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The Privatized War in Afghanistan
Sue Sturgis, writing today in Facing South: the Online Magazine of the Institute for Southern Studies:
Additional number of American troops President Obama plans to deploy to Afghanistan: 30,000
Total number of U.S. troops that will be there after the deployment: 98,000
Number of private contractors working for the U.S. in Afghanistan as of September 2009: 104,101
Percent by which that number grew between June and September: 40
Percent of the Defense Department's workforce in Afghanistan accounted for by contractors: 57
Number of conflicts in U.S. history involving a higher percentage of contractors: 0
Percent of the U.S. presence on the ground during the Vietnam War accounted for by contractors: 13
Percent of the Defense Department's 2008 budget devoted to contracts and grants: 82
Estimated value of Defense Department contracts in Afghanistan awarded to Texas-based Fluor and Virginia's DynCorp: $7.5 billion
Amount Fluor's PAC contributed to federal candidates in 2008: $305,499
Amount DynCorp's PAC contributed to federal candidates in 2008: $51,999
Date on which a financial analyst announced that Fluor and DynCorp stood to benefit from deployment of additional troops to Afghanistan: 12/2/2009
Amount by which Fluor's share prices rose in that afternoon's trading: 33 cents
Amount by which DynCorp's share prices rose: 30 cents
Month in which DynCorp disclosed in a regulatory filing that it had made payments to expedite visas and licenses, potentially violating the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act: 11/2009
The estimated total for these illegal payments: $300,000
Date on which an investigation was announced on behalf of DynCorp investors over possible securities law violations by the company: 12/3/2009
Value of a U.S. contract with DynCorp to train Iraqi police that federal auditors said was so mismanaged they were unable to determine how the money was spent: $1.3 billion
Year in which the U.S. Commission on Wartime Contracting is scheduled to release a comprehensive study of contracting in war zones: 2011
(Click on the number to go to the original source.)
17 Comments so far
Show AllThis is a horror story. Why are our legislators not screaming about this? I guess it is because they, too, are on somebody's take list. How do we stop this? Where are Obama's promises now?
No need to guess. Obama's promises? Why bother referring to them? After all, he's made it clear since ..., well, actually before even being elected, that we're getting what could be expected, for he had already given us sufficient proof that this was definitely foreseeable. Nevertheless, I can also refer to his campaign pledges; and that he's done and doing worse than breaking them means that he's a political fraud. What happens when a company commits fraud? It's illegal according to laws on the books. What happens when political candidates commit political fraud? There evidently are no related laws on the books and these charlatans are allowed to get away with these crimes as if they didn't exist; and not only in the USA, but also Canada and other "civilized" countries, in the Anglo-, Franco-, ... West anyway.
I understood that there were voters who'd vote for him while nevertheless expressing doubts about him, and I appreciate the latter acknowledgement, for it was and is better than voting and lying about it, which can be done by just staying silent (omission). But something being understandable and being acceptable, or not, are two different considerations. Some unacceptable things or matters are understandable. If they weren't, then we probably wouldn't find them to be unacceptable. I understand that too many political "leaders" pander to Evil, and this is as unacceptable as hell is rejectable.
Press the Reject button for all of these corrupt, criminal "politicians".
"Number of private contractors working for the U.S. in Afghanistan as of September 2009: 104,101"
I'd like to know how many are mercenary soldiers and how many are plumbers, electricians, computer programmers, etc.
Regardless, most of these occupations were once provided by members of the military at much less cost than that paid to contractors. Not only are these wars and occupations needless and immoral, they are hugely overpriced and fraudulent. The taxpayers are being hugely ripped off.
MichaelC, of course your speculation is accurate. The legislators are most definitely on the take. They receive huge campaign donations from the profiteers, and when their terms are finally over, when they are finally booted out of office by voters they go to work for the profiteers at enormously overinflated salaries.
