Antiwar.com Blog

Does this mean American private contractors have joined the Iraqi insurgents, or what?

Sixteen private American security guards are under investigation for shooting at U.S. Marines and Iraqi civilians during a three-hour spree west of Baghdad, the military said Thursday.

The Marines said the 16 Americans and three Iraqi contractors were arrested and held in a military jail for three days after spraying small arms fire at Iraqi civilians and U.S. forces from their cars in Fallujah late last month. There were no casualties.
[…]
Marines spokesman Lt. Col. Dave Lapan said Marines reported seeing gunmen in several late-model trucks fire “near civilian cars” and on military positions.

“Three hours later, another Marine observation post was fired on by gunmen from vehicles matching the description of those involved in the earlier attack,” Lapan said.

U.S. forces later detained the contractors without incident and held them in a military jail for three days. The American contractors are thought to have left Iraq, the military said. A Naval Criminal Investigative Service inquiry is under way.

UPDATE: So, here’s the “contractor” side of the story:

A group of American security guards in Iraq have alleged they were beaten, stripped and threatened with a snarling dog by US marines when they were detained after an alleged shooting incident outside Falluja last month.

“I never in my career have treated anybody so inhumane,” one of the contractors, Rick Blanchard, a former Florida state trooper, wrote in an email quoted in the Los Angeles Times. “They treated us like insurgents, roughed us up, took photos, hazed [bullied] us, called us names.”

A Marine Corps spokesman denied that abuse had taken place and said an investigation was continuing. According to the marines, 19 employees of Zapata Engineering, including 16 Americans, were detained after a marine patrol in Falluja reportedbeing fired on by a convoy of trucks and sports utility vehicles. The marines also claim to have seen gunmen in the convoy fire at civilians.

This is believed to be the first time that private military contractors have been detained in Iraq by the US military, and it has reignited debate about their status and accountability.

The security guards claim the shooting incident was a case of mistaken identity. A spokeswoman for the company told the LA Times that the guards had fired warning shots into the air when an unidentified vehicle approached their vehicle as it passed through Falluja, but had not fired at any marines.

Mark Schopper, a lawyer for two of the contractors, told the newspaper that his clients, both former marines, were subjected to “physical and psychological abuse”. He said they had told him that marines had “slammed around” several con tractors, stripped them to their underwear and placed a loaded weapon near their heads.

“How does it feel to be a big, rich contractor now?” one of the marines is alleged to have shouted at the men, in an apparent reference to the large sums of money private contractors can make in Iraq.

Lieutenant Colonel David Lapan, a Marine Corps spokesman, who did not respond to emails from the Guardian, said in an email to the LA Times: “The Americans were segregated from the rest of the detainee population and, like all security detainees, were treated humanely and respectfully.”

The American contractors, who were working in explosives disposal, were arrested on May 18 and imprisoned for three days. All have since left Zapata Engineering, which is based in North Carolina, and have returned to the US. They also complained they were made to wear orange prison uniforms and fed the same “bad food” as Iraqi prisoners.

If neoconservatism is a biographical creed, denoting someone who has evolved from some variant of Leninism or Marxism into a supporter of George W. Bush’s foreign policy of American global military dominance, then President Meles Zenawi certainly fits the bill. A former guerrilla leader of the Tigray Peoples Liberation Front — a Marxist group that supported Albania’s commie dictator Enver Hoxha as the architect of “real” socialism — Zenawi came to power in 1991, and wound up an ally of George W. Bush in the U.S.-led “war on terrorism.” See here for his commie background and his evolution into a neo-liberal Stalinist.

The United States has an intimate military and political relationship with the government of Ethiopia. In July 2003, the Pentagon held a three-month training exercise in tandem with Ethiopian military at the Hurso Training Camp. Ongoing “anti-terrorism” training exercises continue in coordination with the U.S. base at Djibouti. In January of 2004, a new joint U.S.-Ethiopian military base was established at Hurso, in Ethiopia, alongside “Camp United,” where U.S. troops train Ethiopian troops in anti-insurgency strategy and tactics. The record of U.S. military aid to Ethiopia shows a marked increase since 2001. As Keith Harmon Snow points out in an excellent bit of research:

“From 1995-2000, the US provided some $1,835,000 in International Military and Education Training (IMET) deliveries to Ethiopia. Some 115 Ethiopian officers were trained under the IMET program from 1991-2001. …

“For 2002 and 2003, Ethiopia received some $2,817,000 through the IMET and Foreign Military Sales and Deliveries programs. The US also equipped, trained and supported Ethiopian troops under the Africa Regional Peacekeeping Program. Ethiopia has remained a participant of the IMET program in 2000-2004. In August 2003, the U.S. committed $28 million for international tradeenhancements with Ethiopia.”

