In my book, I examine a new industry that has exploded in size to support the Iraq war. This new industry is not like the old familiar Military Industrial Complex, especially since they don’t usually manufacture anything; they supply service – armed security or logistics. I dubbed this new and burgeoning industry the War Service Industry. In contrast, they have a trade organization with the strange and Orwellian name—the International Peace Operations Association (IPOA).

IPOA is planning to have their annual summit next week in Washington DC. I had a chance recently to sit down and talk to the president and founder of IPOA, Doug Brooks. Mr. Brooks is an affable guy who occasionally comments on my blog posts here. He is genuinely enthusiastic about the war service industry (he calls it the Peace and Stability Industry). Until the Iraq war, this industry and his members of IPOA worked on various conflicts around the world, often in cooperation with UN missions. Since the huge amount of money that has been shoved into the Iraq war, the mission is new and very different. There has been an emergence of large players, such as Blackwater and DynCorp, into this area and they joined IPOA.

Mr. Brooks and I had a lively conversation when we met, especially when he said, as he has in his comments to my blog, that in this war “the use of contractors has ensured that Iraq is the best supported, best supplied military operation in history” When I would challenge him on that statement based on the research for my book and the plethora of government reports showing that is not so, he replies, “I note that no one, in books or the media, has come up with an example that disproves the statement. The media focuses on problems and looks for the 'big lie', but the enormous success of the privately supported logistics and supply mission is the 'big truth' that gets ignored because it ain't a 'spicy' story.”

OK, so all of these stories in the media of lack of supplies for the troops and all the stories in my book about troops outside the large bases living in abysmal conditions and all the government reports about the failures of the contractors are all wrong. My meeting with him got surreal when he told me that the troops were getting fat because they were so well fed…I tried to tell him that may be true at the big bases but not out where the contractors refuse to go. He just kept giving me a sunny smile.

There was one area that we agreed on. He said that the contractors needed good oversight and transparency and that IPOA had a code of conduct that each member company had to sign. He made it a point for me to know that KBR was not a member, probably because it was becoming more and more clear in the news and government reports that KBR has had questionable practices and costs. He also mentioned that IPOA was working on how to put contractors under US legal statutes. I mentioned that Blackwater was one of his members and he said that they were working with him on the laws. (This was just before the big Blackwater Nisoor Square shooting scandal hit.) Ironically, the main legal advisor for Blackwater is Joseph Schmitz, the former DOD Inspector General who left under a black cloud because of allegations that he limited IG investigations of Paul Wolfowitz and others.

But I have to give Mr. Brooks credit. After the Blackwater scandal hit and there were allegations of wrongdoing by Blackwater, IPOA’s executive committee “authorized the Standards Committee to initiate an independent review process of Blackwater USA to ascertain whether Blackwater USA’s processes and procedures were fully sufficient to ensure compliance with the IPOA Code of Conduct….” Blackwater quit the IPOA two days later.

Mr. Brooks can’t be happy that he woke up yesterday to find out that the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIRIG) has issued a report on DynCorp’s contract to train the Iraqi police.

According to the Associated Press:
[SIGIR IG]Bowen had been trying to review a February 2004 contract to DynCorp awarded by the State Department's Bureau for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL). The company was to provide housing, food, security, facilities, training support, law enforcement staff with various specialties as well as weapons and armor for personnel assigned to the program.
"I guess it's a familiar theme," Bowen said Monday, in that problems have previously been documented with both DynCorp and the agency overseeing the contract.

Although training has been conducted and equipment provided under the contract, the bureau is in the process of trying to organize and validate invoices and does not believe its records accurately show the reasons for most payments that were made, the report said.

"As a result, INL does not know specifically what it received for most of the $1.2 billion in expenditures under its DynCorp contract for the Iraqi Police Training Program," Bowen said in a new 18-page report.
It sounds like Mr. Brooks might have to ask for another Executive Committee review, especially since the IPOA code of conduct says, in part:

“Signatories understand the unique nature of the conflict/post-conflict environment in which many of their operations take place, and they fully recognize the importance of clear and operative lines of accountability to ensuring effective peace operations and to the long-term viability of the industry.”

As this war service industry or, if you prefer, peace and stability industry gets more and more scrutiny, Mr. Brooks may lose some more members if he really does enforce the code of conduct. Dyncorp is a “gold sponsor” of his annual summit. Blackwater paid a membership price of $15,000 to join IPOA. IPOA is offering a training seminar in December to learn how to comply with the IPOA code of conduct. They better move quickly or their membership might dwindle as investigators finally begin to peel back the layers of this new war service industry. I wish him luck.

