Zeev's Turnips Talk Politics (ZTTP)

[BOREALIS]

100,000 mercenaries, the forgotten "Surge"

(( repost of easy on Jan 10,
http://investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?Message_id=16127715&txt2find=mercenaries ))

By Barry Lando
Posted on January 8, 2007, Printed on January 9, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/lando/46429/

What is striking about the current debate in Washington - whether to
"surge" troops to Iraq and increase the size of the U.S. Army - is that
roughly 100,000 bodies are missing from the equation: The number of
American forces in Iraq is not 140,000, but more like 240,000.

What makes up the difference is the huge army of mercenaries - known
these days as "private contractors." After the U.S. Army itself, they
are easily the second-largest military force in the country. Yet no one
seems sure of how many there are since they answer to no single
authority. Indeed, the U.S. Central Command has only recently started
taking a census of these battlefield civilians in an attempt to get a
handle on the issue...

The private contractors are Americans, South Africans, Brits, Iraqis and
a hodgepodge of other nationalities. Many of them are veterans of the
U.S. or other armed forces and intelligence services, who are now
deployed in Iraq (and Afghanistan and other countries) to perform duties
normally carried out by the U.S. Army, but at salaries two or three
times greater than those of American soldiers.

They work as interrogators and interpreters in American prisons; body
guards for top U.S. and Iraqi officials; trainers for the Iraqi army and
police; and engi-neers constructing huge new U.S. bases. They are often
on the front lines. In fact, 650 of them have been killed in Iraq since
the 2003 invasion

Their salaries, are, in the end, paid directly by the U.S. government -
or tacked on as huge additional "security charges" to the bills of
private American or other contractors. Yet the Central Command still
doesn't have a complete list of who they are or what they are up to. The
final figure could be much higher than 100,000.

The U.S. Congress, under Republican control until now, knows even less.

Yet these private contractors man their own helicopters and Humvees and
look and act just like American troops.

"It takes a great deal of vigilance on the part of the military
commander to en-sure contractor compliance," William L. Nash, a retired
general, told the Washington Post. "If you're trying to win hearts and
minds and the contractor is driving 90 miles per hour through the
streets and running over kids, that's not helping the image of the
American army. The Iraqis aren't going to distinguish between a
contractor and a soldier."

But who, in the end, do these contractors answer to? The U.S. Central
Command? Their company boss? Or the official they've been assigned to
protect?

A recent case in point: The former Iraqi minister of electricity, who
had been imprisoned on corruption charges, managed to escape in broad
daylight in the heavily fortified Green Zone. Iraqi officials claim he
was spirited away by con-tractors from a private security detail that
had been hired when he was minis-ter.

Which raises another question. Who has jurisdiction over these private
contrac-tors if they run afoul of the law in Iraq? Also, are they
supposed to follow the Geneva Conventions? Or George W. Bush's conventions?

For instance, according to The New York Times, although 20 civilian
contractors working in U.S. prisons in Afghanistan and Iraq - including
Abu Ghraib - have been charged with mistreating prisoners, none has ever
been successfully prosecuted.

Another point, which brings us back to the discussion about increasing
Ameri-can troop levels in Iraq: It would seem that the Pentagon could
outsource a "surge" by a simple accounting sleight of hand, quietly
contracting for another 10,000 or 20,000 mercenaries to do the job, and
the Congress and press would be none the wiser.

/Barry Lando, a former 60 Minutes producer, is the author of "Web of
Deceit: The History of Western Complicity in Iraq from Churchill to
Kennedy to George W. Bush." He also blogs at Barrylando.com
<http://barrylando.com/>. /


� 2007 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at:
http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/lando/46429/