Ugly Trend Behind Green Zone Jail Break

[rodeodance]

I hear very little about this jail break.


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/noah-shachtman/ugly-trend-behind-green-z_b_36722.html

Ugly Trend Behind Green Zone Jail Break
.............
In a war filled with too-strange-for-fiction tales, this may be the strangest yet. Was Iraq's former electricity minister, jailed on corruption charges, really "sprung from a Green Zone prison this weekend by U.S. security contractors?" If so, it's the latest chapter in an ugly story: zero accountability, undermining the American military, again and again.

Brookings Institution Senior Fellow P.W. Singer -- who wrote Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry, which has become the ur-text on this new wave of mercenaries -- tells me:

So the Great Private Military Escape joins the lengthy list vying to be made into a bad Hollywood movie (sorry, Blood Diamonds). My other favorites include the Triple Canopy lawsuit which alleges that a company supervisor told his employees that he had "never shot anyone with my handgun before" and then fired his handgun through the windshield of a parked taxi, killing the driver; the Aegis "trophy video," in which employees posted footage on the web of shooting at Iraqi cars on the web, set to Elvis music; the Donald Vance case, in which a US contractor was held 97 days without charges in a US military prison; the various Blackwater episodes, ranging from the 4 guys sent to Fallujah without maps, intell, or proper equipment, to the plane crash in Afghanistan, in which the plane lacked basic safety equipment and didn't even follow basic flight safety procedures, flying by guesswork into a box canyon, killing 3 civilians and 3 US Army; and of course don't forget the wonderfully named Custer Battles charging for all sorts of fraud at Baghdad airport, such as a bomb-sniffing dog that in the words of a US Army colonel turned out to be a guy with his pet.

At what point do we accept that this whole situation has gone well beyond the original idea of privatization and start to rein it in? Then again, the Army Under Secretary testified to Congress 2 months back that the Army had never authorized Halliburton or its subcontractors to carry weapons or guard convoys, denying we even had firms handling these jobs. So, I guess its like the end of Dallas, where the whole private military industry in Iraq (estimated by Centcom to be 100,000) was "just a dream."

[Fridays Child]

1. Just gave this its first "greatest" recommendation. Hope it gets many more.

[Drum]

2. Happy to Rec this...scrutiny and examination of this is needed! nt

[Higans]

3. A guy and his pet. Classic. K&R

[alfredo]

4. K&R

[lapfog_1]

5. Custer Battles...

That's a great name! How ironic that we have a Custer in Iraq.

General Custer: Your miserable life is not worth the reversal of a Custer decision!

[Disturbed]

6. A Prison break from the Green Zone?

Wow! Will that be on Corp TV?

[bahrbearian]

7. Thanks for Link ,, Good reading

[Jeffersons Ghost]

8. K&R

[MsLeopard]

9. Recommended

and :kick:

[HuffleClaw]

10. 'undermining the American military' ????

on direct orders of cheney i expect. so clearly they were hiding their blatant profiteering.

[IWantAChange]

11. Another example of that alternate Repug Universe - Bizzaroland.

:wtf:

[The Backlash Cometh]

12. Worst idea ever: Privatizing anything that the taxpayer funded

military was responsible for. It's like they're driving in their private trucks into Fort Knox and just loading up and going on their merry way.


Let me be the first to say, Capitalism Sucks!

[AtomicKitten]

13. It is a microcosm of dysfunction

that our media has been remiss in not reporting adequately, if at all.