Dina Rasor

In his column yesterday, New York Times columnist was writing about the various problems with our mess in Iraq. But I was excited when I came across this section of this column:

Last week Paul Rieckhoff, an Iraq war combat veteran who directs Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, sketched for me the apocalypse to come. Should Baghdad implode, our contractors, not having to answer to the military chain of command, can simply “drop their guns and go home.” Vulnerable American troops could be deserted by those “who deliver their bullets and beans.”

(Note: Hat tip to fellow Huffington Post blogger Paul Rieckhoff for filling in Frank Rich on this subject. In full disclosure, Paul’s IAVA was the preliminary fiscal sponsor for my Follow the Money Project and several of the soldiers in his organization were profiled in my book.)

Anyone who has been reading my blog posts here for the past few months knows that I have been pounding away on this problem that goes way beyond Blackwater. It is also the premise for my book, Betraying Our Troops: The Destructive Results of Privatizing War. In the book, I follow 11 soldiers and contactor employees through the buildup of the war, the war, and the occupation to illustrate how the contractors hurt the mission of our troops by not doing their full job and how our soldiers did without while contractor billings hit new heights.

Paul rightly talks about a potential problem if Iraq gets hairy and the contractors just leave and don’t supply the logistics for the troops. I call it the “Just Say No” problem that could become catastrophic for the US Army and Marines if Iraq melts down.

What the media and the Congress now need to understand is that the problem of the contractors not doing the work that the troops need has been going on, in a rolling way, since even before the invasion. It has been weakening our military and their mission way beyond what Blackwater and the other private security contractors have done, especially since the US Army has now basically turned their supply lines and logistics over to private companies. There is also much more money involved…Blackwater has billed over a billion dollars since the war started but KBR, the main supplier of logistics, has billed over $26 billion dollars, averaging around a half a billion a month in billings.

My book is full of these examples. Probably the most egregious examples is that KBR and other companies, have refused to consistently go beyond the safe bases to supply the troops in the field with food, water, logistics and the other necessities of war. KBR’s contract with the Army requires them to supply food and logistics within 400 KM of major bases. Recently, there was a piece on NPR about a US soldier who was killed in Mosul. After his parents spoke about their anguish, they said that they were very upset that they had to send him basic supplies, even as mundane as underwear. They were also concerned about the other troops who did not have family who could send them regular supplies and the fact that they had to do without.

Even on the bases, KBR and other contractors find ways not to do the work but get paid for it. Here is a letter from a soldier who wrote about his frustrations with KBR in Stars and Stripes in 2005:

At Forward Operating Base Speicher, we have experienced similar issues with KBR. You drive by hundreds of air-conditioning units sitting idle, yet if you place a work order to have an A/C unit installed, it is denied. “There’s no money for new installations,” you are told by a man wearing a T-shirt and shorts inside a nicely cooled building. So you go back to your oven.

Then two of the three A/C units in your barracks unit break down due to an electrical problem at the breaker box. After attempts to get it fixed, you finally get an “emergency” work order response from KBR — a week after it happened. The gentleman tells you that it’s not an emergency (nothing is on fire) so there isn’t a thing he can (or will) do. But he does call the safety inspector because of the poor condition of the breaker box. The inspector calls “Facilities” and, next thing you know, there are six KBR employees standing around saying they can’t fix it. For them to fix it, they would have to install a breaker box, which is not authorized because it would be a “new” installation.

I agree the employees are not at fault. I have little doubt that, given the green light, they would have repaired, replaced, installed as necessary to help us out. Their hands are tied. If they do work they aren’t supposed to, they lose their job. I doubt they envisioned things being the way they are when they took the job.

It seems KBR, at the administrative level, has found a way to get paid for doing a job without ever actually having to do it. (For his sake, I have left out the name of the soldier, even though it is public.)

Just this weekend, a former KBR manager told me that in his area of logistics, at least two thirds of the KBR employees did not have anything to do. Keep in mind that KBR is having their employees record twelve hours a day, seven days a week on their timecards. I am not just relying on anecdotal stories. The GAO and the DCAA have written reports, even before the war, warning about these problems. My website has a list of them at www.followthemoneyproject.org.

Thanks Mr. Rich for understanding this problem and trying to bring it to the public. Now the Congress has to take the initiative to do something about this before it becomes a catastrophic problem. Using these contractors for logistics in a war zone has become the new normal for the US Army and our troops will be left in the lurch as long as the contractors and their employees can just say no.