The tyrant Zenawi is killing his own citizens with weapons bought and paid for by the United States of America. But he needn’t worry about a cut-off in military or economic aid: Zenawi was warmly welcomed to the White House by President Bush in 2002, just as Uzbek tyrant Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan was greeted with open arms.

Remember all those cool-looking kids calling for “democracy” and waving orange banners at that giant rock concert that styled itself Ukraine’s “Orange Revolution”? No one but us “democrats” here — right?

Wrong.

John Laughland, among others, warned us about the ideological coloration of the “orange revolutionaries,” but dissenting voices were in a minority. Now that the “revolution” has given way to a government, however, the character of the new regime is becoming apparent. An editorial in the pro-Yushchenko Kyiv Post wonders if the Orange Revolution is turning red, on account of the socialist measures recently enacted — including price controls on gas and meat — and now that same newspaper has revealed that a pro-government member of the Rada, the Ukrainian parliament, recently attended a conference in Kiev, the theme of which was “Zionism as the Biggest Threat to Contemporary Civilization.” The Kyiv Post reports “the conference included calls for the deportation of Ukraine’s Jews.” An honored conference guest: David Duke. The Rada member in attendance: Levko Lukyanenko, a supporter of Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko’s party.

Okay, so maybe this is a marginal figure, not representative of the “orange” mainstream.” Nope. In this little biography, Lukyanenko is described as not only a member of the Rada, but a former ambassador to Canada and a founding member of the Helsinki Watch Group, not to mention “the co-author of the Declaration of Ukrainian National Sovereignty and the author of the Act of the Proclamation of Ukrainian Independence.” On April 20, he was presented with the title “Hero of Ukraine” by President Viktor Yushchenko.

As if the slaughter unleashed by Uzbekistan’s Islam Karimov, a staunch American ally in the “war on terrorism,” wasn’t enough, another pro-U.S. commie dictator, Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia, is mowing down protestors in the streets: 22 dead, so far, dozens wounded, and opposition leaders are in jail.

The protestors, many of them students, were outraged that the government appeared to have rigged the election returns. Ethiopia’s recent election, marked by a complete absence of transparency and fairness, was widely touted as a “test of democracy.” I give Ethiopian “president” Zenawi an F-minus.

Natan Sharansky, author of The Case for Democracy — which President Bush has said he read with admiration — certainly can’t be accused of consistency. When confronted by Pat Buchanan on the kind of “democracy” he envisions for the Palestinians, Sharansky balked:

“BUCHANAN: Mr. Sharansky…

SHARANSKY: We appeased Yasser Arafat.

BUCHANAN: If you…

SHARANSKY: And then we are paying price for this.

BUCHANAN: If you believe in democracy…

SHARANSKY: Yeah.

BUCHANAN: …that much, would you allow the fate of the settlers in Gaza…

SHARANSKY: Yeah.

BUCHANAN: …to be decided by all the people of Gaza?”

Sharansky paled, and muttered that the Palestinians are out to “destroy us.” If the case for democracy in his own part of the world is vague, at best, it dissolves into mist when it comes to Uzbekistan, however. The Forward reports Sharansky’s outlandish praise for the regime of Islam Karimov, the mass-murderering dictator of Uzbekistan:

“In an interview with the Israeli daily Novosti Nedeli last August, Sharansky said that terrorism threats were a reminder that Karimov’s uncompromising stance against extremists was justified, according to the BBC monitoring service.

“‘The Uzbek government adopted such an uncompromising position because it is understood in Tashkent, in the same way as Jerusalem, that the battle against terrorism is not some sort of tribal conflict; it is a world war of the forces of democracy against international terrorism,’ Sharansky was quoted as saying. He added, ‘It goes without saying that the strengthening, development and defense of democracy in Uzbekistan are an important part of the struggle for human rights all over the world. However, it would be a mistake to believe that the democratization process could be speeded up by way of slander and defaming the courageous struggle that Uzbekistan is waging against terrorism.'”

That was before Karimov the Crazed ordered his troops to mow down over 1,000 protestors in the Uzbek town of Andijan last month. However, The Forward reports that, in the wake of the bloody slaughter carried out by the “courageous” Uzbek regime, “Sharansky could not be reached for further comment.”

Will this phony icon of “democracy” even bother to retract his fulsome support for what has proved to be one of the most odious governments currently in power?

Don’t hold your breath….

Seymour Hersh, writing in The New Yorker, relates this exchange with Alexander “I’m in charge here” Haig during the Watergate imbroglio:

“It was late in the evening on May 16, 1973, and I was in the Washington bureau of the Times, immersed in yet another story about Watergate. The paper had been overwhelmed by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein’s reporting for the Washington Post the previous year, and I was trying to catch up. The subject this time was Henry Kissinger, President Richard Nixon’s national-security adviser. I had called Kissinger to get his comment on a report, which the Times was planning to run, that he had been involved in wiretapping reporters, fellow Administration officials, and even his own aides on the National Security Council. At first, he had indignantly denied the story. When I told him that I had information from sources in the Justice Department that he had personally forwarded the wiretap requests to the F.B.I., he was silent, and then said that he might have to resign.

