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Still no Oversight or Accountability for Contractors in Iraq

Still no Oversight or Accountability for Contractors in Iraq

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Another must-read, by Jeremy Scahill from today’s U.K. Guardian, “A very private war.”

Four years into the occupation, there is absolutely no effective system of oversight or accountability governing contractors and their operations. They have not been subjected to military justice, and only two cases have ever reached US civilian courts, under the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act, which covers some contractors working abroad. (One man was charged with stabbing a fellow contractor, in a case that has yet to go to trial, while the other was sentenced to three years for possession of child-pornography images on his computer at Abu Ghraib prison.) No matter what their acts in Iraq, contractors cannot be prosecuted in Iraqi courts, thanks to US-imposed edicts dating back to Paul Bremer’s post-invasion Coalition Provisional Authority.

The internet is alive with videos of contractors seemingly using Iraqi vehicles for target practice, much to the embarrassment of the firms involved. Yet, despite these incidents, and although 64 US soldiers have been court-martialled on murder-related charges, not a single armed contractor has been prosecuted for any crime, let alone a crime against an Iraqi. US contractors in Iraq reportedly have a motto: “What happens here today, stays here today.”…

In part, these contractors do mundane jobs that traditionally have been performed by soldiers, from driving trucks to doing laundry. These services are provided through companies such as Halliburton, KBR and Fluor and through their vast labyrinth of subcontractors. But increasingly, private personnel are engaged in armed combat and “security” operations. They interrogate prisoners, gather intelligence, operate rendition flights, protect senior occupation officials – including some commanding US generals – and in some cases have taken command of US and international troops in battle. (my emphasis)…

Much has been made of the administration’s “failure” to build international consensus for the invasion of Iraq, but perhaps that was never the intention. Almost from the beginning, the White House substituted international diplomacy with lucrative war contracts. When US tanks rolled into Iraq in March 2003, they brought with them the largest army of “private contractors” ever deployed in a war.

Please go and read the whole thing. The privatized mercenary revolution that this article describes is very disturbing.

Halliburton and KBR in the News

Halliburton and KBR in the News

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Halliburton and KBR have broken up – and breaking up is hard to do. But no sad faces, y’hear? Everything’s A-OK for the billionaire war and oil profit set.

They are diggin’ the new headquarters in Dubai – way better than Houston. Texas is so over. Everything’s bigger in the United Arab Emirates.

Halliburton’s second quarter profits more than doubled.

Halliburton Co.’s profit more than doubled in the second quarter, getting a $933-million lift from the separation of former subsidiary KBR Inc. But even without that gain, the results still beat the consensus Wall Street forecasts for the oilfield services contractor. Its shares rose 4 percent. Earnings were $1.5 billion for the April-to-June period, which amounted to $1.62 per share, compared with income of $591 million, or 55 cents a share, in the year-ago period, Halliburton said yesterday. Revenue in the quarter rose 20 percent, to $3.7 billion from $3.1 billion a year ago.

Despite various scandals, the war profiteering and corruption continue. It’s such a great feeling to know that we support such great causes with our tax dollars – we are so lucky that they get all those no-bid contracts…

And what a relief! A federal judge has decided that whistleblowers may not sue U.S. companies for fraud if payment for services was made in Iraqi (not U.S.) money. That’s going to save a LOT of aggravation.

Oh, yeah, and good ole’ Dick Cheney is still drawing one and a half million dollars a year from Halliburton for his excellent work – no conflict of interest there, nope. Nope.

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US Concentration Camps?

US Concentration Camps?

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KBR, the engineering and construction subsidiary of Halliburton Co. was awarded a $385 million 1-year contract (with 4 1-year options) from the Department of Homeland Security to establish “temporary detention and processing capabilities to expand existing ICE Detention and Removal Operations Program facilities in the event of an emergency influx of immigrants into the U.S., or to support the rapid development of new programs.”

“We are especially gratified to be awarded this contract,” an executive vice president, Bruce Stanski, said in a statement, “because it builds on our extremely strong track record in the arena of emergency management support.”

It’s amazing someone can stand up and say something like that, given the historical facts. Sigh.

So, the question is, why do we need concentration camps in the US, and who’s really gonna sit in them??

Terrorists? Immigrants to be deported? Victims of natural (or unnatural) events? Poor people? Old people? Whoever doesn’t sign up for the drug benefit written by the insurance industry? (the last a lame attempt at humor, sorry)

American citizens culled for one of the rapidly-developing “new programs”?

What kind of programs require major expansion of detention centers, each capable of holding 5,000 people?