Dina Rasor

Another day, another story on an out of control private security contractor shooting. This time it is an Australian run company, Unity Resources Group, was returning from escorting a USAID subcontractor convoy. They shot two women in a car. The Washington Post reports, “’A vehicle got close to them and they opened fire on it randomly as if they were in the middle of a confrontation. You won't find a head. The brain is scattered on the ground,’ said Ahmed Kadhim Hussein, a police officer at the scene. ‘I am shaking as I am trying to describe to you what happened. We are not able to eat. These were innocent people. Is it so natural for them to shoot innocent people?’”

The public is finally learning about these companies and the havoc that they have been wreaking on the Iraqi citizens for years. Many of these past attacks were not routinely reported or reported on by the media. Since the Blackwater shooting in September, the Iraqi government has found its voice and the press is now paying attention to these attacks.

Private Security Contractors, part of what I call the War Service Industry, don’t just guard diplomats. Except for KBR who has their security provided by the US Army, every contractor in Iraq who delivers a service or builds something needs private security contractors to protect them. So these security contractors escort company convoys of supplies and equipment, protect job sites and escort convoys of personnel. The problem is how they do it. They have a different goal than the US Army. The Army is trying to secure areas and win over various sectarian factions but the private security contractors are just trying to get their job done…such as moving equipment and people from point A to point B and they don’t want to deal with the Iraqis on the road.

While researching my book, I came across Will Hough, a very impressive ex-Marine who was hired as a security guard for the now defunct Custer Battles company. He mainly did convoy work and was very upset on how his company treated the Iraqis while running their convoys. I was so moved by his story that I devoted a whole chapter on his experiences. Here is an excerpt:

"Custer Battles hired Kurdish guards to go along with the American guards on these convoys. Many of the Kurds were barely out of their teens, and Hough worried for them. According to Hough, Custer Battles sometimes would only supply one helmet per SUV, and the American guard usually wore it. Bothered by this, Hough tried to scrounge up enough helmets for the young Kurds. He did not feel right leaving them so unprotected.

When he was traveling with his Kurdish guards through various towns providing protection to convoys, Hough told them not to shoot at any of the civilians unless they were fired upon. They were confused and told him they were taught by the other American guards to shoot randomly at people while going through the town to keep everyone back from the convoys and it was all right to hit civilians with gunfire. It was important to remember that these Kurds had a natural animosity toward Iraqis because of Saddam’s killings and suppression of the Kurds. However, Hough was stricken when he heard this because he knew that would just cause the civilians to attack them the next time the convoys went through the town. He strongly told them not to shoot civilians. He taught them hand signals to show civilians on the street and in cars, they would understand, to 'keep back from the convoy.'”

According to Hough, shortly after that, a leader of one of the convoys told his crew, to not let cars near the convoy on the road and to shoot any care that got near them even if they had families in them. After the mission, one of the crew told Hough he shot up at least four cars with families in them because they came near the convoy and the cars had crashed and burned.

Hough was in Iraq in the summer of 2004. These private security convoys have been breeding hatred throughout the occupation. The stories are now coming out to the public but it is too little, too late to curb them in and convince the Iraqi population and their government that we don’t condone the random shooting of civilians. It has been going on for years. Now Congress is scrambling to find some effective legal solution to the problem. It is another example of unintended consequences in using contractors in the war zone. It was not well thought out by the military and the State Department and now the U.S. is reaping the hatred that the contractors have bred among the Iraqis. How would you like to be a U.S. Army foot soldier who has to patrol a town that the private security contractor had just gone through, firing at civilians?

Dina Rasor

In the past few days, there has been a buzz of activity surrounding the questions that the Blackwater incidents have raised. The House of Representatives has passed a bill putting contractors in Iraq under U.S criminal law and the Senate has introduced a similar measure. The White House says it has grave concerns about the law because of national security implications. Even if the bill gets passed into law, there are no retroactive provisions so all the “losing hearts and minds” work done by Blackwater and others is just water under the bridge.

Just this morning, it has been reported that Secretary Rice has ordered that “special agents from the department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security now ride with Blackwater security details; the bureau more closely review incidents like the recent shooting, and the convoys communicate with American military units operating in the same area.” We are now going to reinsert government personnel into a situation that we contracted out under the guise of lack of government people to do the job.

This is similar to the situation I found in researching my book. KBR has been contracted to run vital truck convoys from Kuwait to bases in Iraq. According to KBR truck drivers, in the beginning, KBR provided the trucks, the truck drivers and the convoy commander for the convoy and the US Army just supplied the security. But by 2005, Army truck drivers told me that the Army, out of frustration with the performance and safety of KBR, brought in Army trucks and drivers to supplement the KBR trucks and took over the control of the convoy command job in order to make sure that their vital supplies got through. So here is another situation where we contracted out to a contractor to “free up” troops to fight the war but where the Army, out of necessity, had to reinsert themselves. KBR is still getting paid for this job and the Army has had to take valuable men to back up these indispensable convoys.

