Here’s a brief case study (more to come) of one contract for the British “private security”company Aegis, recently awarded a $293 million security contract in Iraq by the United States government.
The man who created Aegis (Lt Col Tim Spicer) has a resume that reads like a list of indictments.
– Two soldiers under his command indiscrimantly shot and killed a catholic teenager. Convicted of murder, Spicer still defends their actions.
– Arrested for illegally importing arms to Papua New Guinea for the employees of his “Private Military Company” Sandline.
– The next year he was in trouble again for breaking an arms embargo in Sierra Leone on behalf of a Canadian businessman who is currently awaiting extradition to Thailand on fraud charges.
Now some perspective. In the United States if you want to drive a truck for a living, you’re required to pass periodical drug screenings. Any kind of criminal charge on your record could exclude you from working in the financial services arena. Want to become police or a firefighter? Get in line.
How about a job leading 20,000 mercenaries in a combat zone? Knowing that any diversion from the American military’s standard of conduct would motivate the enemy, what did the US government get in return for their quarter billion dollar investment?
From the UK’s Telegraph: A “trophy” video appearing to show security guards in Baghdad randomly shooting Iraqi civilians has sparked two investigations after it was posted on the internet, the Sunday Telegraph can reveal…
The video, which first appeared on a website that has been linked unofficially to Aegis Defence Services, contained four separate clips, in which security guards open fire with automatic rifles at civilian cars. All of the shooting incidents apparently took place on “route Irish”, a road that links the airport to Baghdad.
In one of the videoed attacks, a Mercedes is fired on at a distance of several hundred yards before it crashes in to a civilian taxi. In the last clip, a white civilian car is raked with machine gun fire as it approaches an unidentified security company vehicle. Bullets can be seen hitting the vehicle before it comes to a slow stop…
There are no clues as to the shooter but either a Scottish or Irish accent can be heard in at least one of the clips above Elvis Presley’s Mystery Train, the music which accompanies the video.
The video first appeared on the website www.aegisIraq.co.uk. The website states: “This site does not belong to Aegis Defence Ltd, it belongs to the men on the ground who are the heart and soul of the company.” The clips have been removed…
A message from Lt Col Spicer to his employees, which reads: “I am concerned about media interest in this site and I remind everyone of their contractual obligation not to speak to or assist the media without clearing it with the project management or Aegis London.
“Refrain from posting anything which is detrimental to the company since this could result in the loss or curtailment of our contract with resultant loss for everybody.”
Do the Iraqis have any power to hold these people accountable?
Capt Adnan Tawfiq of the Iraqi Interior Ministry which deals with compensation issues, has told the Sunday Telegraph that he has received numerous claims from families who allege that their relatives have been shot by private security contractors travelling in road convoys.
He said: “When the security companies kill people they just drive away and nothing is done. Sometimes we ring the companies concerned and they deny everything. The families don’t get any money or compensation. I would say we have had about 50-60 incidents of this kind.”
Crooks get rich, innocent Iraqis suffer. That’s the Iraq War in a nutshell.
Chris no praise from you on Ramsey Clark? 🙂
If Republicans are looking for someone to blame for the loss in Iraq they should look no further than the profiteers. If the contractors had been doing what they said they were going to do maybe their would have been a chance of success.
If Republicans are looking for someone to blame for the loss in Iraq they should look no further than the profiteers.
Hey Karl, shouldn’t we actually lose the war before you look for someone to blame? It’s just that everything is going so well over there, elections, new schools, new hope, new economy and the failed insurgency and all. I’m just thinking that we should actually have to lose the war before you start placing blame.
Or at least wait until it looks like were losing. And I don’t mean you should look to that bastion of political prowess, Rolling Stone, for indications of a lost war.
I Thought Bush was going to lay out his surrender strategy today. If Haliburton and other profiteers had stayed out of the war maybe things would have gone different. The real damage done by the Iraq fiasco is thet the US will not intervene in cases where milatary intervention is warranted, I hope people realize that it was Rumsfeld and Bush and Haliburton that lost the war, not the US milatary. At this point I hope we avoid Viet Nam syndrome.
Right – the soldiers are PISSED about the contractors. There are tons of stories out there in the UK press…in fact, this story, Aegis…it was editorialized in the Wall Street Journal over a year ago. I recall reading about this very same guy I just wrote about here in the summer of 2004 in the Journal.
None of these facts make it into the mainstream news cycle.
Any reason why our print media can have so much dirt on this guy over a year ago – and his firm posts videos of their own people murdering Iraqis?
Right, there’s ZERO OVERSIGHT! Bush isn’t going to crack down on anybody doing anything over there. It’s been a free for all since day one.
You want to know why the Iraqis aren’t trained? PRIVATE CONTRACTORS! They’ve failed.
I have a piece coming up on how contractors have killed our training efforts.
Connecticut Democrat Joe Lieberman, who just returned from Iraq, defended U.S. efforts there in Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal and a subsequent news conference on Capitol Hill, saying the military has “a good plan” for victory in Iraq, that progress is “visible and practical” and warning that such progress could be turned back by a premature withdrawal.