The question is, why aren't we the people going after these mattoids with piano wire and duct tape and dragging them off to the nearest light poles.
Your question about how many are plumbers ect. I do not know the answer to but an aquaintence of mine was over in Afghanistan as a plumber. I asked him if he was going back because of how lucrative the pay was and he told me: " NO WAY,NO MATTER HOW MUCH THEY PAY ME"! According to him, it is a lot worse than we are being told and that is one reason for the additional troops. Also, my nephew is in Afghanistan now and it will be interesting to hear what he has to say. He was in Iraq for 2 years and gave me a good perspective on that mess.
Thanks for contributing that post, Paul Revere; and I wish we'd get news like that a lot more often. It's certainly significant when a contractor of the U.S. in Iraq, Afghanistan, or anywhere else where the U.S. is criminal, wouldn't want to return because of the horrific and/or very dangerous situation the person experienced or witnessed there. These people are paid plenty; not richly, but nevertheless plenty. So when they say that there's no way that they'd return, then we should be immediately attentive to their words. It'd be great to see and read some articles and/or to get some videos with some of these people. And they and IVAW, f.e., could work together to oppose these wars. Winter Soldiers comes to mind. Instead of only the military veterans testifying, contractors of heightened conscience or awareness of the situations in these wars could also add their testimonies. He's a U.S. military veteran of one of the GWoT wars anyway.
And that brings the following video compilation, which I just came across and viewed last night, to mind. It's a very fine compilation for an anti-war statement along with brief descriptions of war crimes. The piece refers to the use of DU and white phosphorous, and extreme deformities caused by these and other toxic substances due to the wars (Iraq and Afghanistan); rape and other brutalities against female members of the U.S. military as well as young Iraqi girls; and more. It begins with (I guess anyway) a U.S. military veteran of the Iraq War making a fine statement.
"The U.S. Military does not want you to see this video
The truth about the wars are out" (10:41)
posted by bigsteelguy, Dec 1 2009
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpKRpzjHnts
I know the video also relates to the war in Afghanistan because one of the "extreme deformity" pictures of a little child, I think still at baby age, appeared in an article that was about the deformities happening in Afghanistan due to the present war there. This is the picture of the little child with very strange-looking skin, eyes, mouth, ... and I emailed the author about the skin, or also the eyes and mouth. What I definitely recall was having questioned him about the skin, for it looked and still looks like the child is really in some tight-fitting rubber suit, say, to me. The author responded saying that he is the one who took the pictures of the deformed children in Afghanistan and that the skin of this particular child looked like fibre-glass to him. He might have also said that he's a doctor, but am not sure if he added this.
Human skin looking like rubber or fibre-glass? What(!)? And the eyes and lips are incredibly red and red fluid seems to be coming out, too. We see no pupils, etc. I've seen the pictures of "extreme deformities" of Iraqi children due to the U.S. war there in 1990 or 1991, and since, but while their deformities are clearly [extreme], none had skin and eyes like in the photo of this little Afghan child; and the other deformed Afghan children also didn't have this apparence in the photos. All of the others had or have [extreme] deformities, but their skin otherwise appears human and none have red eyes and lips. The extreme deformities seriously vary though; bewilderingly.
Anyway, that is a little Afghan child. And this article was a few years ago, or maybe 2007; seeming to recall that it's been around a few years since the email exchange. It might be a little further back than this, but I'd say at least a few years and recall being stunned by how soon after this war on Afghanistan was launched that these deformities were evident.
I think most CD readers will appreciate this above video. It could or would be interesting or good to have a similarly-made work for ... longer, say 20 to 30 minutes, or even more. But the above is very good for only a little over ten minutes and a lot of people might not want to dedicate time to much longer. Not all crimes are referred to, but some very important ones are. And what particularly stood out to me are the extreme deformities, which I've seen images of before, but which are always shocking and which we should be regularly reminded about, and the hell women in the U.S. military are put through. Al Franken makes a fine statement on the latter topic, and maybe more, but this part of the video is very short and I think it's only for his good words on the abuses against women in the U.S. military.
