The military privatization of murder was warned as far back as 2004

Alt Tv/Fleet FM Breakfast News Comment
The military privatization of murder was warned as far back as 2004
Senior officials in Iraq and the United States ignored multiple warnings about the operations of some of the biggest private military corporations dating back to at least 2004, new evidence shows. A series of congressional reports, testimony to congressional committees, lawsuits in the US, and leaked documents from the past two years have painted a picture of a lack of transparency and accountability of security firms working for the State Department and Department of Defence, including allegations of frequent shooting of civilians. The sheer scale of the failure to rein in the private military corporations comes in the wake of last week's killing of at least eight, and possibly as many as 28, civilians by Blackwater USA, a contractor working for the State Department, in what Iraq's Interior Ministry has said was an unprovoked attack. Ironically the need for regulation was first raised in March 2004 by the Private Security Working Group in Baghdad, representing the biggest operators in the country. The minutes of the meeting were later leaked. What was discussed that day contained a grim prediction of the controversies that would dog the companies in the years to come. The group warned of the need for self-regulation. Most urgently, in the light of hostile media coverage, it warned that the industry should be aware of an influx of "criminals and cowboys". The meeting's chairman, Lawrence Peter, described it as a gold rush for security guards in which he said the group's members were "creating a private army on an unprecedented scale". And thanks to America passing Order 17 in Iraq, that private army of unprecedented scale is legally exempt from Iraqi law, you have tens of thousands of mercenaries free from any legal responsibility and overwhelming evidence that these guys shoot innocent civilians all the time. Hardly the freedom and democracy we promised Iraq now is it?