Blackwater Is Just the Tip of the Iceberg

The scandal surrounding the conduct of Blackwater contractors in Iraq is just the most recent example of contractors and criminals run amok in that ill-conceived war. Since the occupation began, the U.S. military and its contractors have relied on shady characters and even criminals to do the outsourced business of supplying the troops, delivering weapons and making sure the mail arrives.

One such wanted criminal, Viktor Bout, was paid tens of millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars while illegally flying transport missions for the United States in Iraq. Bout is the notorious Russian weapons merchant whose fleet of aging Soviet aircraft rivals that of some NATO countries in its size and capacity. By marrying his access to Soviet bloc weapons with his airlift capacity, Bout established himself as the world's premiere purveyor of illicit weapons to the world's tyrants-- a one-stop shopping source for everyone from Charles Taylor and his armies of child soldiers of Sierra Leone and Liberia to the Taliban in Afghanistan, from Jonas Savimbi in Angola to the FARC rebels in Colombia.

As shown in the new book Merchant of Death: Money, Guns, Planes and the Man Who Makes War Possible by former Washington Post correspondent Douglas Farah and the Los Angeles Times' Stephen Braun, Bout flew hundreds of flights for the Pentagon and its contractors in Iraq. He did so despite having been: 1) identified by U.S. and British intelligence as a supplier of weapons, ammunition and aircraft to the Taliban and, indirectly, to al Qaeda; 2) the subject of an Interpol arrest warrant at the request of the Belgian government; 3) named in almost a dozen U.N. public reports as the chief illegal provider of weapons to Africa's rogue regimes, and; 4) the subject of an executive order signed by George W. Bush in July 2004 making it illegal to do any business with Bout. The executive order was followed by an order from the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) in May 2005, freezing the assets of Bout, his senior partners and main companies, again making it illegal for U.S citizens or their government to do business with any of the named entities.

Yet the flights in Iraq went on, at the request of Halliburton, KBR and others, on behalf of the U.S. Army, Air Force and Marine Corps, until early 2006. Farah and Braun, based on flight and refueling records from Iraq, estimate Bout's companies may have flown up to 1,000 flights as a secondary contractor for the U.S. government. Each flight cost about $60,000 -- not a bad chunk of taxpayer dollars. Bout managed to up his profit margin considerably by having his pilots apply for and receive special refueling cards that allowed them to gas up for free when they landed in Iraq.

Using an Amnesty International report as a starting point, the authors trace a deeply troubling incident that, based on a July GAO report, was not unique. The GAO report found that tens of thousands of weapons purchased by the U.S. military and destined for delivery in Iraq remain unaccounted for.

Some of weapons--200,000 AK-47 assault rifles--were transported by Bout's aircraft before going AWOL. One of his airlines, Aerocom, registered in Moldova, obtained a contract from the Pentagon in August 2004 to fly the weapons from Bosnia to Iraq, along with millions of rounds of ammunition.

But, according to Amnesty International and the authors, there were several problems with the deal. Aerocom was already named in U.N. reports to illicit weapons trafficking in Africa, and Bout was on UN and U.S. sanctions lists. The day before the first flight, the Moldovan government canceled the Aerocom aircraft's air-operations certificate, making taking off illegal. Still, the flights went on, although there is no record of them ever landing in Iraq or of the weapons being delivered to their declared destination.

Blackwater is just one piece of an entire outsourcing system for which there is no accountability. Congress is presently debating a number of bills that would reign in this whole mess of outsourcing gone wild. The House overwhelmingly passed this week a bill by Rep. David Price to bring better oversight and legal accountability. On the Senate side, Senator Barack Obama was the first Senator to introduce legislation on this subject last February. Obama has also added in a section to ensure that critical U.S. military functions are not simply handed over to contractors like Viktor Bout.

It is well past time that the U.S. Congress enacts these bills in to law. That is, unless we want to keep giving our business to the Viktor Bouts and Blackwaters of the world. By failing to control the contractors, or giving contracts to criminal enterprises, we squander our moral authority, waste tax dollars and undercut our men and women in uniform fighting far from home.

Comments

[THEUNHEARDVOICE]

I believe that George Bush has to be the smartest President this nation has ever seen!The reason i say this is all the media story of law braking by members of our goverment.­Eight years of lies

[JayWilliams]

Dunno about smartest, but G. W. Bush is easily, hands down, easily the most powerful president since...ev­er?
He gets virtually anything he wants. He gets away with anything he does, and he just keeps on keeping on. He is supposedly a "lame-duck" president as he rides into the twi-light of office. Nobody even mentions the "lame-duck" title, because he still runs the show. A threat to veto makes congress tremble. A lame-duck Bush is more powerful than any president in my life---since Truman.
If most powerful is the same as greatest, then Bush is the greatest president we have probably ever seen. This makes it so vexing because Bush is the most repugnant prez I have ever seen. Why does anybody listen to His Royal Puke?

[fact finder]

JayWilliams, First; Bush was never legally elected.

Second; There is nothing great about this imitation human.