I forget what the number of contractors in Iraq were, but read an article or two, or three, over the past few years or so about this topic and these said that the contractors, total, were around the same number as U.S. troops, around 138,000, or near that number; and I think the mercenary contractors were said to be around 50 to 60 thousand. I'd have to find the articles again to be sure, but if these numbers are roughly right, while using the 60,000 for the mercenaries, then they're nearly half of all foreign contractors in Iraq and I guess we can expect close to the same proportions in Afghanistan. So out of 104,101 contractors, maybe there are 40 to 50 thousand mercenary ones.
Still, and like you, I'd like to know what these statistics or details really are. We can be certain that there are MANY mercenary contractors and this is only speaking of Afghanistan, for there's also Pakistan; but getting the actual numbers would clearly be preferable.
CorpWatch.org and Tim Shorrock for CW provide a new database of contractors, but am not sure if it's only for the spying ones. If it's only for them, then I think CW would be a website where we might get the data for numbers of mercenary contractors though. The database, which I just learned of over the past few weeks is presented with the following article of Nov. 16th and the second link is the website for the database.
http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=15468
http://www.crocodyl.org/spiesforhire
Re. your words about the costs of these wars, the "politicians" voters elected clearly don't care and evidently don't want to reduce the cost-burden on taxpayers. If someone's to profit, then another party will have to pay. Most "politicians" evidently look to the profit calculation.
Kissinger purportedly said, in a purported interview, that soldiers are "dumb animals" and if he didn't really say this, then actions (conduct) still speaks louder. And the majority of voters evidently are dumber; the dumbest of all animals. Soldiers, in horrific war zones, and based on being LIED to, become seriously PTSD'd and can't rationalise anymore. Voters don't have any acceptable excuse.
Yep, taxpayers "are being hugely ripped off"; and it's their fault. They refuse to learn from the "fool me" game; "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me again, and ... where the heck is a mirror, because I need to have a serious discussion with myself?".
I doubt that very much. Iraq and Afghanistan aren't huge countries, but they still aren't petite and war-profiteering is major. We're not talking about Rhode Island, here. And war-profiteering is useful with the military, since it's all at taxpayer expense and soldiers cost little, but this is not as profitable as using private cies to do a lot of the "dirty work" in addition to reconstruction, etc. (Big Oil invests in a lot of GAS, they invest in Big MIC, etcetera, and the banksters laugh about their huge profits while [letting] a [little] trickle [downward] to account holders, and the sadistic merriness continues for ..., well, until the empire falls anyway.)
Provide some supporting links if you really wish people to believe that mercenary contractors only numbered around 5,000 or so when the total number of foreign contractors, who aren't all from the U.S. or even it and Britain, but also from plenty of other countries, is roughly equal (close anyway) to the total number of U.S. military troops.
There were certainly over 10,000, but even that low of a number would be difficult to prove; and these people are hardly ever reported on or about. We hardly get any reporting for the reconstruction, ... contractors. One large contracting corporation, alone, might have 5,000 or so mercenary "soldiers" in these wars, and Blackwater USA, Xe, is definitely not the largest contractor.
They're not all U.S. cies. Nor are the mercenaries all of the Anglo. countries. Consider, for [an] example, the fact that the so-called UN peacekeeping force in Haiti following the Feb. 29, 2004, act-of-war coup d'etat by the U.S., Canada and France didn't only consist of, but nevertheless highly consisted of Brazilian soldiers or paramilitary ... whatever; extremely brutal, criminal "peacekeepers". They weren't directly employed for or through a contracting company, but they clearly were mercenary "soldiers". They weren't part of the military forces of the three criminal foreign countries, governments. They were outside "help", support, [enforcement] and horrifically instrumental; so horrifically that it'd be difficult to imagine that private sector mercenaries could be worse. They could be, but both could be; all while the Brazilian "peacekeepers" were ... like hell on Haitians and we can't get much worse than that, unless we change 'h' for 'H' in "hell". Either way, it was hell, and most corporate media underreported, or totally omitted, this reality, as well; and many or all of those that did produce reports weren't honest, not fully anyway. Even MSF, Medecins Sans Frontieres, Doctors Without Borders, did some grotestquely bad reporting of a "flavour" blaming the Haitians when this was just more pro-imperialist, ... BS!
