F THERE is a quagmire in Iraq, it was created more than a decade ago when the United States instituted a flawed system governing the use of contractors to perform governmental functions. Now, despite Iraqi fury at Blackwater USA, some of whose employees are accused of fatally shooting Iraqis, Washington is so reliant on the firm that it dare not order it from the field.
The heavy dependence on private contractors in the military is relatively recent. In the Gulf War only 9,200 contractors supported 540,000 military personnel. The estimated 180,000 US-funded contractors now in Iraq (of which about 21,000 are Americans) outnumber the 160,000 US troops.
All too often this private army has been unmanageable and unaccountable, its interests dangerously divergent from those of the US and the Iraqi governments. The troubles exposed by the Blackwater debacle provide a glimpse into a much larger, systemic problem that pervades military, intelligence, and homeland security efforts alike.
The Bush administration came into office bent on privatizing as many government functions as possible and threw billions into the mix in its Iraq venture. It was changes in the contracting system, instituted during the Clinton administration, though, that transformed the contracting rules and undercut oversight, transparency, and competition.
Through the Clinton and Bush II administrations, outsourcing steadily accelerated. In fiscal year 2006, the federal government awarded contracts valued at over $420 billion, more than double the amount awarded in 2000, according to the Federal Procurement Data System. The war in Iraq has spurred contracting to record-breaking heights. As the federal government’s biggest buyer of services, the Department of Defense, in fiscal 2006 alone, obligated upwards of $151 billion in service contracts, a rise since 1996 of 78 percent. The transfer of many military functions to the private sector occurred at the same time that government oversight , has been diminished. The Defense Department is ever-more dependent on contractors to supply a host of “mission-critical services,” according to the Government Accountability Office. These services include “information technology systems, interpreters, intelligence analysts, as well as weapons system maintenance and base operation support,” according to the GAO.
Moreover, functions that were once the responsibility of military personnel are now essentially in private hands. For example, websites of contractors working for the Defense Department have posted announcements of job openings for analysts to perform such functions as preparing the department’s budget. One contractor boasted of having written the Army Field Manuals on Contractors on the Battlefield.
Yet, while private companies are acquiring government functions and the number of contractors is on the rise, the number of Defense Department employees available to oversee them has declined. For 15 years, the GAO has included the Pentagon’s contract management operation on its list of “high-risk” activities. This designation means that the department may well lack “the ability to effectively manage cost, quality, and performance in contracts,” according to US Comptroller General David M. Walker, head of the GAO. When these deficiencies play out on the ground in Iraq, they can have serious consequences.
The extensive transfer of functions to the private sector raises more fundamental concerns. The overarching goal of government is supposedly the adoption of policies and practices that promote the public good. For contractors performing government services, the bottom line is profit.
Further, military personnel are governed by regulations that do not apply to contractors, such as those Blackwater employees involved in the shooting. They do not fall under the rules of war or the Geneva Convention. The records of private employees in war zones are exempt from scrutiny under the Freedom of Information Act. And, unlike military personnel, contract employees on the battlefield can quit their jobs when the going gets rough.
The Iraq war has exposed the dangers of contracting out vital state functions to private actors. Such massive privatization renders government more susceptible to the influence of unelected private players with their own interests - players who are far removed from the oversight of government and the scrutiny of voters.
Inherently governmental functions, such as the direction of military and intelligence operations, ought not to be privatized. It is vital to reverse Clinton-era procurement “reforms” and to restore effective government oversight - and Bush-era extensions of them. Otherwise, the public can be more easily mislead, and America’s interests, along with its moral standing, will be repeatedly undercut by a shadow army.
Janine R. Wedel is professor of public policy at George Mason University and a fellow at New America Foundation.
© Copyright 2007 The Boston Globe
The formation and maintainance of a lawless right-wing private army is evidence enough that Republicans not only are unable to govern a democratic society, but also those at the very top of that contemptable and murderous political party by their actions and inactions in conducting their illegal war qualify for inprisonment and even a firing squad.
