Mercenary Blogging

by digby

Ana Marie Cox dredges up that old Kos chestnut about the mercenaries to point out that the families of those men who were ritually killed in Fallujah are suing Blackwater for failing to adequately protect their employees. She retracts her earlier assertion that “liberal bloggers famously derided these contractors as mercenaries who deserved to die” when Attaturk pointed out that it was really Markos alone on that. (She does add “I do suspect that Markos is rarely alone in his opinions on such matters” but whatever.)I can only speak for myself when I say I didn’t ever even call them mercenaries because I doubted they’d fight a war for anyone but the United States or one of its allies.

I have certainly had a lot of misgivings about the outsourcing of the military over the years, however, which I don’t think is quite the same thing. Cox brings up the fact that the families of these men claim they “operate as part of the ‘military force,’ but they don’t have the same level of protection, they don’t have the same level of survivor benefits, and — perhaps most tragically — their families don’t have the right to find out the details of their deaths. And a lot of them have died.” I was unaware of that part of the issue, but it doesn’t surprise me. The whole “contractor” scam is filled with unaccountability from the billions of dollars the companies are paid, to the fact that the contractors don’t necessarily fall under legal jurisdiction of any kind, either military or civilian.

From Tara McElvey’s article in last September’s TAP:

On May 7, 2004, shortly after the Abu Ghraib scandal broke, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Acting Secretary of the Army Les Brownlee appeared before the Senate Armed Services Committee. Brownlee said they would make sure individuals “responsible for the shameful and illegal acts of abuse are held accountable.” Eighty-nine members of the U.S. military have been prosecuted for detainee-related misconduct since the start of Operation Enduring Freedom. And recent reports of rape, murder, and other crimes in Haditha, Mahmudiya, and other Iraqi towns indicate that some soldiers responsible for such acts will be held accountable.

Not so for independent contractors like Nakhla, who has been implicated in charges of rape, torture, and assault during his one-year stint in Iraq. He is one of 25,000 civilian contractors who have worked for the military in Iraq since hostilities began. Currently, more than 15 contractors are under Justice Department investigations. While that number may seem small set against 25,000, many observers say instances of contractor abuse are vastly underreported by victims — and underinvestigated by the military. Only one civilian, David A. Passaro, a CIA contract interrogator, has been indicted — for assault on detainee Abdul Wali, who died in June 2003. Passaro’s trial opened on August 7.

These cases are moving forward at a snail’s pace. That’s partly because it’s not clear which laws can be applied to a nonmilitary person who commits a crime on foreign soil. In legal terms, this means untangling a web of justice that no one — not the administration, military, the public, and certainly not the contractors with powerful government ties — seems intent on untangling. In practical terms, it may mean that American employees, working alongside the U.S. military and on their payroll, committed crimes in Iraq for which they will never be punished.

They estimate that there 100,000 contractors in Iraq today, I wouldn’t be surprised if there are significant numbers more. They don’t operate under the auspices of the military and they answer to their “bosses” not the generals. This is one of the most under-reported and least investigated aspects of the occupation. Despite my undying fealty to Commandante Markos, I’m actually thrilled that the families are getting their day in court. Maybe it will shake some of this loose and we can see exactly what our tax dollars have been paying for — and what they aren’t.

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