Third; George Bush and his gang are the largest bunch of terrorist that has ever existed.

Fourth; Bush will attack Iran causing the greatest loss of life that this continent has ever seen. Hundreds of thousands if not millions .

Fifth; There is absolutely nothing you or any one else can do to stop it. Just bend over put your head between your legs and kiss your A&*(()$%&* good bye.

[RumiSouth]

Isn't Viktor Bout the man on whom Nicholas Cage's character in "Lord of War" was based? I recall that the ending saw Cage's character released from custody because he was shipping arms to America's friends as well as its enemies. Who knows where those AK-47s will turn up...Maybe the Mujahideen E-Khalk (MEK), our terrorist allies against Iran, received them?

Once again, the Truth is NOT "Out There." The Truth is OUTSOURCED.

http://www.osborneink.com

[ignorantwillyharper]

All this was done to make few people in the White House richer. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice and Haliburton & Kellog.

Billions folks, and they'll be making richies on this little war for the next thirty years!

[realitytrumpsbull]

Maybe Congress will pull the plug on the whole
thing, but more likely they won't. $$$$$$$$$$­$$$$$$$$$$­$$$

[UNCLEJOE]

When will Americans and Huf Bloggers realize the the majority of Democratic Congressmen are in on Bush's Folly and are reaping their share of blood money? The House Majority decides Which Bills are sent to the President, and they do NOT need 60 Senators to over-ride a Bill that the House Never sends with money. Democrats are using a Phoney excuse not to stop the wars and nobody is calling them on it.

[EyeballKid]

This perspective is so logical that it has to be true. All of the active evidence (what Congress is DOING) indicates that the truth lies in the Dems' covert complicity in the Iraq War. There MUST be a payoff for most of the Dems who are "hesitant" to de-fund the war.

And what about the recent bill to codify illegal behavior on the part of mercenaries in Iraq? B..F..D.

The people who run these mercenary outfits, and their underlings and perpetrators, ought to be thrown in the can and either place in trial or sent to the Hague for further processing. But no. We're now going to pretend to make them behave. There's nothing more hurtful than a slap on the wrist when it comes to the robbing of billions from US, the taxpayers.

It's all a shell game, and the Dems are in on it.

[realitytrumpsbull]

I think the major lesson of the last several years is that you can kiss public accountability
in government goodbye pretty much altogether,
they may go through the motions, but there are Larger Forces At Work, Here whose actions and
policies likely won't be made public until
After The Fact. Maybe that sound a little
tinfoil hat, but in the case of the Penta$cam,
you've got an entity with 1/2 trillion and more
annually at their disposal, and nothing to do...
lots of free time, lots of money...bo­red, bored, bored...

[Henry]

As time goes on...it becomes more clear what purpose the 363 tons of $100 bills, the $12 billion U.S. flown to Iraq and given to Bremer were all about. Shrink wrapped and placed into black brief cases, then handed out by Bremer, the provisional government, with no trace for whom the cash was given. How much of that cash purchased black market weapons? And just what could all of that be about?
It's seemed more incompetent than one could imagine (from the start) but maybe something else was up all along.

[Boadicea]

This is getting scarry. I saw Man of War a few months ago, and it brought home how screwed up our world is.

The problem, of course, is that our economy, and that of several other countries including Britain and Russia, is greatly enhanced by our arms running. A big chunk of our GDP is military weaponry. How will we extricate ourselves from that?

[Guitarsandmore]

If the government can borrow money to make weapons then the government can just as easily borrow money to make solar panels, wind generators, or little plastic peace signs for that matter.

The same people that now work at the weapons plants could just as easily work at the solar factory and take the money the government hands out.

Global Warming is a big crisis. Since our new economy seems to be based on the latest crisis then let us have an energy crisis and build new energy.

[cuthbertallgood]

Not to be snarky, for I agree with you, but people who earn money working in a factory are not taking a government hand out. They are working for a wage. The money is earned. It is not a hand out of any kind.

Words are important.

[dryfactoidobotanoid]

"By failing to control the contractors, or giving contracts to criminal enterprises, we squander our moral authority, waste tax dollars and undercut our men and women in uniform fighting far from home."

like the Pentagon doesn't waste tax dollars and shortchange the troops in favor of Big Weapons procurement, and shit-and-piss "reconstruction". the M-16 is a forty year old gun for chrissakes.

the Military-Industrial Complex owns all of us mere humans. pretending to pull the reigns on it is pure theater, signifying nothing.

[ZingoBonMot]

I'm afraid you're right, Dryfactoid­abotanoid.

Like a recalcitrant mule, there's only two ways to tame the MIC. Either bite it's ear...or put one in it.

[BushSunkOurShip]

Our democrats are either with us or against us and right now they are certainly not for us.
They are now creating law behind closed doors and in secret.
To show our government no longer abides by any law, the Supreme court has just past a law that a candidate running for office can lie to Americans on their records or made up lies about the records of the person they are running against.
How long do you think this would last if your employer found your reference and experience was just a bunch of lies.