Any possibility of a USA revolution?
And which side would these private armies be on if there was a revolution either in martial law or in an uprising. Someday what we’ve seen in Burma will be see on the US streets?
Pretty much ’splains why the US didn’t want to have anything to do with a “world court” that the US doesn’t own and operate.
This is indeed one of the ugliest times of humankind.
dlnelson7:
I had exactly the same question occupying my thoughts the past few days. It’s too uncomfortably likely, in my view of late.
of course, it might not be all bad if a bunch of fundamentally religious christians got run off…
that part might actually be a plus, but not likely to help the cause of the commons, however.
“Till the pain is so big you feel nothing at all”
The human cost of war alone makes it self-evident that we must renounce war.
Movement for the Renunciation of War.
I renounce war, and I will never support or sanction another war.
Signed: _____________________
Dated: __________
‘The President Has Accepted Ethnic Cleansing’
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,508394,00.html
Dr. Zimmerman,
Thanks for that link to another set of Mr. Hersch’s truthful reports/statements. I take what he says with no salt…
“Well I stand corrected”
A couple of days ago I was harping on about under estimating Iraq War Causalities in an Article written by Eric Margolis.. Well I did a bit of under estimating of my own…In my post I indicated 65,000 wounded Veterans…However, it seems I was out by nearly 3 fold….
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/09/30/america/
“Wounded vets from Iraq, and families, now suffer economically; 185,000 seek help so far.”
TEMECULA, California (AP) — He was one of America’s first defenders on Sept. 11, 2001, a Marine who pulled burned bodies from the ruins of the Pentagon. He saw more horrors in Kuwait and Iraq.
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Today, he can’t keep a job, pay his bills, or chase thoughts of suicide from his tortured brain. In a few weeks, he may lose his house, too. Gamal Awad — the American son of a Sudanese immigrant — exemplifies an emerging group of war veterans: the economic casualties.
More than in past wars, many wounded troops are coming home alive from the Middle East, a triumph for military medicine. But they often return hobbled by prolonged physical and mental injuries from homemade bombs and the anxiety of fighting a hidden enemy along blurred battle lines.
These troops are just starting to seek help in large numbers, more than 185,000 so far. The cost of their benefits is already testing resources set aside by government and threatening the future of these wounded veterans for decades to come, say economists and veterans’ groups.
“The wounded and their families no longer trust that the government will take care of them the way they thought they’d be taken care of,” says veterans advocate Mary Ellen Salzano.
How does a war veteran expect to be treated? “As a hero,” she says.
___
In Awad’s case, he needs to think of a reason each morning not to kill himself. He can’t even look at the framed photograph that shows him accepting a Marine heroism medal for his recovery work at the Pentagon after the terrorist attack.
It might remind him of the burned woman whose skin peeled off in his hands when he tried to comfort her. He tries not to hear the shrieking rockets of Iraq either, smell the burning fuel, or relive the blast that blew him right out of bed. The memories come steamrolling back anyway.
“Nothing can turn off those things,” he says, voice choked and eyes glistening.
He stews alternately over suicide and finances, his $43,000 (€30,326) in credit-card debt, his $4,330 (€3,053) in federal checks each month. They bring the government’s compensation for total disability from post-traumatic stress disorder. His flashbacks, thoughts of suicide, and anxiety over imagined threats — all documented for six years in his military record — keep him from working.
The disability payments don’t even cover the $5,700 (€4,020) -a-month cost of his adjustable home mortgage and equity loans. He owes more on his house than its market value, so he can’t sell it and may soon lose it to the bank.
“I love this house. It makes me feel safe,” he says.
Awad could once afford it. He used to earn $100,000 a year as an experienced Marine with a master’s degree in management who excelled at logistics. Now, he can’t even manage his own life.
There’s another twist. This dedicated Marine was given a “general” discharge 15 months ago for an extramarital affair with a woman, also a Marine. His military therapists blamed this impulsive conduct on PTSD aggravated by his Middle East tours.