But the major media that played up Democratic Rep. John Murtha’s call for withdrawing U.S. troops largely ignored Lieberman’s remarks. Neither ABC nor CBS mentioned the senator in their nightly newscasts while NBC aired a short sound byte. And The Washington Post, New York Times, and USA Today ran not a word of Lieberman’s praise for U.S. efforts in Iraq.
You are asking why the media doesn’t have America’s best interest at heart??? Everyone on this blog has had their own personal issues with the media, such that, I think it is the only thing we all agree on. The American media sucks!!!!
The british and French are worse in that their entire media system is tabloid based. Political partisanship in the media is destroying, if not already destroyed, journalism. Just look at the New York Times. Can that even be called journalsim anymore???
Right – the soldiers are PISSED about the contractors.
I haven’t heard this. Is thit what soldiers have said “according” to the NYT or is there some reallity in this. I haven’t heard any of this from my friends or family in the military. (They are tired, though, of always having to fix what the NYT said in some misguided/all-out-lie of an article.)
I posted the actual words of a soldier over there in Iraq:
http://deadissue.com/archives/2005/11/28/cunningham-r-ca-war-profiteer-pleads-guilty/
Check out that personal account. There are tons of them out there. None in the MSM, but I’ve been reading about these contractors in the Wall Street Journal a lot more than I have in the New York Times!
Right, you never cease to amaze me with your application of double-standards. When Murtha says something, you accuse him of posturing for a Presidential run…then you quote JOE LIEBERMAN to me!?!
Mitt Romney is my governor, so I’m very familiar with the dynamic of a leader in office doing more work for their future campaigns than the job at hand…I find the practice of complaining about it exhausting and futile.
Murtha or Lieberman…on military affairs, I’ll take Murtha’s word before Lieberman’s every time. Lieberman is a Senator I tend to consider a hack in comparison to Biden, Warner, Specter and other heavyweights.
If he’s ever in his life given an inspiring speech, I haven’t heard it.
Right, you never cease to amaze me with your application of double-standards. When Murtha says something, you accuse him of posturing for a Presidential run…then you quote JOE LIEBERMAN to me!?!
Because Lieberman is one of the few Democrats I would ever consider voting for as President. It’s odd that you call this a double standard when one Democrat disagrees with another. Joe is a low-crazy, high morals kind of guy and I like him.
Murtha or Lieberman…on military affairs, I’ll take Murtha’s word before Lieberman’s every time. Lieberman is a Senator I tend to consider a hack in comparison to Biden, Warner, Specter and other heavyweights.
Wasn’t Mmrtha was a drill sargent for 6 years in the Marines, the only full time portion of his “37” years of service? Why would you trust a guy who was in military human resources over Joe Lieberman?
One thing about Biden, he thinks Al Queda will follow the Geneva Convention. What a loser.
I just gave myself a hernia from laughing too much…Right, it’s Monday! Save some material for later on in the week man!
Being that you’re from Vegas…I wonder what the odds would be of you voting for Lieberman. It would depend on the opponent I suppose.
Right, if any Democrat says anything negative, you’re the first one to chalk it up to future political aspirations.
Military human resources? Right, ask anyone who’s ever served in the enlisted side of the Army or Marines and they’ll tell you that drill sergeant is the toughest job there is.
I know you’re not serious w/ this last paragraph.
How about a quote? I read his report on how to win Iraq a while back, and I don’t remember him making that claim.
I just gave myself a hernia from laughing too much…Right, it’s Monday! Save some material for later on in the week man!
Being that you’re from Vegas…I wonder what the odds would be of you voting for Lieberman. It would depend on the opponent I suppose.
Yeah, your right, but I don’t feel that I want to smash my head in the refridgerator door when I think about voting for Lieberman.
Right, if any Democrat says anything negative, you’re the first one to chalk it up to future political aspirations.
Or playing to the extremist base, don’t forget that one. Lieberman doesn’t give me that sleazy liberal feel that Schumer, Kerry, Clinton(s), Dean et. al. give me. He’s the Democrat version of McCain to me, cares more about the Country than about the party.
Military human resources? Right, ask anyone who’s ever served in the enlisted side of the Army or Marines and they’ll tell you that drill sergeant is the toughest job there is.
How about I ask them how PT, first aid and rifle training qualifies Murtha as a terrorism expert?
Sure it’s a tough job, if we see any flabby, low discipline maggots in Iraq who want a career in the armed forces we can give Murtha a call.
How about a quote? I read his report on how to win Iraq a while back, and I don’t remember him making that claim.
Sorry, I was drifting off topic. I was watching the flogging of Ashcroft earlier this year and Biden was arguing that by interrogating criminals that his son in the military was more in danger because since we follow the geneva convention they will to. I’m paraphrasing because I don;t commit nonsense to memory.
Biden was all yakin’ about is he son is captured by al queda then the geneva convention would protect him and Ashcroft was messing is all up. Maybe it was Rumsfeld who was getting flogged…