
American troops may be leaving Iraq before the end of the year, but U.S. contractors aren't going anywhere soon.
ABC News reports that the State Department "is expected to have about 5,000 security contractors in Iraq as of January 2012 (they already have about 3,000 in country)." There will also be 4,500 "general life support" contractors to provide food and medical services.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)The U.S. Army is getting rid of its "pen and paper" and "string and stick" method of tracking fuel use in Afghanistan after nearly a decade of mismanagement, theft and fraud resulting in what is likely hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars in lost fuel, some of which is sold on the black market and has ended up in Taliban hands.
The highest levels of the U.S. military have deep concerns about the rampant robbery, and the U.S. Army this week is beginning to implement, base by base in Afghanistan, a computerized accounting system aimed at making it easier to track the disappearing fuel.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)After nearly a decade of mismanagement, theft and fraud, the U.S. military still hasn't found a way to staunch the flow of what is likely hundreds of millions -- if not billions -- of dollars in lost fuel in Afghanistan, some of which is sold on the black market and winds up in Taliban hands, a TPM investigation has found.
With political unrest in the Middle East sending oil over $100 per barrel and Congress more intent than ever at cutting government waste, fraud and abuse in tough budgetary times, the Defense Department is under intense pressure to find a way to monitor and track the flow of fuel in and out of its bases in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The extensive corruption associated with disappearing fuel in Afghanistan provides another illustration of the problems associated with the heavy use of private contractors on the battlefield. Earlier this week, the non-partisan Commission for Wartime Contracting reported that the U.S. government has spent $117 billion on private contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2002, and tens of billions of those dollars have been wasted.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (2)When a who's who of Washington heavyweights spoke at a panel two weeks ago on behalf of the MEK, an Iranian opposition group currently considered a terrorist organization by the State Department, former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge made a claim that the members of the group who currently reside in Iraq enjoy special protection under the Geneva Convention. But the State Department tells TPM that's not true.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)A Virginia man facing charges of raping an underage girl has been found, after five years, working as a contractor in Iraq.
Norfolk police tracked down Daniel Phillips, 46, this week, with the help of the U.S. Marshals, the State Department and NCIS, and brought him back to Virginia to face the charges stemming from an incident in 2004 or 2005.
Federal agents arrested a Navy SEAL on Wednesday in San Diego, CA, on charges that he and two other men smuggled firearms from Iraq and possibly Afghanistan to sell them on the black market.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (5)Viktor Bout, a notorious arms dealer who allegedly provided weapons to former Liberian president Charles Taylor, the Taliban and FARC rebels, will soon be extradited to the U.S. -- two years after he was arrested in Thailand.
The Department of Justice announced today that Bout will be extradited to face criminal charges of conspiring to sell weapons to a terrorist organization.
An Army intelligence analyst, arrested in April for allegedly leaking a classified military video of a 2007 U.S. helicopter attack in Baghdad to WikiLeaks, is now facing eight criminal charges in connection with the leak.
Pfc. Bradley Manning was charged Monday with violating the Espionage Act by transmitting classified information to an unauthorized third party. He's also facing criminal charges for abusing access to a secret-level network, and is accused of uploading unauthorized software to the network.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (3)In order for President Obama to meet his pledge to get Iraq troop levels down to 50,000 by August, the military will have to exit the country at a rate of about 14,000 troops per month -- a difficult but doable task, military observers tell TPMmuckraker.
The number of U.S. troops in Iraq currently stands at 94,100, according to the Pentagon.
Unless Obama changes his policy, the military must get at least 44,000 troops out of Iraq by August. The Pentagon said recently that it expects to get down to 91,000 by the end of May, at which point an accelerated pullout will begin. (See chart below.)
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (2)The former president of Blackwater has been indicted on weapons charges.
Federal prosecutors today charged Gary Jackson with conspiracy to violate firearms laws, false statements and possession of an unregistered firearm, reports the Associated Press.
Four others were also charged, including former general counsel Andrew Howell and former executive vice president Bill Mathews.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (11)The group Wikileaks has released a video that it describes as showing "the indiscriminate slaying" by U.S. troops "of over a dozen people in the Iraqi suburb of New Baghdad," including two Reuters employees.