Luckily, his discharge, though not unqualifiedly honorable, left his rights intact to medical care and disability payments — or he’d be in sadder shape.
Divorced since developing PTSD, Awad has two daughters who live elsewhere.
He spends much of his days hoisting weights and thwacking a punching bag in the dimness of his garage. He passes nights largely sleepless, a zombie shuffling through the bare rooms of his home in sunny California wine country, not too far from his old base.
___
Few anticipated the high price of caring for Awad and other Middle East veterans with deep, slow-healing wounds.
Afghanistan seemed quiet and Saddam Hussein still ruled Iraq one year after the Sept. 11 attacks. That’s when the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs guaranteed two years of free care to returning combat veterans for virtually any medical condition with a possible service link.
Later, few predicted such a protracted war in Iraq, one in which Iraqi insurgents would rely on disfiguring bombs and bombardment as chief tactics. Better armor and field medicine have kept U.S. soldiers alive at the highest rate ever, according to one study based on government data. However, many are returning with multiple amputations or other disabling injuries.
The Pentagon counts more than 29,000 combat wounded in the Middle East since the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. Tens of thousands more got hurt outside of combat or in ways that only surface later.
[This is an Excerpt]
Blackwater, and other contracted “security” shouldn’t be kicked out. They should be made to stay and fight Bush’s War for oil, so that US military troops can be pulled from the region. Bush’s army of mercenaries should cover the withdrawal of official US military forces. Then, those in whose interests this war was started will have their own privately funded (well , US Govt contract funded) army to accomplish their mission — whatever it is. It’s morally reprehensible, but I think this for-profit enterprise might more realistically assess the cost/benefit ratios and realize the bottomless pit does not serve their shareholders (any more than it serves the people of the US).
Oh!! JH,
I love your idea, but we have to totally cut all funding that might find it’s way into their pockets as well. The US subsidies should dry up immediately and the real US troops come home tomorrow. All prisoners at GITMO should be returned to the regions of their choice and let them go at the privatized militia, so they really have someone to fight against for their own survival’s sake. You wouldn’t want them to get bored, they might come home.
You can bet your a– that those moral chumps wouldn’t be over there in the first place if they didn’t have the US military’s volunteer corps as human shields to hide behind so that their funders could rape the richest nation of ALL its assets and march on to “acquire” the rest of everybody else’s resources and $$ therafter. It’s all about domination, guys.
So let’s “privatize” the clean-up of this global mess we made too.
We’re constantly manipulated by right-wing republican party hacks to “support our troops.” But the cat is out of the bag now and Blackwater is not “our army,” so I’m not supporting them and I don’t care if their defeated, castrated, burned, and spit on. Fuck em!
A way for Dick n Bush to enrich their friends and then get paid back.
very alarming trend i agree. not only the military aspect but the idea that all government services should be in private hands.
to me that is one of the great propaganda coups of all time, the convincing of the pulbic that the government is a poor candidate to provide services like military defense and postal service, environmental stewardship, etc.
these were the very basis of forming the government in the first place, its reason to be, as it were.
what a scam.
the same propaganda machine has made liberal a bad word - 9/11 a calling to history, the clash of civilizations, and all that other crap they ooze.
as if bush has any interest in history, or philosophy, religion, or any other hallmarks of civilization.
he is only interested in war, we know, when it is someone else fighting it.
the ultra saturation of our personal spaces by 300 hundred channels of lumpy porridge has not enhanced our sense of civilization one lick.
but it has dumbed us down so that when the neocons, bent on our destruction, tell us that liberals - whose main focus in government has been about social safety nets for people like you and me - are bad and that right wing psychotic war mongering neocons who support the war without end - leading to cutbacks in all kinds of social safety for children and our elderly - the guys who blew all our money on the military build up of the last 8 years, in iraq and soon iran and then who knows where - these are the good guys.
as i say, what a scam.
today the dollar is worth less than the canadian dollar.
gold - over 700/oz
oil - over 80/bar
milk - $5/gal
blackwater no bids in a war without end?
priceless!
