Page 2 of
2 All power to US's
shadow army in Iraq By Jeremy
Scahill
charge whatever they want
with impunity. There's no accountability as to how
many people they have, as to what their activities
are."
Until now, this situation has
largely been the doing of a Republican-controlled
Congress and White House. No longer.
While
some congressional Democrats have publicly
expressed grave concerns about the widespread use
of these private forces
and a
handful have called for their withdrawal, the
party leadership has done almost nothing to stop,
or even curb, the use of mercenary corporations in
Iraq. As it stands, the Bush administration and
the industry have little to fear from Congress on
this score, despite the unseating of the
Republican majority.
On two central
fronts, accountability and funding, the Democrats'
approach has been severely flawed, playing into
the agendas of both the White House and the war
contractors. Some Democrats, for instance, are
pushing accountability legislation that would
actually require more US personnel to deploy to
Iraq as part of a Federal Bureau of Investigation
(FBI) Baghdad "Theater Investigative Unit" that
would supposedly monitor and investigate
contractor conduct. The idea is: FBI investigators
would run around Iraq, gather evidence and
interview witnesses, leading to indictments and
prosecutions in US civilian courts.
This
is a plan almost certain to backfire, if ever
instituted. It raises a slew of questions: Who
would protect the investigators? How would Iraqi
victims be interviewed? How would evidence be
gathered amid the chaos and dangers of Iraq? Given
that the US government and military seem unable -
or unwilling - even to count how many contractors
are actually in Iraq, how could their activities
possibly be monitored?
In light of the
recent Bush administration scandal over the eight
fired federal prosecutors, serious questions
remain about the integrity of the Justice
Department. How could people have any faith that
real crimes in Iraq committed by the employees of
immensely well-connected crony corporations like
Blackwater and Halliburton would be investigated
adequately?
Apart from the fact that it
would be impossible to effectively monitor 126,000
or more private contractors under the best of
conditions in the world's most dangerous war zone,
this legislation would give the industry a
tremendous public relations victory. Once it was
passed as the law of the land, the companies could
finally claim that a legally accountable structure
governed their operations. Yet they would be well
aware that such legislation would be nearly
impossible to enforce.
Not surprisingly,
then, the mercenary trade group with the Orwellian
name of the International Peace Operations
Association (IPOA) has pushed for just this
Democratic-sponsored approach rather than the
military court-martial system favored by
conservative Republican Senator Lindsey Graham.
The IPOA called the expansion of the Military
Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act - in essence the
Democrats' oversight plan - "the most cogent
approach to ensuring greater contractor
accountability in the battle space". That
endorsement alone should be reason enough to pause
and reconsider.
Then there is the issue of
continued funding for the privatized shadow forces
in Iraq. As originally passed in the House, the
Democrats' Iraq plan would have cut only about 15%
or $815 million of the supplemental spending
earmarked for day-to-day military operations "to
reflect savings attributable to efficiencies and
management improvements in the funding of
contracts in the military departments".
As
it stood, this was a stunningly insufficient plan,
given ongoing events in Iraq. But even that mild
provision was dropped by the Democrats in late
April. Their excuse was the need to hold more
hearings on the contractor issue. Instead, they
moved to withhold - not cut - 15% of total
day-to-day operational funding, but only until
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates submits a report
on the use of contractors and the scope of their
deployment. Once the report is submitted, the 15%
would be unlocked. In essence this means that
under the Democrat plan, the mercenary forces will
simply be able to continue business as usual and
profits as usual in Iraq.
However
obfuscated by discussions of accountability,
fiscal responsibility and oversight, the gorilla
of a question in the congressional war room is:
Should the administration be allowed to use
mercenary forces, whose livelihoods depend on war
and conflict, to help fight its battles in Iraq?
Congressman Murtha has said, "We're trying
to bring accountability to an unaccountable war."
But it's not accountability that the war needs; it
needs an end.
By sanctioning the
administration's continuing use of mercenary
corporations - instead of cutting off all funding
to them - the Democrats leave the door open for a
future escalation of the shadow war in Iraq. This,
in turn, could pave the way for an array of
secretive, politically well-connected firms that
have profited tremendously under the current
administration to elevate their status and
increase their government paychecks.
Blackwater's war Consider the
case of Blackwater USA. A decade ago, the company
barely existed; and yet its "diplomatic security"
contracts since mid-2004, with the State
Department alone, total more than $750 million.
Today, Blackwater has become nothing short
of the Bush administration's well-paid Praetorian
Guard. It protects the US ambassador and other
senior officials in Iraq as well as visiting
congressional delegations; it trains Afghan
security forces and was deployed in the oil-rich
Caspian Sea region, setting up a "command and
control" center just kilometers from the Iranian
border.
The company was also hired to
protect Federal Emergency Management Agency
operations and facilities in New Orleans,
Louisiana, after Hurricane Katrina, where it raked
in $240,000 a day from the American taxpayer,
billing $950 a day per Blackwater contractor.
Since September 11, 2001, the company has
invested its lucrative government payouts in
building an impressive private army. At present,
it has forces deployed in nine countries and
boasts a database of 21,000 additional troops at
the ready, a fleet of more than 20 aircraft,
including helicopter gunships and the world's
largest private military facility - a
2,800-hectare compound near the Great Dismal Swamp
of North Carolina.
It recently opened a
new facility in Illinois ("Blackwater North") and
is fighting local opposition to a third planned
domestic facility near San Diego ("Blackwater
West") by the Mexican border. It is also
manufacturing an armored vehicle (nicknamed the
"Grizzly") and surveillance blimps.
The
man behind this empire is Erik Prince, a
secretive, conservative Christian, ex-navy
special-force multimillionaire who bankrolls Bush
and his allies with major campaign contributions.
Among Blackwater's senior executives are Cofer
Black, former head of counter-terrorism at the
Central Intelligence Agency; Robert Richer, former
deputy director of operations at the CIA; Joseph
Schmitz, former Pentagon inspector general; and an
impressive array of other retired military and
intelligence officials. Company executives
recently announced the creation of a new private
intelligence company, "Total Intelligence", to be
headed by Black and Richer.
For years,
Blackwater's operations have been shrouded in
secrecy. Emboldened by the culture of impunity
enjoyed by the private sector in the Bush
administration's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan,
Blackwater's founder has talked of creating a
"contractor brigade" to support US military
operations and fancies his forces the "FedEx" of
the "national-security apparatus".
As the
country debates an Iraq withdrawal, Congress owes
it to the US public to take down the curtain of
secrecy surrounding these shadow forces that
undergird the US public deployment in Iraq. Bush
likes to say that de-funding the war would
undercut the troops. Here's the truth of the
matter: continued funding of the Iraq war ensures
tremendous profits for politically connected war
contractors. If Congress is serious about ending
the occupation, it needs to rein in the
unaccountable companies that make it possible and
only stand to profit from its escalation.
Jeremy Scahill is the author of
the New York Times best-seller Blackwater: The
Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army.
He is currently a Puffin Foundation writing
fellow at the Nation Institute.
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