The graphic and disturbing video, which a senior military official told the AP is authentic, shows 17 minutes of footage taken from the air. In it, US helicopters fire on a group of men after concluding that several of them are holding weapons.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (14)Dan Senor, the Bush administration's top spokesman in Iraq, won't run for the U.S. Senate from New York after all.
Here's his statement:
For some of the Bush administration's most energetic spinners, it looks like it's finally safe to get back into the water.
OK, in truth, some of them never really got out. But we can't help noticing that in the last few weeks, several prominent spokespeople for the last administration have been back in the media spotlight, triggering memories of those halcyon early years of the century.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (2)There's more evidence that Dan Senor may be planning a U.S. Senate bid from New York this year.
The New York Times reports that the neoconservative and former top spokesman for the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq has been urged to run by a slew of top Republicans -- including Rudy Giuliani, Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), who chairs the NRSC, Michael Long, the influential leader of New York's Conservative Party, and Ed Cox, the chair of the state GOP -- and that Senor is "seriously considering" doing so.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (3)A 2003 handbook for the U.S. 1st Infantry Division in Iraq exhorts soldiers to "Do your best to prevent war crimes" and warns that "when an Arab is confronted by criticism, you can expect him to react by interpreting the facts to suit himself or flatly denying the facts."
The document, obtained and posted by the National Security Archive at George Washington University, runs nearly 100 pages outlining on the history of Iraq, the customs of Arabs, and the rules of war.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (3)Is Dan Senor, the face of the U.S. occupation of Iraq, mulling a run for the Senate from New York?
A Manhattan voter received a phone call last night, asking his opinion about Senor and his wife, CNN anchor Campbell Brown. And one-plugged in New York Republican told TPMmuckraker he hears that Senor may be meeting with "potential money people," in advance of a possible Senate bid.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)Things heated up yesterday in Britain's official examination of the lessons of the Iraq War, with a former member of Tony Blair's cabinet charging that the British government was "misled" into believing the war was legal.
Since last July, a steady stream of current and former British officials have been testifying before the Iraq Inquiry, led by Sir John Chilcot. But thus far, it's been relatively short on fireworks -- until yesterday's testimony by former International Development Secretary Clare Short.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (3)When the Pentagon's internal think tank decided in 2004 it needed a better understanding of Al Qaeda, it turned to an unlikely source: the terrorism analyst Laurie Mylroie, who was known as the chief purveyor of the discredited idea that Saddam Hussein was behind Sept. 11 and many other attacks carried out by Al Qaeda.
Mylroie was paid roughly $75,000 to produce a 300-page study, "The History of Al Qaida," for the Defense Department think tank, known as the Office of Net Assessment, a DOD spokesman tells us. The study, which is dated September 2005, was posted on an intelligence blog last month.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (7)It's hardly news that U.S. government contracts in Iraq have been a mess of fraud, abuse, and lax oversight for years. But a new Inspector General report that reveals the State Department assigned just one oversight officer to a $2.5 billion police training contract still manages to shock.
The report (.pdf) released today by the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction is the second study in the past few years that showed lax or nonexistent oversight on the large police training contract of Virginia-based Dyncorp.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (3)An ex-military man with ties to the Tea Party and militia movements has been charged in separate complaints with raping a minor and with possessing an unregistered grenade launcher.
Charles Dyer, a former U.S. Marine who served in Iraq, was arrested January 12 in Oklahoma on the rape charge. A child had told sexual-abuse experts about a January 2nd incident at Dyer's home.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (10)
The military is increasingly relying on private security contractors as President Obama ramps up the war in Afghanistan, with contractors now making up as much as 30% of the armed force in the country, a just-released congressional report shows.
In the period roughly tracking with President Obama's first nine months in office, the number of Defense Department armed security contractors soared 236% -- from 3,184 to 10,712 between December 2008 to September 2009. The number roughly doubled between June and September 2009 alone.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (4)The White House has announced a settlement in a lawsuit filed by two good-government groups concerning emails that went missing over a two-and-a-half year period during the Bush administration.