This new effort for some accountability is a good start but it does not address a much larger, albeit less sexy, problem with contractors in Iraq. If these new bills are passed into law, they cover criminal acts done by contractors and their employees. The much larger problem is what the Army and others do when the contractor, in a hostile area, refuses to do all or some of the work in their contract or contractor employees decide to just quit and go home. As I mentioned in my past blog, the remedies for commanders on the field are to go back to the US and start civil proceedings against the contractor, an impossible situation in a hostile zone when he is relying on the work to be done. The employees have a constitutional right to quit a job and go home, leaving the contractor and the commander short handed to get vital work done, such as supplies, food and water to the troops outside the safe bases.

If the troops were doing the work of the contractors, especially the vital supply lines, under the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) they would have to do the work, follow the orders of their commanders or face jail. The US would be hard pressed to try to charge a contractor or its employee under the UCMJ for something that would be a civil matter in the US.

So what is the solution? After much research and review for my book, I have come to the conclusion that you cannot use contractors in hostile areas. Their ability to quit or do less of a job threatens the troops. We have had too many stories of troops doing without because of contractors. In order to make sure that vital supplies and equipment makes it to the troops, the contractors need to be pulled back to Kuwait, to the safe bases and the Green Zone. Relying on KBR and its employees to be the main convoy supplies for the troops will continue to be a problem and potentially a crisis for the mission in Iraq as long as the contractor and his employees can just say no. Congress needs to address this problem which has much more potential consequence on our mission than the Blackwater episodes.
Dina Rasor

Tomorrow, Representative Henry Waxman, chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Governmental Reform, will hold hearings on Blackwater, the largest of the private security firms in Iraq. There will be many issues discussed and debated. The committee recently issued a report on the failures of the company when they sent out four of the employees on that ill fated trip to Fallujah which ended with parts of those employees hanging from a bridge in 2004. As I illustrate in my book, this incident, which was shown on national television, forced a strong response from the Army and they stormed Fallujah, killing many of our troops, many civilians and forced the town to empty, causing the suffering of refugees.

Now we have the current situation where the State Department is reliant on Blackwater for their security to moving around the country and even in Baghdad but the Iraq government wants Blackwater out because of the most recent, alleged trigger-happy incident in a Baghdad intersection. The US has kept Blackwater working for them despite the strained relationship with the Iraq government who had ordered the company out of their country.

Blackwater may stay or even be replaced by another company, but their American employees may not. If these private security companies are put under Iraqi law, many of the employees, mainly American employees may quit rather than face the possibility of an Iraqi jail. Their Wild West days may be over and the prospect of being arrested by the angry Iraq justice system could drive them out of the country. The military personnel, who used to do this protection work of diplomats around the world, are under strict rules of engagement and cannot quit. The Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) prevents them from doing so. Since the US decided to outsource much of this war without a lot of thought and study of the consequences, they have put themselves in a very vulnerable position in a war zone; the contractors and their employees, have a constitutional right to quit and walk out of a bad situation. This leaves the Pentagon and the State Department in a tight spot.

The Congress has tried to put a Band-Aid on this problem but saying that contractors are under UCMJ by law, but many military legal experts will tell you that it won’t pass a constitutional test. Unless you take the oath of the Armed Services and voluntarily give up some of your constitutional rights under the UCMJ, you have the right as an American citizen, to quit any job that you want. There may be some civil contract consequences but is it not a crime like a dereliction of duty or refusing a direct order is for a US soldier. The industry is pushing the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act (MEJA) law as a remedy but that applies to criminal acts, not quitting a job, and only to contractors with the Department of Defense.

So what does the State Department do for protection in this situation? These private security companies may be able to get some foreign nationals hired to guard our diplomats but do we really want to turn the delicate protection of our diplomats over to foreigners with little American oversight in this day of terrorist infiltration? I’m not sure that Condi Rice wants to put her diplomats and even herself in that situation in volatile Iraq.

Many issues have been raised in the media and Congress about the problems with contractors in Iraq, a group I call the war service industry. But with all the research and interviews I have done for my book and my Follow the Money Project over the past three years, I have yet found anyone who can seriously address the Achilles’ heel of private contractors. What do you do if the contractors and/or their employees just say no and quit? We have seen it in Iraq and it has hurt our military mission and our troops. Now it threatens our diplomatic mission as well. This unintended consequence of using contractors in a hostile zone needs to be explored by Waxman’s committee and others in Congress. Perhaps he should ask Dr. Rice about this dilemma if she will show up to testify.

Dina Rasor