Let’s ask the Bush administration exactly what it means by the “rapid development of new programs,” which might require the construction of a new network of detention / labor / concentration camps across the United States!

“Almost certainly this is preparation for a roundup after the next 9/11 for Mid-Easterners, Muslims and possibly dissenters,” says Daniel Ellsberg, a former military analyst who in 1971 released the Pentagon Papers, the U.S. military’s account of its activities in Vietnam. “They’ve already done this on a smaller scale, with the ‘special registration’ detentions of immigrant men from Muslim countries, and with Guantanamo.”

Peter Dale Scott, author of Drugs, Oil, and War: The United States in Afghanistan, Colombia, and Indochina, suggests that it could be a preparation for conditions of martial law, and notes that a multimillion program for detention facilities “will greatly increase NORTHCOM’s ability to respond to any domestic disorders.”

…in April 2002, Defense Dept. officials implemented a plan for domestic U.S. military operations by creating a new U.S. Northern Command (CINC-NORTHCOM) for the continental United States. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld called this “the most sweeping set of changes since the unified command system was set up in 1946.”

The NORTHCOM commander, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld announced, is responsible for “homeland defense and also serves as head of the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD)…. He will command U.S. forces that operate within the United States in support of civil authorities. The command will provide civil support not only in response to attacks, but for natural disasters.”

John Brinkerhoff later commented on PBS that, “The United States itself is now for the first time since the War of 1812 a theater of war. That means that we should apply, in my view, the same kind of command structure in the United States that we apply in other theaters of war.”

…NORTHCOM conducted its highly classified Granite Shadow exercise in Washington. As William Arkin reported in the Washington Post, “Granite Shadow is yet another new Top Secret and compartmented operation related to the military’s extra-legal powers regarding weapons of mass destruction. It allows for emergency military operations in the United States without civilian supervision or control.”

For an excellent, but chilling overview of some of the possibilities here (including labor camps, dissident and “Fifth Columnist” roundups, and so on), take a look at “Bush’s Mysterious ‘New Programs'” by Nat Parry, Consortium News, posted February 23, 2006. at AlterNet.

Way Beyond “Republican”…

Way Beyond “Republican”…

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Some people want to argue with me about the effects of this administration on this country. I say words are cheap, propaganda is more effective than it should be, and I judge by actions and evidence. What we are seeing is not a Republican agenda, but a wholesale reorganization of what America is all about. A must-read is Howard Zinn’s article in the Guardian, “It is not only Iraq that is occupied. America is too.”

I wake up thinking: the US is in the grip of a president surrounded by thugs in suits who care nothing about human life abroad or here, who care nothing about freedom abroad or here, who care nothing about what happens to the earth, the water or the air, or what kind of world will be inherited by our children and grandchildren.

More Americans are beginning to feel, like the soldiers in Iraq, that something is terribly wrong.

Starting a new category today called Alien-nation (from “American Idiot” by Green Day). If I have some extra time, I’ll go back and add the category to some archived posts. Meanwhile, here are the Alien-nation examples for today.

Depleted uranium – a weapon of mass destruction for all.

The KBR division of Halliburton, which is responsible for carrying out the no-bid Pentagon contracts, experienced a 284 percent increase in operating profits during the second quarter of this year, including $70 million in “award” fees. Although government auditors have repeatedly cited the company for apparent fraud, improper billing, bribery, and gross overcharging for services there, the administration (and our representatives) have ignored even the auditors’ requests to withhold a portion of payments to the company.

The Christian right was saved from dying out with the Bush administration’s tens of millions of taxpayer dollars to their grassroots organizations – while they starved out family planning and AIDS-related organizations. So much for separation of church and state.

From the Progress Report

D’OH FOR JOHN DOE: ” …playing to the interests of John Doe — belies a reality that Treasury Secretary John Snow recently acknowledged, “the fruits of strong economic growth are not spreading equally to less educated Americans.” A notable characteristic of  the recent economic growth is the “unusually uneven“ economic gains distribution: ”exceptionally fast growth in corporate profits [has been] coupled with exceptionally slow growth in wages and salaries.” In what Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan referred to as “a very disturbing trend,” the income gap has widened to a chasm that “by some measures is the biggest in the United States since the Roaring ’20s.” Though infamous for his belief in the free-market, Greenspan testified to Congress that “a free market, democratic society is ill-served by an economy in which the rewards are distributed in a way” that excludes the majority. How much of the majority? According to the Labor Department, “the nearly 80 percent of Americans who rely mostly on hourly wages [have] barely maintained their purchasing power.” Unfortunately, President Bush continues to champion his 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, despite the fact that they “were too slanted toward upper earners to be particularly effective economic medicine.”