Private Military Security Contractors

The article recounts how private security firms won lucrative contracts to supply support staff and security guards to back up U.S. forces in Iraq. The firms recruited Ugandans and pushed them to the limit, on low pay and no benefits.

Dyncorp's new Supply Chain organization, stood up last year, has introduced several tools that are updated regularly to evaluate subcontractors on an ongoing basis.

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.

As I've said before, codes of conduct are better than nothing, but lacking enforcement or the means to exact consequences, if the code is violated, not much more so. Let's just say that codes have a certain amount of elasticity.

Considering that Chapter 12 is best known as a chapter of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code, the authors may have wished for another chapter number. On the other hand, considering the gap between some claims and evidence, perhaps it is appropriate.

One wonders why all the PMSC trade association crack analysts and interns have not been publicizing his work. After all it is not every day that one finds factual data supporting, at least partially, their claims. Oh well, perhaps they're on a long coffee break or out for a run.

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.

This is not some merely some picayune issue for bureaucrats to fuss over. As Sen. Portman testified, "This is about something much more fundamental, and that's who we are as a people. It's about respecting and protecting human dignity."

Perhaps the private military and security industry is right; maybe using contractors IS more cost-effective than using regular military folks. But is that really the case?

Still the vagueness, regardless of how deliberate it may be, of many firms has often bugged me. Perhaps it is because I'm a Capricorn but I prefer directness. And I think most people actually do understand that the world being what it is that there is a need for guys with guns.

So just because you can't do it yourself you assume the contractor you hire does a great job? Now, that is not a criticism of DynCorp. For all anyone knows it might have done a terrific job.

if an actual person working for DynCorp, or any other contractor, received ratings like this on their performance assessment the door would be hitting them in the back as they left the office. Yet DynCorp still gets government contracts.

Has the role of private military and security companies been overlooked since the al Qaeda attacks of September 11, 2001? With everything that has been written and said about the subject, from Afghanistan to Iraq and KBR to Wackenhut Services, it is difficult to think that is the case.

Despite all the pieces of national legislation that have been introduced in recent years the heart of the issue is that most PMSC exist to operate somewhere outside the country they are headquartered in. That makes then an international, not a national legal issue.

The issue is not DynCorp; trafficking in and exploitation of people, whether for labor or sexual services, is the problem.

Private Military Security Contract (PMSC) workers could sort of be considered like Mexican migrant workers. Yes, some people think they shouldn't be doing the work but the real problem is with the people who hire them.

The EEOC originally filed suit against DynCorp in August 2011 alleging that from October 2006 through January 2007, James Friso, an aircraft sheet metal/structural mechanic working in Taji, Iraq, was subjected to harassment based on his sex by a male co-worker.