The Law Catches Up To Private Militaries

Since the start of the Iraq war, tens of thousands of heavily-armed military contractors have been roaming the country -- without any law, or any court to control them.
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Since the start of the Iraq war, tens of thousands of heavily-armed
military contractors have been roaming the country -- without any law,
or any court to control them. Despite abusing detainees at href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1391443,00.html">Abu
Ghraib and at href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/03/AR2007010301759.html?nav=rss_nation/nationalsecurity">Gitmo,
despite springing
an ex-minister
from a Green Zone jail, despite href="http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/1128/dailyUpdate.html">making a
video of randomly shooting Iraqi civilians, not one of these
guns-for-hire has been prosecuted since the Iraq invasion. That may
be about to change, Brookings Institution Senior Fellow href="http://www.pwsinger.com/index.html">P.W. Singer notes in a
Defense Tech
exclusive
. Five words, slipped into a Pentagon budget bill, could
make all the difference. With them, "contractors 'get out of jail
free' cards may have been torn to shreds," he writes. They're now
subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice, the same set of laws
that governs soldiers. But here's the catch: embedded reporters are
now under those regulations, too.

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