The Saudis still haven't answered for 9/11. Mercenaries in Iraq: Soldiers And Fortune
Who's the United States' major ally today in Iraq?
Hint: it may not be part of the "Coalition of the Willing." You might instead label them the "Brotherhood of the Extremely Well Paid": mercenaries working for private security firms in Iraq. Estimates of their number run from 5,000 to 15,000.
And while no one really knows how many there are, thousands more are due to join them.
At this extremely critical time, when ill-conceived military action can degenerate into disastrous religious outbursts, who is calling the shots? That question is only now beginning to draw some attention.
For instance, two of the most violent actions in recent days in Iraq were not what we thought they were. A bloody attack by hundreds of Iraqi militia on the U.S. government's headquarters in Najaf last week was defeated not by valiant U.S. soldiers—as the press first was led to believe—but by eight mercenaries from a private American security firm.
According to The Washington Post, that company, Blackwater Security Consulting, even called in its own helicopter to rescue a wounded Marine and re-supply its own men when the U.S. Army failed to show up.
And those four "contractors" who were torn apart in Fallujah a few days earlier? Not hapless civilians, it now appears—they were also hired American mercenaries, also working for Blackwater Security. It currently has some 450 guards working in Iraq, and it is only one of many—which makes Blackwater alone larger than many of the national contingents that comprise the Coalition.
[Note: the mercenaries killed in Fallujah were protecting U.S. missionaries establishing a food distribution center as a part of their goal of converting Muslims to Christianity.]
The mercenaries range from South Africans and Philipinos to Iraqis, Indians and Chileans to former U.S. Navy SEALs and Special Forces—carrying out what, in effect, are military services in Iraq, at salaries many times higher than those of the most skilled U.S. soldiers.
It's the United States that, either directly or indirectly, is picking up the tab for most of these mercenaries, but not all. The Japanese, for instance, also have their own private security contractor.
But who is giving the orders?
Under whose military control are those thousands of fighting men? Who tells them when to attack? When to retreat? When to avoid battle? What happens to those private armies after June 30, 2004, when sovereignty is—in theory, at least—transferred to the Iraqi people?
In a firefight, how on earth do Iraqis distinguish between actions of "private civilian contractors" and the U.S. military?
It's an Enron accountant's wet dream: private contractors taking over so much of what used to be considered military duty. How does Congress figure out, not only what the war in Iraq really costs, but what the real troop levels are? Another convenience for the Bush White House is that those contract casualties—and there have been many—are not included in the official military count.
One such private contractor—we'll call him Jerry—just recently returned from a stint in Iraq. He was paid $174,000 a year, he said, more than four times the officer's salary he was pulling down after 27 years with the military. But he was just one small part of the food chain of private contractors who are making billions of dollars a year in Iraq, supporting the Coalition military.
Jerry was hired by a private security company in Louisiana to provide protection for another private company, U.S.A. Environmental, which has been contracted by the Army Corps of Engineers to get rid of captured Iraqi military supplies at a place called Taji, the largest ammunition dump in Iraq. It's a dangerous place, and to do their job in Iraq, the folks at U.S.A. Environmental have to be protected. That's where the company that hired Jerry and scores of other former troops like him comes in.
But they aren't the only ones. Another of the companies supplying security guards was set up by a former Iraqi army colonel, also cashing in on the Coalition bonanza. He's hired 240 Iraqis, all former soldiers, to help patrol the huge ammunition dump. "Each of them makes $300 a month," says Jerry. "If they got paid $60 a month before they were lucky."
According to Jerry, all those former Iraqi soldiers are well vetted before being hired. How difficult would it be to infiltrate them? That's another question.
Now, normally one would think that the U.S. military would take care of destroying captured weapons and providing security for the demolition experts, just as they would normally handle security for an important official like Paul Bremmer. But not in this Brave New Military World: Bremmer has his own private security force: five former SEALs and one Marine.
By turning such messy tasks over to outsiders—at three or four times the normal military salary—soliders are supposedly freed up to do the real business of fighting. Such humdrum tasks as vehicle maintenance are also contracted out to another private firm; catering and laundry, of course, are handled by Halliburton.
And why shouldn't contractors be used? Well, one reason, Jerry claims, is that the people running his security company really knew nothing about security.
"The first week we got there, I said I'd like to see the Security Plan, and your standard operating procedures. They didn't know what I was talking about. They had non-Special Forces guys running security operations. One of our superiors was an Air Force captain in logistics, another, a guy who had worked in tanks. It was ridiculous, the blind leading the blind. They didn't understand anything."
According to Jerry, although the company made big bucks for its contract, it skimped on vital equipment, "We were out every night patrolling with no night-vision devices. You couldn't see a thing. The machine guns they gave us were much too big. I had to shell out $2,400 for my own body armor. We were always short on ammunition. And we were coming under fire every night." Finally, despite the fancy pay, Jerry quit. Several others have also left recently, he says.
What kind of rules of engagement did they have?
"We had a letter of agreement with the military. If a soldier suspects something, he can move in. If a private contractor suspects something, we have to tell the military. We're only to return fire if first fired upon," Jerry said.
That kind of loose control may work for mercenaries protecting a diamond-mining company in Sierra Leone. But how are those rules of engagement enforced in Iraq? By whom?
Indeed, we discover from the Post's account that "The Defense Department often does not have a clear handle on the daily actions of security contractors because the contractors work directly for the coalition authorities, which coordinates and communicates on a limited basis through the normal military chain of command."
And few of the hired guards are grizzled veterans. According to Jerry, another major contractor also provided security at his location. Many of his employees, he says, lacked the right kind of experience: "Navy SEALs and former Marines, a bunch of hot rodders, wild cowboys, all they want to do is kill people. They had their machine-gun mentality. A little too young, a little too green. Not enough combat experience in my opinion. They had launched bullets, but never had bullets coming back at them."
Last week, seven powerful U.S. senators, including Ted Kenney and Hillary Clinton, sent a letter to Donald Rumsfeld asking some pretty basic questions about those private companies, including how big their combined army really is.
"It would be a dangerous precedent," they wrote, "if the United States allowed the presence of private armies operating outside the control of governmental authority and beholden only to those who pay them."
Amen.
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