LAT, Rosa Brooks, Outsourcing Foreign Policy: WAR FOR SALE -- CHEAP!

[DeepModem Mom]

Outsourcing foreign policy
The latest Blackwater controversy exposes a larger effort to auction off key government roles to the highest bidder.
September 21, 2007

WAR FOR SALE -- CHEAP! Somewhat tarnished but still offers significant profit-making opportunities for the entrepreneurial. Inquire at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., Washington, D.C. Additional components of U.S. foreign policy also for sale (including, but not limited to, intelligence gathering, humanitarian assistance and counter-terrorism). You probably haven't seen that ad on Craigslist or in the classified section of your local paper. But believe me, that ad, or something very much like it, has been circulating quietly in certain corporate circles for several years.

Erik Prince, CEO of Blackwater USA (which describes itself as "the most comprehensive professional military, law enforcement, security, peacekeeping and stability operations company in the world") has seen the ad. So have Jerry Hoffman, CEO of ArmorGroup, and Herb Lanese, CEO of DynCorp. The ad has also made its way to CACI, Haliburton and its subsidiary, Kellogg Brown & Root, and the rest of the corporations that make money doing the things we used to assume only the U.S. government did -- such as fight our wars, protect our diplomats, interrogate suspected terrorists and engage in nation-building.

This week's fatal Baghdad shooting involving Blackwater employees drew fresh attention to U.S. reliance on private security contractors. (The incident, which sparked angry protests from the Iraqi government, left 11 Iraqis dead.) But despite the renewed controversy, most media coverage of the role of private contractors has focused on relatively mundane issues -- the legal vacuum in which contractors operate in Iraq, for instance -- and missed the true blockbuster story: the wholesale privatization of war and U.S. foreign policy.

When I say that the legal vacuum in which contractors operate is a relatively mundane issue, I don't mean that it's unimportant. It's not. In the absence of clear rules and accountability mechanisms for contractors, abuses -- from waste and fraud to assault, torture and murder -- are inevitable. As an editorial in this paper noted on Wednesday: "The massive, poorly regulated, poorly controlled and even downright secretive outsourcing of key military and security jobs to private contractors has gone too far. Congress is overdue for some oversight." That's right -- but it's a major understatement.

What's been happening in Iraq -- and in Afghanistan, Colombia, Somalia and the Pentagon and the State Department -- goes far beyond the "outsourcing of key military and security jobs." For years, the administration has been quietly auctioning off U.S. foreign policy to the highest corporate bidder -- and it may be too late for us to buy it back....

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-brooks21sep21,0,4584140.column?coll=la-home-commentary

[eleny]

1. After today's Senate hearings - this should get interesting

One whistle blower who testified today was a sub to a larger company. He alleges that they asked him to falsify billings. He said "No!". Next time they asked him he said "Hell no!". And the last time they asked him to do so he told them that they were going to jail. And they took him and his people out into Baghdad, I think it was the city, and told them they could get to the airport on their own. Mercifully, they were able to get out of Iraq alive.

[DeepModem Mom]

2. What a story! nt

[eleny]

3. Byron Dorgan held the hearings

They were on the net only. If they have them on demand, it's worth the time. They weren't that long. Jeremy Scahill who wrote "Blackwater" testified, too.

One guy who also worked for a contractor decided to blow the whistle on some stuff. He said he either worked for the FBI in some capacity or was going to report what he knew to the FBI. When he told that to our military they held him for 91 days and interrogated him every day along with psych torture of loud music and lights on in his cell 24/7. He even has it in writing that they told him he could not have a lawyer. When one of the senators asserted that he was an American and therefore had the right of Habeas Corpus I thought to myself "Yeah, right". Our military finally gave him $10.00, put him in the middle of Baghdad and said he was on his own.

The hearings were short but hair raising.

[DeepModem Mom]

4. Whoa. Thanks, again, eleny! nt