Under the terms of the deal, 94 days of emails -- which could shed light on controversial topics that the Bush administration sought to obscure from public view, such as the Valerie Plame scandal and the run-up to the war in Iraq -- will be transferred to the National Archives, and eventually made public.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (8)A good government group is calling on the State Department to investigate the role of former ambassador Peter Galbraith in drafting Iraq's constitution in 2005 while he held a lucrative stake in a Kurdish oil field.
The letter from Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington to the State Dept. Inspector General asks whether State approved Galbraith's activities, and cites a recent New York Times exposé that built off work of the Norwegian newspaper Dagens Naeringsliv.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (2)Most reactions to the release of Dick Cheney's 2004 interview with FBI investigators on the Valerie Plame affair have focused on the numerous instances in which the then-vice president claimed a faulty memory about events that had occurred less than a year before.
But did Cheney at one point all but lie under oath about whether he directed Lewis Libby to give Judith Miller information from a government report on Saddam's alleged efforts to procure uranium from Africa?
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (3)A series of shocking and lurid charges have been made against Erik Prince and Blackwater, the defense contracting behemoth he founded, in sworn statements filed in federal court Monday. Prince and or his company are variously accused of being motivated by an apocalyptic Christian worldview which glorified killing Muslims; of "encourag[ing] and reward[ing] the destruction of Iraqi life;" of illegally smuggling weapons into Iraq; of destroying incriminating evidence; of using child prostitutes; and even of murdering government informants.
The charges -- which come from a former Blackwater employee, and a former US Marine who has worked as a security operative for the company -- appear to be largely unsubstantiated. Their existence was first reported by The Nation, and has since been covered by numerous blogs and a few mainstream outlets.
A senior American military adviser in Baghdad, whose memo arguing that the U.S. should leave Iraq is currently the top story on the New York Times website, is also the author of an unhinged online screed against health-care reform.
The health-care post, by Colonel Timothy Reese, sketches far-fetched scenarios about forced abortions and accuses President Obama of being "deceitful" in telling Americans they can keep their doctor under his plan. Its harsh tone raises questions about an active duty officer inserting himself into the political arena. And it suggests that that his widely-publicized military advice -- which was posted on the same blog as the health-care post -- should perhaps be treated more skeptically than is currently being done.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (17)Here's something else that's noteworthy from Cheney's speech. He again falsely implied that Saddam was working with al Qaeda:
We had the anthrax attack from an unknown source. We had the training camps of Afghanistan, and dictators like Saddam Hussein with known ties to Mideast terrorists.
It's unclear which "Mideast terrorists" those were. After all, Saddam had for over 30 years been the leader of a major Mideast country. It would be surprising if you couldn't find that he had "ties" to terrorists of some kind. But Cheney's purpose in bringing it up is clearly to suggest that Saddam had meaningful connections to the terrorists who hit us on 9/11. That's long been known to be a lie.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (3)More possible evidence that the Bush administration used torture to get information about Iraq?
Back in 2004, the Associated Press reported on the plight of several Guantanamo detainees who had previously been held by the Taliban in Afghanistan. Among them was one Iraqi:
The Iraqi, Arkan Mohammed Ghafil al Karim, says he deserted from Saddam Hussein's army and was later imprisoned and tortured by the Taliban for two years. He says he was brought to Guantanamo in 2002 so that the American military could learn about Iraq's army ahead of the invasion of that country.
Here's another possible piece of evidence that the Bush torture program was used to bolster the political case for the Iraq war.
That 2004 intelligence committee report on Iraq intel that we just wrote about also contains a short section, on page 324, on the information provided by Abu Zubaydah:
The CIA provided four reports detailing the debriefings of Abu Zubaydah, a captured senior coordinator for Al Qaida responsible for training and recruiting. Abu Zubaydah said he was not aware of a relationship between Iraq and al Qaida. He also said, however, that any relationship would be highly compartmented and went on to name al Qaida members who he thought had good contacts with Iraqis. For instance, Abu Zubaydah indicated that he had heard that an important al Qaeda associate, Abu Mus'ab al -Zarqawi, and others had good relationships with Iraqi intelligence ... REDACTED ... During the debrefings, Abu Zubaydah offered his opinion that it would be extremely unlikely for Bin Laden to have agreed to ally with Iraq, due to his desire to keep organization on track with its mission and maintain its operational independence.PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (4)
A great find by the Huffington Post offers additional evidence that the Bushies used torture to try to Saddam Hussein to al Qaeda :
A line buried on page 353 of the July 2004 Select Committee on Intelligence report on pre-Iraq war intelligence reads:
CTC [Counter Terrorist Center] noted that the questions regarding al-Qaida's ties to the Iraqi regime were among the first presented to senior al-Qaida operational planner Khalid Shaikh Muhammad following his capture.
