Americas PRIVATE Armies are getting bigger each day

 

Americas PRIVATE Armies are getting bigger each day

There is a new war machine in play and it is growing faster than the US Army.  The use of private mercenaries is now a fact of life for America.  It started with the Dick Chaney outsourcing of military services (food, transportation, etc) when he was Secretary of Defense and continued into the Bush administration until it became a full industry worth over $100 billion per year and growing fast each day.

It is now impossible for America to raise an Army large enough to fight all our current wars and the ones we are planning with a volunteer Army.  But if the government is willing to pay private companies they will find and hire paid killers to do the job.

In fact there are currently over 108,000 private contractors in Afghanistan.  Most of these are not paid killers, but about 40,000 are paid killers.  What do these paid mercenaries do?

1.    They guard embassy staff

2.    Guard US service operations sites, warehouses, offices  

3.    Guard truck convoys, staging areas, terminals

4.    Guard gates into storage sites, ammo sites

5.    Provide private security to CIA operatives, special operation sites

6.    Guard key black sites and secret prisons

7.    Guard key local executives, government officials, US businessmen

8.    Guard American business operations inside foreign countries  

These so called security companies are beginning to rely on personal from third world countries to fill the ranks of their guards.  Fewer and fewer Americans are involved in these mercenary forces. Many in congress and in the military have concerns about the numbers.  It creates many problems around security, transparency, and control.

These mercenaries are not subject to the same rules and regulations the US controlled military personal are subject to: the Uniform Code of Military Conduct (UCMJ).  In most cases they are not covered by US law because they are in a foreign country. 

Private for profit contractors are not subject to these rules and regulations.  In fact they actually work for a private company and their allegiance is to the company that pays them, not to the US government.  The military has little control over these people other than through the managers of the private company.  The military, CIA, State Department (DOS) or Defense Department (DOD) can’t fire individual members of the mercenaries.  They can certainly ask that the private company fire them, but this is entirely up to the company.

These companies work on a contract and once that contract is in place the government has very little control.  They can’t cancel the contract without paying the balance on the contract or a huge settlement fee.

This reliance on private for profit companies for critical support services puts the US in a very bad position.  TPM reported the flowing: 

“Central Command spokesman Lt. Col. Joseph Kloppel sent TPM these numbers, declining to peg them to a specific date, and saying a breakdown of types of contractors is not available:

Third Country Nationals 16,400
Local/Host Nation 78,400
US Citizens 9,300
Total 104,100

As of June, the number of contractors was 73,968, so the new figure is a considerable increase. All of this data should be viewed skeptically; a commission on contracting created by Congress has complained about widely varying contractor counts and lack of good data.

Kloppel told TPM yesterday that there are roughly 9,000 private security contractors, though the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan says there are at least 14,000. That would not include private security for other countries or contractors. The Army Times published a story yesterday showing just how damaging bad contractors can be to the counterinsurgency strategy: along one route in Kandahar province, over 30 civilians have been killed or wounded by heavily armed security contractors, who are mostly Afghans.”

This industry is now so large they have their own trade group IPOA and have conventions attended by all US military groups; Army, Navy, Marines and all government departments DOD, DOS, etc.

Obama is expanding the use of these companies worldwide and in most of our operations.

All these companies have offices in Washington DC, but many are foreign corporations with their corporate headquarters in foreign countries like Cypress.  This removes them even further from US control.

These companies have contracts with the US government and with other countries around the world.  They might be protecting a dictator in a country the US has bad relations with at the same time they are providing security for the DOD.  They might be providing security for foreign operations that could conflict with their duties to a US government operation.

All mercenary contracts are “private” and never disclosed.  So determining what the company interest is in any given country is hard to do.

Is this really what we should be doing? Should America be hiring private for profit companies to help us fight our wars?