David Isenberg

Cross-posted with Somali Report

Part One: A Look at the Use of Maritime Security Guards or PCASP

The number of companies who have jumped into the deep blue sea to offer armed guards and other private security services for commercial shippers who fear pirate attacks has risen sharply...

How should one recognize an act on the battlefield that gets you wounded? If you are a soldier, marine, sailor or airman the answer is easy; you get a Purple Heart. That medal, originally created by General George Washington, is awarded to U.S. soldiers wounded by the enemy in combat....

Here is another excerpt from the recently published book Funding the Enemy: How U.S. Taxpayers Bankroll the Taliban (Prometheus Books, 2012).

The following excerpt is reprinted with permission of the publisher. Any resemblance between the reality described and the realm of surrealism is strictly coincidental.

The military-industrial...

Remember Milo Minderbinder, a fictional character in Joseph Heller's famous novel, Catch-22? Minderbinder is a war profiteer during World War II, "perhaps the best known of all fictional profiteers" in American literature. Minderbinder was a parody of the American dream. He was also a satire of the modern...

Continuing on with the topic of exploitation worker let's turn to a recently published, and unfortunately overlooked, article "Cheap help from Uganda" published in Le Monde diplomatique in France. The article's subtitle "Slaves to the Private Military in Iraq" pretty much tells you what the article is about.

Previously I wrote about the seminar on labor trafficking, or what we should more bluntly call gross exploitation of workers in the private military and security contracting industry, sponsored by ISOA, an industry trade group.

As I've previously mentioned, trafficking was a major aspect of the

On April 17, the Contracting Oversight Subcommittee of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee held a hearing. The subject was the Comprehensive Contingency Contracting Reform Act of 2012.

The purpose of the bill is "to enhance security, increase accountability, and improve the contracting...

Most people assume that the PSC acronym stands for Private Security Contractor. It does but it also stands for Personal Services Contractor. You may be thinking, what is a personals services contractor and why should I care?

For the answer to that question let's look at an article which...

You may recall that in the past I've not been what you would call enthused about the idea that industry codes of conduct are a particularly effective way of ensuring compliance with relevant laws and regulations and human rights norms when it comes to private military and security companies. Call...

I confess: I have an interest in an unseemly topic. Last year I coauthored a report on the subject and testified before Congress about it. The subject is labor trafficking.

So let's give credit where it is due. On May 1, the International Stability...

Today the office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) has released its latest quarterly report. Here is what happening with private contractors in Iraq.

As of April 3, 2012, the Department of State (DoS) reported that 12,755 personnel supported the U.S. Mission in Iraq, down...

After ten years of operation by private military and security (PMSC) contractors in Afghanistan and Iraq, what ethical lessons should we draw from their use?

Namely, that private sector contracting has become an integral part of modern international operations, and in Afghanistan and Iraq contracting has been largely fruitful, despite...

Considering how many times over years I have critiqued the private military and security (PMSC) industry for making claims without providing evidence to back it up, it is always noteworthy to find that rare person who tries to fill that empirical evidence gap.

Thus, meet Lt. Col. Bruce E. Stanley...

For many years those in the private security contracting industry have argued loudly that the people who carry guns in the field are not mercenaries. And they are exactly right, as I have noted many times in the past.

Words do have specific meaning and when it comes to...

Recent news indicated that Russia may create private military and security companies and possibly use them for missions abroad. Prime Minister and President-elect Vladimir Putin mentioned this possibility after he delivered his report on the government's performance in 2011 to the State Duma.

This raises interesting questions. Since...

In the past several years, as concern has grown about being able to properly exercise administrative and legal oversight of private military and security contractors, new regulations and laws have been passed.

In many respects this is to be welcomed. It was clear that many of the old laws were...

Despite all the attention paid to the use of private military and security contractors on battlefields it is true, as many in that industry say, that it is not that new; at least not as an organizational phenomenon. In fact, the problem of adjusting American military organization to new social,...

Recently the Center for American Progress released a trifecta of reports that anybody interested in military outsourcing and privatization issues should read.

The three CAP reports are:

Insourcing

Better Auditing for Better Contracting

How Sunlight Can Improve Federal Contracting

The reports were written by...

Although the print version of the April 2012 issue of Harper's magazine has been out for a few weeks this week the digital version started making the rounds and one of its articles is attracting lots of notice, as well it should.

The article is "The Warrior Class: A golden...

On March 29 the Government Accountability Office released a report on the state of military contracting oversight in Afghanistan.

Before turning to what GAO found let's consider that improving the state of contracting is a seemingly eternal goal of the U.S. government. Private military and security contractors (PMSC) take a...