…Before Rumsfeld resigned he took the extraordinary step of classifying private contractors as an official part of the U.S. war machine…This formal designation represented a major triumph for war contractors--conferring on them a legitimacy they had never before enjoyed.

Contractors have provided the Bush Administration with political cover, allowing the government to deploy private forces in a war zone free of public scrutiny, with the deaths, injuries and crimes of those forces shrouded in secrecy. The Administration and GOP-controlled Congress in turn have shielded the contractors from accountability, oversight, and legal constraints…

…Blackwater was founded in 1996 by conservative Christian multimillionaire and ex-Navy SEAL Erik Prince--the scion of a wealthy Michigan family whose generous political donations helped fuel the rise of the religious right and the Republican Revolution of 1994. At its founding…its vision was to "fulfill the anticipated demand for government outsourcing of firearms and related security training…
--"Bush's Shadow Army," Jeremy Scahill, The Nation, April 2, 2007 issue

Blackwater's team was in a hurry to take over the contract to escort kitchen supplies to a U.S. military base near Fallujah from a British security company. The British company offered to have the Blackwater guys ride along with them to get to know the general routes and threats, but (the boss and his team) was "way too busy." Blackwater also didn't provide the men with any maps…They…lacked the coordinates for their final destinations. …

It is telling that this watershed moment involved American employees of a private security contractor. Of all the changes in tactics that have made the war in Iraq distinct from prior U.S. engagements, perhaps no shift is as profound as the massive hiring--and varied deployment--of private contractors in combat zones. There are an estimated 100,000 private contractors in Iraq…bodyguards for VIP's, snipers in the field, translators, and interrogators. They man checkpoints at Army bases and run supply convoys through the streets of Iraq…the emergence of guns for hire was not part of the original plan.
--"Outsourcing War. Four families want to know how their men, all guns for hire, died in Iraq," Brian Bennett, Time Magzine, March 16, 2007 issue.


I am very familiar with Blackwater Bridge. There is a framed photo of it in my son's room. He and his fellow Texan Marines from the Dark Horse unit, who wrestled the bridge from the control of insurgents in retaliation for the murders of the four Blackwater contractors during the vicious, bloody, and prolonged Battle of Fallujah in November, 2004, posed in front of the bridge in full combat gear, clutching a Texas flag sent to him by a friend of mine.

More than 150 Marines and Army troops died in that battle, many more were scarred for life. 

At the time of the original Blackwater incident the previous March, and during the initial, aborted battle for the insurgent-infested city, the one that was called off in April of that year, more men had been lost.  My nephew was deployed to Iraq at the time, and lost men from his own unit.

The way I see it, all these men died because Blackwater was greedy to get a few more million dollars in yet another contract, on top of the well over $300 million it had already lapped up from the overflowing cup of the Bush administration's war-pirating crowd.

I know, I know. My son would be angry if he heard me say that.

He would point out that Fallujah was a hotbed of insurgent activity, that in fact, they had completely taken over the city and were conducting operations against Americans with impunity. I understand military strategy and tactics, but there is no denying two fine points: (one) the Blackwater incident set off a firestorm in Iraq, not just in Fallujah, but all over the country, and (two), Fallujah is almost as bad now as it was in November of '04, but that's another post.

It's a dirty little secret of this war that in Donald Rumsfeld's so-called desire to streamline the Pentagon bureaucracy and downsize the military and fight a swift and lean war--he and his GOP cronies did that by doling out massive, enormous no-bid contracts to companies strongly in the Republican pocket, and that never before in the history of this country has the United States government, basically, hired mercenaries to fight a war alongside American troops.

Didn't just hire them. Wrote it into law that they were part of the "Total Force" of American military might, so that now, when contractors are being challenged in court, they actually have the unmitigated gall to claim that, hey, you can't sue us, WE'RE THE GOVERNMENT.

And now we learn that way back in 1996, when the company was founded, there was an anticipation of greatly expanded wartime use. Millions were donated to Republican candidates. The Republicans took over the White House and Congress. And we went to war in Iraq. And we immediately doled out hundreds of millions of dollars in no-bid contracts to those same companies…So what came first? The chicken or the egg?

I can tell you this--the troops have got no respect for those contractors. One of the men who was killed in Fallujah was deployed to Iraq for TWO MONTHS and was due to take home $36,000 for that two months.

Do you know what my son, the combat Marine, made in two horrific months of fighting in Fallujah triggered by the death of that contractor? Less than $4500.   That's gross--in every sense of the word.