"Undercounting deaths of US soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan
Contractor deaths are rarely reported"
by Bernd Debusmann, Reuters, Sep. 10, 2009
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=15183
EXCERPT:
WASHINGTON, Sept 10 (Reuters) - By most counts, the death toll of U.S. soldiers in America's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan stood at 5,157 in the second week of September. Add at least 1,360 private contractors working for the U.S. and the number tops 6,500.
Contractor deaths and injuries (around 30,000 so far) are rarely reported but they highlight the United States' steadily growing dependence on private enterprise.
End excerpt
That high number is not likely to happen with only 5,000 or so mercenary contractors in Iraq, alone.
Excerpt:
Contractor ranks in Iraq and Afghanistan have swollen to just under a quarter million. They outnumber U.S. troops in Afghanistan and they almost match uniformed soldiers in Iraq.
...
Schooner wrote it was troubling that few Americans considered the deaths of contractors relevant or significant even though many of them performed roles carried out by uniformed military only a generation ago. "...."
That's not surprising after a series of ugly incidents involving armed security contractors. They make up for a small proportion of the total (about 8 percent) but account for almost all the headlines that have deepened negative perceptions and prompted labels from mercenary and merchant of death to "the coalition of the billing."
End Excerpt
That 8% is significant and leans in your direction, but this is Reuters and we can't be sure that 8% is representative of the complete number of private sector contractors who serve or have served in mercenary ways in Iraq, alone. Out of nearly 250,000 contractors, I would not expect only 5 to 6 thousand, as you claim, and 8% would put them at roughly 20,000; however, I believe to have read that the real number is considerably higher.
5 to 6 thousand is BS.
Completing my reply:
Most people will remember the so-called suicide car bombings in Iraq and that many, most or all of these incidences first occurred in civilian areas, like the markeplace in Baghdad. Basically all reports were saying that this was committed by the Iraqi Resistance and I didn't immediately react; but after two instances of this, I knew that it was NOT by the IR, couldn't be, it would make any f*cking sense, and I have plenty of "streets" sense to realise this quickly. The real IR would never attack ordinary members of their own population and there are two critical reasons for this. They aren't murderers, and they only opposed the foreign aggression against and occupation of their country, which ordinary, general Iraqis weren't responsible for. I stated this clearly enough starting early into these bombings and some time later, what happened? We sarted getting sort of similar attacks on Iraqi police stations, etc. These latter attacks [might] have been by IR members, but we don't know that they were.
The major attacks on universities were likely not by the IR, but one or two world-renowned journalists, I think Robert Fisk being one of them, reported about "odd" happenings at checkpoints. The stories I read about were two, albeit really four, but the other two are of a different vein, say. The two consist of Iraqis driving and arriving at a checkpoint, where the driver is told to go to the nearby police station to be cleared, and while the driver does this, explosives are planeted in his vehicle. The drivers were cleared at the police station and were supposed to drive to ... wherever and their vehicles would explode, but the two drivers learned of the "dirty trick" before the explosives blew. One was told by his young son or grnadson, whatever, that the checkpoint guards put an object about the size of a mellon on the truck among the fruit there, and the driver got out and checked, finding a bomb. The other driver was a taxi driver and found that his car suddenly felt heavier than normal, so stopped the car and inspected it; finding the back seat, back door panels and maybe trunk filled with explosives.