"Among the first presented".
Yesterday we rounded up the other evidence that torture was used to bolster the political case for war with Iraq.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (5)At last, the torture debate looks to be heading toward what's been the big question lurking in the background all along: was the Bush administration using torture in large part to make a political case for the invasion of Iraq?
Writing on The Daily Beast, former NBC producer Robert Windrem reports that in April 2003, Dick Cheney's office suggested that interrogators waterboard an Iraqi detainee who was suspected of having knowledge of a link between Saddam and al Qaeda.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (26)Here's a very interesting line from the statement Nancy Pelosi just gave:
We also now know that techniques, including waterboarding, had already been employed, and that those briefing me in September 2002 gave me inaccurate and incomplete information.PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (5)At the same time, the Bush Administration was misleading the American people about the threat of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. (our itals)
Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) led the congressional charge against the Pentagon's use of retired military analysts to shill for the Iraq war on TV -- a program that was exposed in that Pulitzer-winning New York Times report.
Now the Pentagon Inspector General's office has withdrawn a report into the affair, which had largely exonerated the department, finding that it "did not meet accepted quality standards for an Inspector General work product." And DeLauro isn't mincing words about the news.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (11)A senior enlisted U.S. Army soldier--Master Sergeant John Hatley--was convicted two days ago by a military jury in Germany of executing four handcuffed, blindfolded Iraqi men by shooting them in the backs of their heads.
That's a newsworthy (and, of course, gruesome) story in and of itself, but there's a story behind the story.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (55)Change we can believe in? Maybe not so much.
The Obama administration is siding with the Bush administration in trying to kill a lawsuit brought by watchdog groups that seeks to gain access to Bush White House emails, reports the Associated Press.
At issue are emails from key periods of the Bush years, including the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, and the investigation into the Valerie Plame leak.
In response to the suit brought by two groups, CREW and the National Security Archive, the Bush White House recently said that it had found 14 million of the e-mails and had taken steps to archive others. But the plaintiffs called those steps inadequate.
Now the Obama Justice Department is seeking to have the suit dismissed, just as the Bush DOJ did.
"The new administration seems no more eager than the last" to deal with the issue, Anne Weismann of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, told the Associated Press.
The AP adds:
Tom Blanton, director of the National Security Archive, noted that President Barack Obama on his first full day in office called for greater transparency in government.The Justice Department "apparently never got the message" from Obama, Blanton said.
Sounds about right.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (20)This should do the trick.
Blackwater Worldwide, the contractor that emerged over the last few years as Exhibit A for ugly Americans in Iraq, has decided that the best response is to ... change its name.
And check out the name they picked: "Xe." (Apparently it's pronounced like the letter 'Z.' Raising the question: Why not just call it "Z"?)
They've also renamed Blackwater Lodge & Training Center, the subsidiary that does much of their controversial overseas operations. It's now the "U.S. Training Center Inc." (Which doesn't exactly mesh with "Xe," but whatever.)
According to the Associated Press, Blackwater (or should we say "Xe"?) president Gary Jackson said in a memo to employees, announcing the changes, that they reflect a shift in the company's focus away from private security and toward operating training facilities around the world.
You can see how "Xe" would be the obvious name to reflect such a shift.
It's not hard to guess why Blackwater (or wait, Xe) wants to get out of the private security business. In 2007, Blackwater guards opened fire in a Baghdad square, killing 17 Iraqis. Five ex-Blackwater guards were charged with voluntary manslaughter and are awaiting trial.
And recently, thanks largely to that incident and other cases where Blackwater has been accused of using excessive force, the Iraqi government declined to renew the company's contract to operate in the country. Soon after, the State Department announced that, in any case, it wouldn't renew Blackwater's contract to operate in Iraq.