Hey milesofmusic
Heck-of-a-job Bu$hie!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
This dopey article sounds like a critique of the SA as opposed to the SS. Not one mention of the genocidal illegality of the whole enterprise. How sick is this country anyway?
very very sick and getting worse by the day.
Hey White Rose
I’ve been saying that very thing, asking that very question, for months now. The answer is a resounding NO. We the People don’t have the stomach, the organization or the resources to revolt. Instead America will go quietly into that goodnight and Amerika, the neoamerica if you will, will emerge triumphant until the whole fucking world blows up.
A mercenary army by its nature is coward. They’re in it for the money, not to get killed. They lay low and dodge the bullets to let other suckers die, in this case the G.I.’s
I am always so comforted knowing that the adults are in charge. I wouldn’t be so dismisive of the carnage that mercenaries can accomplish. The Thirty Years War was largely supported by mercenary armies.
There is no question in my mind who’s side the mercenaries would be on (whoever will pay or promise them) - they’ve already made their choice. I’m more curious and anxious about who’s side the real soldiers will be on. Especially the pilots. That’s why the Christian proselytizing at the AF Academy is so scary. Will neighborhoods in America through a gun camera be seen as just some cancerous sin that must be expunged from Amerika?
There is a symbiosis between American flyers and their machines. The flyers know that their machines and our air superiority are the crown jewel of our military/industrial might. They are completely “on board” in many different ways.
News this morning: Blackwater just got a new $92 million contract from the government. I guess killing 11 Iraqi non combatants is meaningless to the Bush administration. Is the attitude that “ragheads” don’t count???
We didn’t have security contractors in WWII and we did just fine without them. None in the Korean War or Vietnam War. And now suddenly under Bush, we can’t live without them. And what is more appalling is this arrogant assumption is not being challenged by the press.
I think the bottom line for the Very Importan People being guarded by such security forces is that they actually want people that will shoot first and ask questions later. They don’t want regular military that would need to follow the rules, especially the rules of engagement (only when shot at return fire).
@ dlnelson7–Blackwater already was on the streets in this country, in New Orleans during Katrina–this is proof the gummint would not hesitate to use private contractors as a police agency on our own soil–and I have no doubt if ‘We The People’ were to ever try and ’spill some blood’ as Jefferson (? to paraphrase) said and reclaim our government and country, you know we’d be targets. I wonder if Blackwater would be exempt from all laws as they are in Iraq?
Of course, if all the state’s National Guard weren’t over there in Sand Land bringing democracy to the ever-grateful Iraqis, they would have been around to help with Katrina.
There is no surprise in any of this. This is exactly what Cheney and the other PNAC good ‘ol boys have been promoting for decades. Why have our troops take care of their traditional duties when you can pay highly connected mercenaries to do it for many times the cost and without accountability? Because they know a draft will bring a quick end to their war. That’s one lesson the neocons learned from Vietnam. The documentary “Sir, No Sir” illustrates this quite well. The other 2 lessons they learned were no open media coverage, only “embeded” media, and no body counts. A good descriptions of where we’re heading can been read at:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/naomi-wolf/the-attack-on-moveonorg-_b_65629.html
We have no way to really know, but it’s likely that we have private combat forces because our Chiefs of Staff communicated to Cheney/bush that their oaths of office were to protect and defend the Constitution and that they had a DUTY to decline to obey illegal orders, ie, murder any Iraqi who resisted the takeover of the oil infrastructure/corporate state by the multi-nationals. They had to leave that to State Dept and contractors. It seems to involve some very elaborate rationalizations for the Chiefs to keep their forces in the field at all, considering current conditions. Lots of lies. Lots of death.
With 6 years and all the money, we could have created an alternative energy world and freed these middle-easterners to pursue more traditional occupations. But the Oil Elite preferred the great game and delusions of Empire.
Useless delay.