The other two stories are about two British SAS jerks dressed as Arabs, etc., and driving a car filled with explosives and guns into Basra; and a foreign contractor similarly driving a car to some city or town in northern Iraq.
"Salvador Option in Iraq"! www.brusselstribunal.org I read about these stories before coming across them against at BRT, but it has an index on this topic; "Salvador Option" in Iraq.
The bombing of the mosque in Samara, Iraq, was NOT by the IR. Etcetera. And if it wasn't by U.S. military forces, then they were certainly complicit; at least.
5 to 6 thousands mercenary contractors? I don't think so.
Note that this is not to say that the checkpoint "guards" planting explosives in the vehicles of Iraqis were private sector employees, for I'm definitely not saying that they were. They weren't. But anyone who thinks that these hellish wars can be assessed in "innocently" ignorant terms is wrong; there's a hell of a lot of "dirtiness" in these wars. These checkpoint guards and the two British SAS asses weren't employed by private sector cies; but there were a lot more private sector mercenaries than you pretend (without anything to support your underreporting).
If you also don't think these events really happen, then God probably can't help you; you're lost.
Please cite specifics and sources.
We've had PLENTY of bodies. Enough bodies! Enough injured and maimed! WTF! Enough is enough. Time to bring our troops home...NOW! I have NO interest in Afghanistan or Iraq. If oil price shoot sky high, it is not worth one more drop of blood to avoid it. We will just have to begin to live as it was before the automobile. Closer communities; not traveling across the U.S. on a whim. Making each trip count. Each life lost counted to someone. Each paraplegics handicapped life counts. They seem to have lost some travel options; so have the dead. Follow the money, follow the money, follow the money to find out why we are there, and to find out why so many think it is a good idea, even patriotic. You've heard of "ship of fools". We have become a "nation of fools"
I know that is not what THEY meant by bodies, it is what I mean by bodies!!!
You're missing the point! The ONLY reason we are REALLY there is for the PROFIT!!! You are paying for this, and you, and you and you, and ME! Our country is falling apart; imploding and exploding at the same time, and we are spending our treasure and our children's lives for some goddamned sons of bitches profits. And the media of this country owned and operated by those who are in the profit stream are beating the drum for the ignorant lemming masses to march to. While the economy is in tatters and unemployment is so high it makes the "voluntary" armed forces numbers swell. If the money spent blowing up and then rebuilding was being spent over here, and the soldiers were being paid for construction rather than for destruction this country would be in such shape that those coming here from across the sea would be coming to work rather than to "terrorize".(if in fact they actually are coming to terrorize) just sayin
Just sayin'?
WELL SAID!!
This is a story to cause former USMC Major General Smedley Butler to not only roll over in his grave, but to also jump out of it in rage at the government of the USA; the political and, I guess, military "leadership(s)", and maybe also voters.
I came across the following article last night. And it's about much more than only oil and gas, btw.
"Afghanistan sitting on a gold mine
The USGS estimates there are about 700 billion cubic metres of gas and 300 million tonnes of oil across several northern provinces"
by AFP, Feb 21, 2008
http://www.rawa.org/temp/runews/2008/02/21/afghanistan-sitting-on-a-gold-mine.html
Double-clicking on the url to highlight it and then copying it should work since it ends with .html. I've tested what happens with URL's of which part doesn't display in CD posts in the past. The ones ending with .htm or .html were okay; just that we didn't see the whole url. (This also worked with some other URL's, but some really do get truncated, such that highlighting and copying doesn't provide a valid link.)
Voters really need to stop pretending that it's okay to vote for "lesser evils". No more evils! NONE! Say "FINI" to such ways. "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me again and I'll smack you; and will worry about the "shame on me" part later, once I'm done with you."
Nobel Prize Committee gave President Obama the Peace Prize. So he can't be doing these things? Can we blame them on Bush or Rush?