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WHEN Congress reconvenes today, it should take a close look at
how the Bush administration is paying billions of taxpayer dollars
to private military contractors.
The biggest beneficiary is Halliburton, which was headed by Dick
Cheney until 2000, when he resigned to run for vice president with
George W. Bush.
Halliburton has received $1.7 billion in no-bid contracts for
work in Iraq, and is set to get hundreds of millions more in the
near future, The Washington Post reported last week.
Halliburton and its subsidiary, Brown and Root, also earned $183
million from U.S. combat operations in Afghanistan.
But this is not simply about private military contractors getting
rich from taxpayer dollars. The use of PMFs (private military firms)
— some of which provide mercenaries for actual combat missions —
raises deeper questions.
To whom are their workers accountable — America, or to their
private employers?
To whom must PMFs explain their activities? Are they accountable
to Congress and the American people? Or do they simply have to
answer to their private stockholders?
Is there any real Congressional oversight?
P.W. Singer’s pathbreaking new book, Corporate Warriors: The Rise
of the Privatized Military Industry, asks these questions and more.
Singer is a scholar at the Brookings Institution in Washington,
D.C.
Some PMFs, like Brown and Root, provide military support
services, such as delivering military equipment, preparing meals for
soldiers, delivering mail and putting out oil-field fires. Others,
like Military Professional Resources Inc., provide direct advice and
technical support for combat operations.
Still others, like Executive Outcomes, engage in actual combat.
Using former soldiers from apartheid South Africa, Executive
Outcomes fought on both sides of some armed conflicts, such as the
bitter battles in Angola. Some PMFs help provoke violent coups.
During the first Gulf War, one of every 100 Americans in that
region worked for a PMF. Today in Iraq, one of every 10 Americans
works for a private military contractor.
PMFs get hired everywhere, by all sides, as long as the employers
have enough cash or unmined mineral resources. PMFs have found work
in Colombia, the Congo, Bosnia, Sudan, Kuwait, Sri Lanka, New
Guinea, Nigeria, Sierra Leone and Equatorial Africa.
Some PMFs provide desperately needed security to humanitarian
groups, to U.N. workers, to multinational corporations.
But minimal oversight can lead to problems. During the Balkan
conflict, private employees of DynCorp., most of whom are U.S.
military veterans, were implicated in sex crimes, prostitution
rackets and illegal arms trading.
The rapid growth of PMFs raises other troubling questions.
“Predictable power balances and deterrence relationships are now
made unstable,” Singer writes. “With such diversity, it becomes more
difficult to figure who exactly are the ‘good guys.’”
Singer questions the “lax and haphazard way in which governments
have privatized their own military services over the last decade.
The simple fact that one can outsource does not always mean one
should.”
Author Singer told the Gazette he has grown even more concerned
since finishing his book, published in June.
The Bush administration hired three PMFs to train military,
paramilitary and police units in postwar Iraq. Facing increasing
dangers and insurance payments, some private workers are beginning
to back out of those commitments.
That means U.S. troops must work even harder. If they leave their
posts, soldiers face military court martial. Private contractors do
not.
The Bush administration also sent 200 Marines and Navy Seals to
help restore order in Liberia. But privately, behind the scenes, the
White House did much more, awarding an initial $10 million contract
to a PMF to work in that troubled nation.
Congress should hold hearings to ask questions about this
exploding industry. Peter Singer should be one of the first
witnesses called to testify.
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