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.
To see a video of this testimony: here.
Jeremy Scahill is the author of the New York Times bestseller Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army. He is currently a Puffin Foundation Writing Fellow at the Nation Institute.
© Copyright 2007 Jeremy Scahill
Well, this country without content of its population that lost sense of citizenship, made the next step to its own self-destruction.
An invisible hand of the free market from now on will push war (forget about Iraq) even further, with each word in this phrase contradicting each other.
Is there any way out of abyss save for total collapse of social order? Are we beyond point of return? Private armies were in developement by extracting industries for quite a long time. Just look at what is going on Africa and elsewhere. You pull this baby down and a lot of things kept in secret deep in corporate’s bowls may go coming down. That will affect Market, Market will affect pension plans, pension plans affect 190 million owners of assault rifles in this country and down we all go.
Finita la comedia.
private ‘armies’ have been in use since the beginning. if we don’t, won’t, or can’t learn from the past… if you think that the behavior of the armed forces of the united states has been bad. just wait. mercenaries have no reguard for life, only money.
some day in the not too distant future, when u.s. power has fallen and other nations (china?) see theirs increase, there will come a time when, in order to increase or preserve their “national security,” a foreign country will invade and occupy this land. we will then see first hand the horrific reality that other peoples of this world live daily. those seeds have been sown and it’s only a matter of time.
America is committing suicide. We don’t need an enemy. We have ourselves. Homegrown terrorism is inevitable. Not only Bruce was born in America. So was Tim. When America loses its veterans - also inevitable with outsourcing and privatization - our society will be without a conscience. Veterans hold wisdom that could prevent this from happening. But in America we would rather watch “Idol” than listen to Bobby Muller or Camilo Mejia.
Hoa binh
Talk about walking a mile in some one else’s shoes, revenge is a mother F;;KER and boy do we deserve payback! This country and our society will pay a bigger price then anyone knows, then they will care! Until the sh.t hits their home fan the do not care, but the sh.t is about to fly through the front door! Move aside when you open.
Wait until these fascist brownshirts, these secret killers and torturers, come home to keep order here in our cities at the behest of Bu$h and Co.
Thanks Jeremy for raising awareness of a long existant problem. This is not new, US companies have been financing and perpetuating wars all over Africa (and elswhere) for decades. And we wonder why people all over the world hold grudges against the Americans. So often the US administration has little or nothing to do with these activities, just profiteers perpetuating war and killing to keep raking in the $’s. Finally ,a war where the safety and reputation of the US troops themselves are being compromised, is bringing to the attention of the American people how their reputation is being tainted around the world by the powerfull in the name of profit$. Funny that the Roman Empire’s demise was initiated by the excess of mercenaries over faithfull countrymen in their mighty army. Here’s hoping the troops (legitimate ones) stay safe and return home soon…there is plenty for them to do right here at home.
“I am shocked to find out there is an illegal war going on inside an illegal war in Iraq.”
Will the war crimes ever end?
Just one clarification. The so-called U.S. military forces are also nothing but a bunch of mercenaries. They are not draftees; they are volunteers, and they get paid too. Right?
Re: Saila
No, actually. Mercenaries fight ONLY for the money - they do not swear an oath, nor promise to uphold the ideals and image of our country. They have no loyalty, not even to each other, and, although they pretend to be the toughest, most will run when confronted with even a moderately larger force. And it is an insult to our military for the top general to trust mercs before his own men who, although they do receive a paltry salary (like cops, or prison guards, or the FBI,) share a universal calling that reaches beyond 22K a year, whether they realize it or not.
It is not the past that needs be remembered, though the ‘Black Companies’ and ‘Free Companies’ (or Free Companions), the uncontrollable mercenary armies, which were the bane of late medieval europe, should be a definitive warning to us all. It is the future to which we bequeath these modern private (and therefore uncontrollable) armies, that needs be remembered. We watch how an armed and dangerous force, which ‘owns’ itself and answers ultimately, only to it’s owners, is born. One day, corporate interests will rely on the extralegality of these ‘official’ neo-corporate mercenaries, to accomplish ends, by whatever means. An untraceable assassination of a pesky union leader in a third world nation? Or even the unregulated surveilance and data mining of a citzenry which may be taking place even now? This aspect alone should deter us from permitting this subversion of our constitutional guarantees from becoming writ in stone. Just how do you rid youself of a privately owned secret police or cia, once it becomes entrenched and a fact of life?
All this generalized talk of corporate fascism, hyperbolic or prescient, whichever is true, the fact remains, that corporations, like Blackwater, are indeed the real thing. This is potentially a unique, new form of fascism, not the nationalistic or even ideologically based but one corporatized to the point of being a totally independent and globalized military force. A distillation down to force for profit…for it’s own sake.
I suggest a motto for them… “We have ways.”
Thank God this is coming to the surface. Now if only our wishy washy leaders would realise the danger.
BugsB - Here is a way to commence changes for the better.