The thing is, this "shadow army" that Jeremy Scahill writes so chillingly about has, under the Republican umbrella, worked for four years, raking in hundreds of millions of tax dollars, WITH ABSOLUTELY NO ACCOUNTABILITY OR OVERSIGHT FOR HOW THOSE DOLLARS HAVE BEEN SPENT.

I read of one case in which a respected West Point professor, a Colonel serving in Iraq, killed himself. His suicide note claimed that he had seen contractors commit all sorts of crimes and that the Army officers who would have never permitted such travesties by soldiers and Marines, looked the other way.

"This is not honorable," he wrote in anguish to his family, before taking his service revolver and shooting himself.

When Dustin and his buddies fought in Fallujah, they did not have proper body armor, proper rifles with decent scopes, or up-armored vehicles. They had to watch the rich contractors drive around with all those things and a fat paycheck to boot.

And if that were the extent of it, that would be bad enough. But the no-bid war-pirates have not stopped there.

I presume you've heard of Walter Reed?


The scandal over treatment of outpatients at Walter Reed Army Medical Center has focused attention on the Army's decision to privatize the facilities support workforce at the hospital, a move commanders say left the building maintenance staff undermanned.

Some Democratic lawmakers have questioned the decision to hire IAP Worldwide Services, a contractor with connections to the Bush administration and to KBR, a Halliburton subsidiary.
--"Privatized Walter Reed Workforce Gets Scrutiny," Steve Vogel and Renae Merle, Washington Post, March 10, 2007


Yeah. Turns out it was private contractors who were responsible for cleaning up the appalling conditions at the infamous Building 18. The one where amputees and brain-injured patients recovered in the midst of rats, cockroaches, and black mold.

Another no-bid contract.

During this past Congressional elections, the Republicans HOWLED that we could not afford to elect Democrats, because if we did, it would be subpoenas and investigations out the wazoo.

Well let me tell you. IT'S ABOUT TIME.


Senator Jim Webb (D-Va) declared, "This is a rent-an-army out there."
--"Bush's Shadow Army," Jeremy Scahill, The Nation, April 2, 2007 issue

In mid-February Senators Byron Dorgan, Patrick Leahy, and John Kerry introduced legislation aimed at cracking down on no-bid contracts and cronyism, providing for penalties of up to twenty years in prison and fines up to $1 million for what they call "war profiteering."
--ibid


According to Jim Abrams of the Associated Press, the House has voted to limit no-bid federal contracts just this past week, in a measure known as the Accountability in Contracting Act.

And many, many of those same Republicans who claimed to fear the hearings and investigations voted FOR it, to the tune of 347-73.

In the hearings leading up to the writing of the new law, Democrats showed where federal contracts have DOUBLED in the Bush years, up to HALF A TRILLION DOLLARS A YEAR. The no-bid contracts alone accounted for $145 billion in 2005.

Oh, and the mess that was supposed to be the big clean-up after Hurricane Katrina?

NO-BID CONTRACT.

But it's not just the billions of dollars squandered. It's not just the unreported crimes committed by contractors in war zones.

They're dying, over there, just like the troops, and their mamas don't have big military support groups or yellow-ribbon magnet foundations to comfort them.

In fact, they can't even find out what happened to their sons, and thanks to the Rumsfeld Doctrine, the companies don't have to tell them.

Recently, the case of the mothers and families of the four contractors who perished in Iraq came before the U.S. Supreme Court--the families claimed that their men were lured to Iraq under false pretenses as to just what their jobs would be and that they were insufficiently armored and supplied, and they wanted to know what happened in Fallujah-- but the Court refused to hear it, sending it back down to the federal courts, where the welcome has been chilly for the contractors.


"Blackwater has wrapped itself in the American flag," Judge Donald Stephens told the firm's lawyers. "Blackwater Security Consulting LLC is not the United States government."
--"Outsourcing the War: Four families want to know how their men, all guns for hire, died in Iraq," Brian Bennett, Time Magaine, March 16, 2007 issue


I feel the noose beginning to tighten on the War Bandits, from the White House and Republicans in Congress who enabled the pirating, all the way down to the Blackwater boardrooms, where hefty donations to Republican candidates came from blood money.

But that is small comfort to the families of the men who hanged from the Blackwater Bridge.


The four men were dragged from their cars, mutilated by a mob and set on fire. The torsos of Scott Halvenston and fellow Blackwater employee Jerry Zovko were hung from the green steel girders of a bridge on the edge of town. In Fallujah, it's still known as Blackwater Bridge.

…Katy Halvenston…still wants to know what happened…because her son died for his company, not his country…
 --"Outsourcing the War," Brian Bennett, Time Magaine, March 16, 2007 issue