No word yet on whether Iraq and State will reconsider now that that the company is called "Xe."
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (24)Et tu, State Department?
Earlier this week, we told you that the Iraqi government had decided not to renew Blackwater's contract to operate in Iraq, thanks to a 2007 incident in which Blackwater guards opened fire in a Baghdad square, killing 17 Iraqis, among several other cases of excessive force. Five ex-Blackwater guards were charged with voluntary manslaughter and are awaiting trial in connection with the 2007 incident.
Now, the State Department, which depended on Blackwater as its biggest contractor providing security to US diplomats in Iraq, has followed suit, according to the Associated Press, declining to renew the controversial company's contract to protect department personnel in Iraq when it expires in May.
The decision was a result of the Iraqi government's move, according to a department official.
In the AP's words, the state Department is "still considering its options" as to how to proceed.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (27)Are Blackwater's days in Iraq numbered?
The Iraqi government has said it won't be issuing a new operating license for the contractor, which is the prime security company for the US Embassy in the country.
It's hard to blame the Iraqis. Blackwater has several times been accused of using excessive force. In 2007, its guards opened fire in a crowded street, killing 17 civilians. The guards were charged with voluntary manslaughter and are awaiting trial.
According to Iraqi officials, it was this incident that prompted them not to renew the license, reports the Washington Post.
There's a bit of a catch though. The Post adds:
Blackwater employees who have not been accused of improper conduct will be allowed to continue working as private security contractors in Iraq if they switch employers, Iraqi officials said Wednesday.
And according to Wired magazine, that's exactly what could easily happen. It reports:
The State Department has a contract for "Worldwide Personal Protective Services" with three firms: Blackwater, DynCorp, and Triple Canopy. If Blackwater is no longer allowed to operate in Iraq, a lawyer steeped in the field tells Danger Room, there's no legal reason why the other two firms can't scoop up Blackwater's employees. "State simply issues a new task order to DynCorp or Triple Canopy, who turn around and hire some or all of Blackwater's employees," he says.
So we may ultimately find out whether the string of violent acts we've seen from Blackwater guards were the result of the company's culture itself -- or the types of personnel they hired.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (5)Already, a consensus of experts has formed to tell TPMmuckraker and others that President Obama's executive order on presidential records, issued Wednesday, could impact efforts to pry loose key documents from the Bush White House.
And the man who served as President Clinton's lead attorney for executive privilege issues yesterday went further, suggesting that that was exactly Obama's goal.
Neil Eggleston, a White House counsel under Clinton, told TPMmuckraker that in his view, the Obama White House issued the order with specific ongoing cases in mind -- that is, with the goal of bolstering those efforts to obtain Bush's records.
Congress and good-government groups are currently fighting to get access to key Bush White House documents that might shed light on a range of subjects, from the level of White House involvement in the US Attorney firings, to the Valerie Plame leak probe, to the decision to invade Iraq. "This is absolutely about all those issues," said Eggleston.
At its heart, said Eggleston, Obama's order is about "who gets to assert executive privilege." It says that former presidents can claim such privilege, but they have no automatic ability to prevent the release of their records if the current administration deems it to be in the national interest. That echoes the view of other experts who have examined the order, including the conservative legal scholar Doug Kmiec, who spoke to TPMmuckraker yesterday.
In a sense, said Eggleston, it's a directive to the National Archivist. "It says: 'Archivist -- if Bush calls up and says don't release certain papers, don't listen to what he says, listen to what I say.'"
Eggleston, now a partner at Debevoise and Plimpton's Washington office, cautioned that if a decision were made to release certain Bush records, and the former president chose to go to court to stop it, it's not absolutely certain that he would lose -- since no executive order can alter the constitution's executive privilege guarantee. But he said that the order would at the very least be likely to sway a court towards openness.
So if we do eventually learn the full story of the Bushies' involvement in the US Attorney firings, and get access to information about their record on a range of other issues, it looks like we may have the new president to thank.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (29)It's Friday at 4pm on the last business day of the Bush administration.
So of course, the Pentagon has just released its report on its TV pundit program, which it used to promote the Iraq war, that the New York Times uncovered last year.
It's here.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (3)
