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Really good New York Times piece on WikiLeaked accounts of private security contractors. And while it’s not the main thrust of the piece, the following section shows how the murky legal rules and chain-of-command situation in Iraq worked to the contractors’ detriment as well as their benefit:
The threats were not limited to insurgents, the documents show: private security contractors repeatedly came under fire from Iraqi and coalition security forces, who often seemed unnerved by unmarked vehicles approaching at high speeds and fired warning shots, or worse. Even as the war dragged on, there seemed no universal method for the military to identify these quasi soldiers on the battlefield.
To cope, the contractors were reduced to waving reproductions of coalition flags from inside their vehicles, the documents show — but even that did not always work. After being shot at by an American military guard tower near Baiji in July 2005, contractors with Aegis first waved a British flag. When the shooting continued, the contractors, who said they were transporting a member of the American military at the time, held up an American flag instead. “THE TOWER KEPT SHOOTING,” a report said, although no one was injured in the episode.
This isn’t the whole story. I found a different document yesterday that showed one now-defunct contractor shot at Iraqi police for seemingly little reason. But it’s rare that we read about the sheer chaos that contractors face — probably because journalists like me tend to write more about the chaos that they take advantage of; and the structural issues that go into them winning more and more contracts…
Also, for perhaps the fairest piece you’ll ever read on Erik Prince, don’t miss Robert Young Pelton’s profile in Men’s Journal. (Unfortunately, I don’t have a link.)
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I’ve been trying to follow the Omar Khadr trial, pretty much without success. Apparently not much has been written about it since the defense attorney collapsed back in August, but I did run across one scrap, I think in a Canadian newspaper, that his trial was again rescheduled to open on 18 October. I’ve seen a couple of other comments-in-passing that the Pentagon was trying again to work out a plea deal with him. I suppose they are especially anxious not to have this trial going on during the weeks just before the election, but I’d really like to find some way to keep up on what’s happening. Google usually doesn’t return anything current. Any suggestions?
Yeah, well, like Cheney said about our US military, they’re volunteers. And contractors get paid a lot and have swell death benefits, too, so there’s that.
This is the stupidest way any empire (every empire?) fights its wars at the end. Thanks, Dick Cheney, for this wonderful outsourcing idea. You so rock.
Thanks Spencer – much appreciated.
Private security contractors=Mercenaries. It is so sad that these highly paid gunmen get so little love. I am sure the Mercs will soon demand military veteran’s benefits for their invaluable service. They have done a great job over the last ten years, great at murder, rape and pillage.
Poor contractors. Well, as they might say, no guts, no glory.
Meanwhile, the same NYT article you cite makes the main point:
I must admit it’s difficult for me to identify with the problems of the contractors, there to make big bucks off an illegal war, with the U.S. allied to horrific killers and torturers.
Talk about your clusterfucks…
“the U.S. allied to horrific killers and torturers.” Is this something new?
Spencer, you are quite generous to give them this moment. Otherwise, well, I guess I don’t have much sympathy.
Remember the flak Kos got for calling the Blackwater guys mercenaries?
Acharn, follow Carol Rosenberg of the Miami Herald/McClatchy and/or Michelle Shephard of the Toronto Star. See also the ACLU.
The DoD and the WH have been talking to themselves and think they have a plea deal Omar should accept. Omar’s Canadian lawyer Dennis Edney, who has no standing before the commission but who is the only lawyer present that Omar trusts, has said today that it’s not certain that Omar will accept the deal, so we’ll just have to wait until tomorrow to see.
Whichever way it goes, it will be an outrage.
Of everything valuable one might write about the U.S. wars of aggression, this seems like the strangest topic to select.
Book Salon Up with Ted Rall’s The Anti-American Manifesto hosted by David Axe
I don’t understand how there were no injuries with all of the US military shooting at the trucks. Are the mercenaries betters shots? They seem to kill a lot more people than the soldiers did on that case. Anyway, it seems to me that the real reason they are there is to see to it that they become acceptable to the general US public as legitimate. Eventually, as in NO and San Diego, they will become the paramilitaries ala Colombia. Instead of being handcuffed as Tony Hopfinger was in AK, he would be shot or tasered by the ‘security guard,’ and, as in Iraq and Afghanistan, the US legal system would not have the standing to prosecute or would dismiss the case as unproveable.
As someone who believes our wars, if we must fight them, must be fought by a conscripted force and certainly not mercenaries, I must ask: are we supposed to feel SORRY for these soldiers-for-hire? The chaos was largely enabled by their employers, and by their contracting entity the DoD, or other darker armies.
What’s the point of this post, exactly?
Chaos for contractors, too? I thought they thrived on chaos and sought it out as a business model!
If the meme is correct that more Republicans than Democrats serve in the regular active-duty U.S. duty, then more Republicans than Democrats are probably private contractor mercenaries (except for the foreign mercs), and more Republicans than Democrats (regular military and mercs) are dying overseas in Bush-initiated for-profit wars…
…which must mean that of those returning home from overseas, more Republicans than Democrats are homeless veterans, more Republicans than Democrats are returning home injured, more Republicans than Democrats are suffering from PTSD and more Republicans than Democrats are committing suicide in record-breaking numbers.
I believe this is all part of the Republicans’ “support the troops” policies and right-wing agenda for our country.
Analysis of federal law and USSC precedent reveals Julian Assange not guilty of espionage or treason (18 USC 2388)
Also, has it occurred to anyone that fighting a war using contractors means they might abandon you when they get a better offer from the other side?
The plights of mercenaries and their victims illustrate why we have evolved laws and customs of war. The established usages–ultimata, formal declarations of war, uniforms, treatment of prisoners, respect for civilians and their property, military police–weren’t invented out of some touchy-feely do-gooderism. They were harshly practical. Without them, you have chaos. Without them, violence stops being a means to an end and starts being an end in itself. The officers lose control and you have a mob instead of an army. You lose battles and suffer heavy losses.
We have been trying to buck a couple of hundred years of military history in order to make the Soldier-of-Fortune fantasies of chickenhawk politicians and their cronies come true. Opportunists like the Prince guy (Blackwater Xe) and Viktor Bout have been allowed to make billions off the madness.
The resulting “system” is neither militarily effective nor cheap nor honest. An acwquaintance of ours was dating a 50-something guy with no known military skills who signed up with a “Contractor”. He wasassured that he would be getting $100K for 6 months and would be doing no more than driving a package delivery van between US offices in Kuwait. Once he got in-country and surrendered his passport and return ticket, he was given a flack jacket and a gun and told that he’d be driving gasoline tankers to Falluja. He was threatened when he refused, but was at least smart enough to continue refusing until they sent him home. Was he dumb? Yes. Greedy and unscrupulous? Sure. Capable of crimes against humanity? Possibly, I suppose. But deserving of how he was treated? Not at all.
The bulk of the mercenaries aren’t plug-headed, crewcut Republicans or even sad-sack truck drivers with Walter-Mitty complexes. They are Nepalis, South Africans, Sri Lankans, Fijians, and the flotsam left by the Soviet collapse. They are desperately poor, have criminal records, or suffer from personality disorders. To sign up, they often have to break their own nations’ laws. They are likely to be cheated. They will be discarded without a thought if they are captured or injured. They are certainly not told that, under the law of nations, they have no rights except the chance to be tried and shot if captured (as at least one American found out in Angola some years back, during one of Kissinger’s “deniable” adventures).
So what is to be gained by recruiting poor-quality soldiers of dubious loyalty at high cost? The gain is political. Politicians can fight their wars deniably, without the constituent body baggage. The mercenary thugs are no angels. But they aren’t the major criminals.