Mercenary companies clearly have little to fear from Republican-dominated governance in Washington. But what about the Democrats? Despite their stated antiwar claims, the Democrats’ dominant Iraq plan would keep in place tens of thousands of U.S. troops for an unspecified time, while escalating U.S. action in Afghanistan. For military contractors like Blackwater, this is welcome news. “Nobody is going to be able to throw the contractors out,” said David Isenberg of the British-American Security Information Council. “They’re the American Express card of the American military. The military doesn’t leave home without them, because it can’t.”63
The 2007 Iraq supplemental spending bill opened a window onto what could happen in the first term of a Democratic administration. Along with the findings of the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group analysis, it formed the basis for the Iraq plans of the leading Democratic contenders for the presidency. The bill was portrayed as the Democrats’ withdrawal plan, and Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton passionately supported it, with Obama saying it meant the country was “one signature away from ending the Iraq War.”64 But upon a careful reading of the legislation (which was vetoed by President Bush), that claim rings hollow. The plan would have redeployed some U.S. forces from Iraq within 180 days. But it also would have provided for 40,000-60,000 troops to remain in Iraq as “trainers,” “counterterrorist forces,” and for “protection for embassy/diplomats,” according to an analysis by the Institute for Policy Studies.65 “There was nothing in the legislation about contractors or mercenary forces,” said IPS analyst Erik Leaver.66 The truth is that as long as there are troops in Iraq, there will be private contractors.
In part, these contractors do mundane jobs that traditionally have been performed by soldiers, from driving trucks to doing laundry. These services are provided through companies such as Halliburton, KBR, and Fluor, and through their vast labyrinth of subcontractors. But private personnel, as Blackwater’s history in Iraq has shown, are also consistently engaged in armed combat and “security” operations. Contractors interrogate prisoners, gather intelligence, operate rendition flights, protect senior occupation officials—including some commanding U.S. generals—and in some cases have taken command of U.S. and international troops in battle. In an admission that speaks volumes about the extent of the privatization, Gen. David Petraeus, who was charged with implementing the “surge,” admitted that he has, at times, not been guarded in Iraq by the U.S. military but by “contract security.”67 At least three U.S. commanding generals have been guarded in Iraq by hired guns, including the general who oversees U.S. military contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan.68
In 2008 the number of private contractors in Iraq was at a one-to-one ratio with active-duty U.S. soldiers, a stunning escalation compared with the 1991 Gulf War. “To have half of your army be contractors, I don’t know that there’s a precedent for that,” said Congressman Dennis Kucinich, a member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.69
Some estimates actually put the number of contractors at higher than active-duty soldiers in Iraq, but exact numbers are nearly impossible to obtain.70 According to a March 2008 report by the Government Accountability Office, the Pentagon “does not maintain departmentwide data on the numbers of contractor employees working side-by-side with federal employees.”71 But in a review of twenty-one Defense Department offices, the GAO found that at “15 offices, contractor employees outnumbered DOD employees and comprised up to 88% of the workforce. Contractor employees perform key tasks, including developing contract requirements and advising on award fees for other contractors.”
Beyond the issues raised by private contractors hired by the Pentagon lies the more troubling problem of the State Department’s private armed forces. A major part of the Democrats’ plan calls for maintaining the massive U.S. Embassy, the largest embassy in world history, as well as the Green Zone. At present, much of the security work required by the embassy and the travel of U.S. officials into and out of the Green Zone is done by three private security firms: Blackwater, Triple Canopy, and DynCorp. This arrangement reflects the simultaneous militarization and privatization of the State Department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security. Created in the mid-1990s, the department’s Worldwide Personal Protective Services was originally envisioned as a small-scale bodyguard operation, comprised of private security contractors, to protect small groups of U.S. diplomats and other U.S. and foreign officials. In Iraq, it has been turned into a sizable paramilitary force. Spending on the program jumped from $50 million in 2003 to $613 million in 2006.72
The looming question is: who would protect the Democrats’ army of diplomats in Iraq? Some insist that it is possible to continue to rely on private forces to do this work as long as they are held accountable. As of March 2008, these private forces enjoyed a de facto “above the law” status, which both Obama and Clinton have decried. But it is hard to see how “accountability” is going to be achieved, at least in the short term.
In late 2007, in the aftermath of Nisour Square, the House overwhelmingly approved legislation that would ensure that all contractors would be subject to prosecution in U.S. civilian courts for crimes committed on a foreign battlefield.73 The idea is: FBI investigators would deploy to the crime scene, gather evidence, and interview witnesses, leading to indictments and prosecutions. But this approach raises a slew of questions. Who would protect the investigators? How would Iraqi victims be interviewed? How would evidence be gathered amid the chaos and dangers of a hostile war zone like Iraq? Given that the federal government and the military seem unable—or unwilling—even to count how many contractors are actually in the country, how could their activities possibly be monitored? Apart from the fact that it would be impossible to effectively police such an enormous deployment of private contractors (such as in Iraq, where it is equal in size to the military presence), this legislation could give the private military industry a tremendous PR victory. The companies could finally claim that a legally accountable structure governed their operations. Yet they would be well aware that such legislation would be nearly impossible to enforce. Perhaps that is why the industry has passionately backed this approach. Prince called its passage in the House, “Excellent.”
Others have proposed to address the problem simply by expanding the official U.S. government forces responsible for securing the embassy and Green Zone, thus reducing the market for mercenary companies. In an October 2007 letter to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Senator Joe Biden, chair of the influential Foreign Relations Committee, suggested the United States should examine “whether we should expand the ranks of Diplomatic Security rather than continue to rely so heavily on contractors.”74 He called for hiring more agents, saying, “The requirement for extensive personal security to protect the employees of the U.S. mission will continue for several years to come—regardless of the number of U.S. forces in Iraq.”
While an increase in funding to the Diplomatic Security division would ostensibly pave the way for a force made up entirely of U.S. government personnel, there are serious questions about how quickly that could happen. As of October 2007, the State Department had only 1,450 Diplomatic Security agents worldwide who were actual U.S. government employees and only thirty-six deployed in Iraq.75 In contrast, as of March 2008, Blackwater had nearly 1,000 operatives in Iraq alone, not to mention the hundreds more working for Triple Canopy and DynCorp. The State Department has said it could take years to identify prospective new agents, vet them, train them, and deploy them.76 In short, this would be no small undertaking and, even if the political will and funding was there, would take years to enact.