Because of their abuse and extreme overuse and over-extension of our military troops in Iraq, the Bush administration has been forced to rely more and more on private contractors to fill various roles in Iraq that were previously restricted to military personnel. These private contractors are being drawn into conflicts on a daily basis, essentially making them paid military mercenaries. They operate outside of US and Iraqi law, and they are being killed and wounded in a private war that has gone mostly unreported in the US press.
Today, the Washington Post reported that the number of contractors/mercenaries that have been killed and wounded has gone unreported.
They note that contractors have been “…taking hundreds of casualties that have been underreported and sometimes concealed, according to U.S. and Iraqi officials and company representatives.”
“The U.S. military has never released complete statistics on contractor casualties or the number of attacks on privately guarded convoys. The military deleted casualty figures from reports…”…the military wanted to hide information showing that private guards were fighting and dying in large numbers because it would be perceived as bad news.”
On one list alone that included only a small portion of the total contractor force, 132 security contractors and truck drivers had been killed, and 416 had been wounded since the Fall of 2004.
One particularly terrible incident was described in the Washington Post article this way: “On May 8, 2005, after dropping off a load that included T-shirts, plastic whistles and 250,000 rounds of ammunition for Iraqi police, one of Holly's convoys was attacked. Of 20 security contractors and truck drivers, 13 were killed or listed as missing; five of the seven survivors were wounded. Insurgents booby-trapped four of the bodies. To eliminate the threat, a military recovery team fired a tank round into a pile of [US] corpses, according to an after-action report.”
These shifts in US policy mean that the United States is privatizing its military on a massive scale. Among the troubling aspects of this trend is that private contractors operate outside military law, and outside of Iraqi law, and are not accountable to anyone except for their employers. Further, deploying as many as 100,000 contractors in Iraq is costing US taxpayers up to 10 times more than it would cost to deploy the same number of military troops. Finally, there is the fact that both contractors and Iraqis are being killed in large numbers beyond the sight of the press and the American people.
This trend will only continue under Bush, because of the massive corporate profits being realized by “security” and “supply” companies, and in fact this may be the blueprint for the Bush/Cheney remaking of the entire US military into a substantially privatized “for profit” military force. The US is building dozens of permanent military bases in Iraq, and is planning up to two dozen more spread across Africa “to fight global terrorism”. Obviously, Bush and Cheney want a vastly expanded military presence throughout the world, and it will be a presence of a highly privatized nature.
Write your Senators and Representative, and tell them that you not only want the war in Iraq ended now, but that you want our military to return to a defensive military posture, one that does not include private contractors. Privatizing military functions can even put military troops in greater danger, because profit motives can outweigh safety procedures. If these companies were not making huge profits, they would never even consider sending their employees into harms way. But money talks… no, it screams bloody murder.
Dr. John Moffett is an active research neuroscientist in the Washington, DC area, who has published articles on the nervous and immune systems. Dr. Moffett is also the author and webmaster of the political opinion website www.Factinista.org, and is a Managing Editor at OpEdNews.com.
Right on! From what I can reckon, even with my lousy math, the figure of U.S. personnel killed in Iraq is at least 10 percent higher than the official Pentagon estimates. The actual figure is closer to 4,000 than 3,500. I have written the wire services several times about this issue but received no replies. It should be pointed out contractors are bound by the same rules of war as military personnel. It's just some of them disregard them. Sherwood Ross
by
Sherwood Ross (153 articles, 0 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 88 comments)
on Saturday, June 16, 2007 at 1:58:37 PM
According to Victoria Wayne, who served at the Reconstruction Logistics Directorate of the Corps of Engineers in Iraq, the military wanted to hide information showing that private guards were fighting and dying in large numbers because it would be perceived as bad news, the paper said.
"Wanted to hide information ..."
Is that new to any of us Iraqi patriots? For years, in the Arab World and elsewhere the rumor has been that scores of US soldiers are killed every month; the figures cited by the Pentagon have been far lower than reality holds.
Iraqis, true patriotic Iraqis who support the resistance, have always said matter-of-factly that more US soldiers are killed than is let on.
And so now we hear that there has been an active effort to suppress information regarding casualty figures.
And, I need to add, the private security contractors are ALL military men -- either former US military, or Brit or South African mercenaries and so on.
The majority of the more than 100 security companies operate outside of Iraqi law, The Post said.
If they operate outside Iraqi law, than they should be shown no quarter. They should be hunted down.
US private security companies are getting increasingly involved in military action in Iraq, fighting insurgents, enduring attacks and taking hundreds of casualties that have been sometimes concealed, The Washington Post reported Saturday.
I wonder how many thousands of Iraqi women and children these men have raped and butchered. Now the Lancet numbers become clearer, do they not?
The picture is becoming abundantly clearer in Iraq. The reason why Iraqis hate the occupation and the occupier is seen with increased clarity as more of these reports surface.
We have seen the videos of these mercenaries shooting at civilian cars. We have heard (and seen the aftermath) of the butchery of the US military.
Iraqis are spared no quarter and so they should hunt down and rid our land of this scourge. And the Iraqis who work with them ... France June/July 1944.
Do any of you remember Abeer? Where is her justice 18 months later? Where is the justice for her mother, father and sibling?
Iraqis, your lives are expendable whether you live in Iraq or beyond its borders, in foreign capitals or across the oceans. Learn that wisdom. There is no justice save in your own hands.
Don't sell your conscience for a few greenbacks to foreign powers.
MEANWHILE, I found this paragraph from David Ignatius' latest offering rather amusing:
The simple, low-tech answer to the IED threat is to reduce the number of targets -- by getting our troops off the streets during vulnerable daylight hours, to the extent possible. It's an interesting fact that very few IED attacks have been suffered by our elite Special Forces units, which attack al-Qaeda cells and Shiite death squads mostly at night, with devastating force. They blow in from nowhere and are gone minutes later, before the enemy can start shooting. That's the kind of asymmetry that evens the balance in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Hahahaha ... that's the kind of asymmetry known as chicken run. Gosh, ol Dave is acknowledging that the US military cannot and should not take on Iraqi fighters in the daylight. More like vampires at night.
Make sure to put out the garlic, bibi.
NEW BLOG: Just added Layla Anwar Arab Woman Blues to my list of Iraqi patriots, her latest posting was riveting and made me very, very angry.
:: Article nr. 33734 sent on 16-jun-2007 18:14 ECT
