Price of privatizing war may be U.S. reputation

[babylonsister]

Price of privatizing war may be U.S. reputation
Posted by the Asbury Park Press on 09/21/07
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snip//

The heavy use of private armies — "corporate warriors" is the term used by Brookings Institution expert Peter Singer — helps to hide the initial and catastrophic decision to limit the number of American troops deployed far below what many military experts said was necessary to pacify post-invasion Iraq.

Secrecy, another administration hallmark, prevented even the Congressional Research Service from getting a definitive count of the number of private contractors taxpayers support. "The executive branch either has not kept sufficient records to produce or has been unwilling to present basic, accurate information on the companies employed under U.S. government contracts and subcontracts in Iraq," the researchers reported in July.

Add the odor of political cronyism: Blackwater's founder, Erik Prince, has deep ties to the Republican Party and conservative religious organizations. He was a Republican congressional aide and briefly an intern in the White House of President George H.W. Bush, according to The News & Observer in Raleigh, N.C. When four Blackwater employees were murdered in Fallujah in 2004, the company turned for public relations and lobbying advice to the Alexander Strategy Group, a now-defunct Republican lobbying firm that was closely linked to former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay.

Meanwhile, the zone of lawlessness the Bush administration created for detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, for its global network of secret prisons and in its domestic surveillance program extended, as well, to private contractors. Under an order issued by the Coalition Provisional Authority, the American occupation bureaucracy that governed Iraq in the initial months after the invasion, private security contractors are immune from any legal action, including prosecution, that arises from their work. Nor are they subject to U.S. military law as are regular American forces. A law enacted in 2000 that conceivably could cover them hasn't been tested. Nor, Singer says, has a 2006 effort to bring the private forces under the military justice system been implemented.

And no one — not the White House nor the Pentagon nor, apparently, the State Department — heeded repeated reports of abuse and flagrant violence against Iraqis that have dogged the private security guards for years. "Everybody has known about these problems," Singer said in an interview. "They've been widely reported."

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http://www.app.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070921/OPINION/709210335/1030

[Kagemusha]

1. Uhhhhhh. I know this is Singer's pet issue but...

What about the problems with, you know, actual uniformed American troops?

[Amonester]

2. The US reputation not as much as the current dictator's and his cronies...

But still, a BIG majority of "ordinary people" in the world keep asking themselves:

"What the hell is happening with the United States, and why is nobody taking these war criminals OUT?"

Compared to the current bunch of human-rights offenders (for oil), Slobodan Milosevic was an angel!!