blackwater men killed yesterday) from a variety of security firms, often consisting of former U.S. military special ops people.

The use of private military forces raises tricky questions for the U.S. government. The most important one is why is the Bush administration is recruiting civilians to work there when our government can't possibly guarantee the security of the area. Another question: Why aren't these jobs in combat zones being carried out by American military forces, instead of mercenaries?

Building up a surrogate military force, along the lines of the French Foreign Legion or the Gurkhas, has been the ambition of conservatives for many years. The thinking is that future wars will be characterized by "low-intensity," or guerrilla, warfare. If the fighting is done by a force of irregular surrogates, people won't question their casualties as they would those of regular military personnel. The contras in Nicaragua were an example of what a surrogate fighting force might look like, and special ops types from South Africa’s former apartheid regime have long been involved in fighting in southern Africa.

The latest incident involving one of these relatively new mercenary companies occurred in Haiti. There the Steele Foundation, a private security firm based in California, was protecting the palace when Jean-Bertrand Aristide was summarily rushed to the airport at Port-au-Prince and onto a mysterious plane that took off with no listed destination—raising the inevitable question of their involvement with American intelligence. According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, Aristide feared that the Steele people would abandon their jobs and leave him to be killed by the rebels. Subsequent press reports noted that an extra detail of Steele people requested by Aristide for added protection were blocked by American officials from leaving California for Haiti.

In Iraq, Blackwater provides security not only for Bremer but also for food shipments in the turbulent Fallujah area.

The private security firms working in Iraq see big salaries as well as plenty of potential danger. Often, they have been seen in military garb but without the insignias that would formally designate them as U.S. military. This situation raises the question of whether or not they can be treated as soldiers under the Geneva conventions—whether they are provided those protections—or whether as irregulars they will get dealt with as spies.

Providing mercenaries is a popular and growing business in part because their use in places like Iraq presumably would release regular military personnel for other work—or allow them to go back to the U.S.

Blackwater USA’s other subsidiaries are Blackwater Training Center, Blackwater Target Systems, Blackwater Canine, and Blackwater Air. The company proclaims: "We have established a global presence and provide training and tactical solutions for the 21st century," adding, "Our clients include federal law enforcement agencies, the Department of Defense, Department of State, and Department of Transportation, local and state entities from around the country, multinational corporations and friendly nations from all over the globe."