*********** HR333 — Impeach VP (The “d” Man) ***********
Hey you supposed representatives in the house of DC, don’t be dimwits. Be inwit. Especially you madam speaker. We need leadership and what better day to start changing things then today, Mother’s day. Because “me thinks” there is one BIG mother that has just about had it with US.
http://www.randomhouse.com/wotd/index.pperl?date=20000118 (info on inwit)
http://thomas.loc.gov/ (search for HR333 & may I humbly suggest you print it out, put it on your table, and talk to other people about what it means)
buffalo_ken
impeachment is on MY table - literally
I think it is a way to start a new beginning for US
born2bwild:
That’s simply not possible logistically, and in part that’s due to how physically isolated the North American continent is.
What’s more likely is they’ll nuke us. America consumes 25% of the planet’s resources, yet we make up only 6% of the population. They don’t hate our freedoms, they hate our wasteful ways. We’re a resource war waiting to happen.
Scary thought though: what’s to stop a Blackwater from selling its services to the highest bidder? Oh wait, that’s already happened and it just so happens that Bush works for Al Qaeda, and that he’s been building detention centers via Halliburton. They’ll start disappearing Americans once we start complaining about the upcoming bombing of Iran. Course we’ll be herded in there for our own protection.
Cut off from the world we’ll be disappeared. Oh, they’ll call it Rapture.Thank God we have Bush to protect us
“ChristIsntComingBack”
Just wanted to say that I checked out your website and it is awesomely inwit.
If we work together, peace can happen.
IAH,
buffalo_ken
Jeremy Scahill is doing some great work! Bravo!
Kids need to be told that the U.S. soldiers are NOT keeping us free, fighting terrorism, or serving their country as they’re told.
The soldiers are all victims of the insanely deceptive forces of insatiable, inhumane greed.
The most frightening aspect of this outsourcing of war is one thing! What is keep these private mercenary companies from getting completely out of control and trying to take over the US Government and forcing their ideology upon all of us. I am told that Erik Prince who is the head of Blackwater Inc. is a Christian Fundamentalist of the highest order. Who is committed to turning this country into a Christian Nation. Which I will be the first to admit sounds far-fetched and stuff of movies! But, the point I am trying to make is this! It seems to me we are asking for untold trouble even employing these kind of people! A lot of them seem to have the same kind of rogue ‘Kick Ass’ mentality Bush has! They don’t like to obey laws or even have much respect for the law! They make their own laws up as they go! In the end someone will get badly burnt from playing with this kind of fire. This sounds to me like a disaster in the making!
Thank you Jeremy, for testifying so righteously in our halls of power. You are a light in the darkness!
Thank You Jeremy!
I do not believe that congress has been stonewalled! I do believe that the Republicians are knee deep in treason and that they were not stonewalled but have willingly collected and invested in Blackwater types. Ask Cheney!
Then, what is in the book and not on this transcript is that there is a “Blackwater-East….Blackwater-North and they have tried for a Blackwater-West but were unsuccessful! It reminds me of circleing the wagons! …
What bothers me the most is that OUR Legitimate Military, with poor equipment, poorer health care and the fact that OUR NATIONAL GUARD has been pulled from our country ….Does the word “Coup” sound familiar? Another fact in the book and not in the transcript is that the mercenaries have been recruited from Pinochet and Marcus’s murdering muraders! There is no armed gang that have caused more human rights violations than these particular for hire killers!….So, if it is coming down, why wouldn’t our business’ move to third world countries, outsourceing our workers-jobs-income, etc?
WHERE IS OUR MEDIA?????….HOW HAS THIS BEEN THE BIGGEST SECRET IN HISTORY?
Hell, think about it, of course the repugs want our guns! We can throw rocks like any other peasants!….
think it might be possible that our military is in Iraq as a foil…I mean, Bush would not have persuaded Congress to fund his mission without making it look like he was caring for the needs of soldiers. It seems like something that bunch of criminals would do…send soldiers over there ill equipped under paid and for endless terms in order to squeeze every last nickel out of Congress to subsidize their war for personal gain…perhaps Congress has been inadvertently writing checks to pay private companies instead of buying helmets.
Thank you, Jeremy, for doing the study of Blackwater. It must be known to all Americans that our economy is built on the military industrial congressional complex. The only way to stop this is for Americans to refuse to pay for it. As long as people make money on war, there will be war. By the way, when is the Pentagon going to replace the $1.1 trillion (according to a former 20 yr. old employee of the Pentagon, it cannot account for in the past?
Impeach?!>?!?!?!? Does that REALLY fit the crime-I would think both George and Dick should be prosecuted for war crimes; why can’t that be done? Without a doubt, Bush & Co. are enemy combatants to the people of the United States-anything less than conviction of war crimes only slaps at the face of our soldiers and the people they so gallantly serve to protect.
It’s a relief to see a true investigative reporter who opens our eyes to the truth about this Cheney/Bush war. It’s all about profits and profiteers. Many soldiers who join up truly believe they are risking their live for our country. That’s the innocense of youth. It’s time now for the elders to tell the truth about this so-called Iraqi war. It’s all about the money and always has been about serving those in power for their profits.
Jeremy Scahill’s work is powerful and persuasive. Even though I think, “Surely not?”, I find myself wondering if Blackwater et al will lead the charge to not yield the Whitehouse come January, 2008.
This president has shown time and time again that he doesn’t think the rules apply to him. They didn’t at the time of the elections, they don’t about torture, they don’t about appointees.
Will he think 8 years isn’t enough?
It seems a farfetched concern, and yet…?