COALITION OF THE BILLING: MORE PRIVATE CONTRACTORS IN IRAQ THAN U.S. TROOPS

I assume you watched the Olbermann piece last night, if not on MSNBC, then over at C&L, Remember when he's talking about the stain of the Bush Regime on the fabric of American government? It really got to me when he mentioned about how Bush had turned the choice between war and peace "over to those of one political party, who stand to gain vast wealth by ensuring that there is never peace, but only war." It was chilling when Olbermann said it and it was chilling when I thought about it afterwards. It's still chilling now typing it.

Yesterday's L.A. Times published a piece by Christian Miller, Private Contractors Outnumber U.S. Troops in Iraq, that shows how Bush has made the occupation of Iraq into a for-profit bonanza for his campaign contributors. And we're not talking about a few million here and a few million here. As I've said before, generational wealth-- that of which a new and venal plutocracy takes root-- is being created for the few while the sons and daughters, brothers, fathers, husbands, wives, friends of regular folks are dying meaningless, brutish deaths to protect the accumulation of vast riches for the few.

Private contractors? I'm not talking just about plumbers and people who are paving driveways-- although they're there too, driven by desperation to find good-paying work in such a hostile environment; I'm talking about the war profiteers and the mercenaries and companies that supply them. "Mercenaries." It's a word that makes normal Americans recoil in horror. Our elementary school books teach us-- or did when I was a kid-- that mercenaries highed by the British, Hessians, were the worst of our enemies in our own Revolutionary War, when we were the terrorists fighting for our freedom and King George III was... well, King George II.

The DWT correspondent in Baghdad, "Fred," tells me he puts it in his contract that he never has to be around mercenaries from Blackwater, the private America run by American neofascist billionaire Erik Prince. The Iraqis, he tells me, hate the mercenaries-- and for good reason-- in a way they don't hate American troops and as much as we, as a people, hated King George (the III's) Hessians.

I remember the first time I heard about American private contactors being killed in Iraq, their mutilated bodies being dragged through Falluja and being hung from a bridge. It was 2004 and I didn't understand yet about King George (the II's) "contractors" and why they are so hated by the Iraqis. A lot of water under the bridge since then.

The number of U.S.-paid private contractors in Iraq now exceeds that of American combat troops, newly released figures show, raising fresh questions about the privatization of the war effort and the government's capacity to carry out military and rebuilding campaigns.

More than 180,000 civilians — including Americans, foreigners and Iraqis — are working in Iraq under U.S. contracts, according to State and Defense Department figures obtained by The Times. Including the recent troop surge, 160,000 soldiers and a few thousand civilian government employees are stationed in Iraq.

The total number of private contractors, far higher than previously reported, shows how heavily the Bush administration has relied on private corporations to carry out the occupation of Iraq — a mission criticized as being undermanned.

"These numbers are big," said Peter Singer, a Brookings Institution scholar who has written on military contracting. "They illustrate better than anything that we went in without enough troops. This is not the coalition of the willing. It's the coalition of the billing."

And "these numbers" (like nearly 200,000) doesn't even count the mercenaries. "Private security contractors, who are hired to protect government officials and buildings, were not fully counted in the survey, according to industry and government officials. Continuing uncertainty over the numbers of armed contractors drew special criticism from military experts. 'We don't have control of all the coalition guns in Iraq. That's dangerous for our country,' said William Nash, a retired Army general and reconstruction expert. The Pentagon 'is hiring guns. You can rationalize it all you want, but that's obscene.'"

There are 130,000 contractors working on U.S. and puppet Iraqi military bases. "Critics worry that troops and their missions could be jeopardized if contractors, functioning outside the military's command and control, refuse to make deliveries of vital supplies under fire. At one point in 2004, for example, U.S. forces were put on food rations when drivers balked at taking supplies into a combat zone."

The companies with the largest number of employees are foreign firms in the Middle East that subcontract to KBR, the Houston-based oil services company, according to the Central Command database. KBR, once a subsidiary of Halliburton Corp., provides logistics support to troops, the single largest contract in Iraq.

The Middle Eastern companies, such as Turkish-based Kulak Construction and Dubai-based Prime Projects International, supply labor from Third World countries to KBR and other U.S. companies for menial work on U.S. bases and rebuilding projects. Foreigners are used instead of Iraqis because of fears that insurgents could infiltrate projects.

KBR is by far the largest employer of Americans, with nearly 14,000 U.S. workers. Other large employers of Americans in Iraq include L3 Communications, which holds a contract to provide translators to troops, and ITT Corp., a New York engineering and technology firm.

The most controversial contractors are those working for private security companies, including Blackwater, Triple Canopy and Erinys. They provide protection to U.S. and Iraqi government officials and businessmen, and guard sensitive sites.

Security contractors draw some of the sharpest criticism, much of it from military policy experts who say their jobs should be done by the military. On several occasions, heavily armed private contractors have engaged in firefights when attacked by Iraqi insurgents.

Others worry that the private security contractors lack accountability. While scores of troops have been prosecuted for serious crimes, only a handful of private security contractors have faced legal charges.

The number of private security contractors in Iraq remains unclear, despite Central Command's latest census. The Times identified 21 security companies in the Central Command database, deploying 10,800 men. However, the Defense Department's Motsek, who monitors contractors, said the Pentagon estimated the total was 6,000.

Both figures are far below the private security industry's own estimate of about 30,000 private security contractors working for government agencies, nonprofit organizations, media outlets and businesses.

Cheney's wealth has grown grotesquely as Halliburton's operations in Iraq turned into a cash cow. No American elected official has ever profited more from a war that he planned than Dick Cheney. No one has ever come close. Cheney does not deserve the dignity of impeachment. Speedy trials, juries of ordinary citizens, blindfolds, last ccigarettes and firing squads were invented for people like Dick Cheney.