“… Alexander Haig, Kissinger’s sometimes loyal deputy, had called a few times during the day to beat back the story. At around seven o’clock, there was a final call. ‘You’re Jewish, aren’t you, Seymour?’ In all our previous conversations, I’d been ‘Sy.’ I said yes. ‘Let me ask you one question, then,’ Haig said. ‘Do you honestly believe that Henry Kissinger, a Jewish refugee from Germany who lost thirteen members of his family to the Nazis, could engage in such police-state tactics as wiretapping his own aides? If there is any doubt, you owe it to yourself, your beliefs, and your nation to give us one day to prove that your story is wrong.’ That was Watergate, circa 1973. The Times printed the story the next day, and Kissinger did not resign.”

This supposed ethno-religious-historical resistance to bugging is apparently something that never occurred to the Israelis, who blithely have been bugging each other’s computers, according to this fascinating story: apparently it all came out when a mystery writer, Ammon Jacont, and his co-author wife noticed that sections of their new as-yet-unpublished novel were appearing on the internet. An investigation unraveled a case of industrial espionage involving “spyware” — software that infiltrates computers, steals information, and records every keystroke — that involves at least three Israeli “private” investigating outfits, as well as the executives of major Israeli companies. As one account describes it:

“The full extent of the industrial spying operation has yet to be discovered, Peal Liat, superintendent at Tel Aviv police headquarters, told Computer Weekly: ‘Right now it is a very sophisticated investigation. We have something like 150 different computers that were taken by the investigators. Every computer they open, they discover more. Every day it gets us more companies that ordered the information and more companies that were infected,’ she said.

“Israeli police are investigating the role of 15 senior executives from top Israeli companies, after they allegedly hired detective agencies to obtain confidential information from their competitors’ computer systems. Telecoms companies, advertising agencies and public relations firms are among more than 20 organisations known to have been targeted. Twenty-two staff from Israel’s three leading private investigation firms have been arrested.”

Just how “private” these “private investigators” are is an open question, however, especially when we take the following news item into consideration:

“The personal computer of Syria’s British-born first lady was bugged by Israeli military intelligence to build up a profile of her husband, President Bashar al-Assad, it emerged last week. The Israelis used ‘Trojan horse’ spy software to record her messages, including e-mail exchanges with her husband, and forward them to a server computer.”

Were “private” investigators spying on the First Lady of Syria? I dont think so. With the Larry Franklin spy scandal now breaking into the headlines, in which a spy nest in the Pentagon and within the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) has been caught stealing U.S. secrets on behalf of Israel, the question of how the Israelis are using this technology in the U.S. becomes pertinent. The extent of Israeli “Trojan horse” spy tactics is perhaps even bigger than anyone now imagines, if we take this report by Carl Cameron of Fox News from 2001 into account. An excerpt:

“Most directory assistance calls, and virtually all call records and billing in the U.S. are done for the phone companies by Amdocs Ltd., an Israeli-based private elecommunications company.

“Amdocs has contracts with the 25 biggest phone companies in America, and more worldwide. The White House and other secure government phone lines are protected, but it is virtually impossible to make a call on normal phones without generating an Amdocs record of it.

“In recent years, the FBI and other government agencies have investigated Amdocs more than once. The firm has repeatedly and adamantly denied any security breaches or wrongdoing. But sources tell Fox News that in 1999, the super secret national security agency, headquartered in northern Maryland, issued what’s called a Top Secret sensitive compartmentalized information report, TS/SCI, warning that records of calls in the United States were getting into foreign hands – in Israel, in particular.

“Investigators don’t believe calls are being listened to, but the data about who is calling whom and when is plenty valuable in itself. An internal Amdocs memo to senior company executives suggests just how Amdocs generated call records could be used. ‘Widespread data mining techniques and algorithms…. combining both the properties of the customer (e.g., credit rating) and properties of the specific ‘behavior….’ Specific behavior, such as who the customers are calling.

“The Amdocs memo says the system should be used to prevent phone fraud. But U.S. counterintelligence analysts say it could also be used to spy through the phone system. Fox News has learned that the N.S.A has held numerous classified conferences to warn the F.B.I. and C.I.A. how Amdocs records could be used. At one NSA briefing, a diagram by the Argon national lab was used to show that if the phone records are not secure, major security breaches are possible.

“Another briefing document said, ‘It has become increasingly apparent that systems and networks are vulnerable.…Such crimes always involve unauthorized persons, or persons who exceed their authorization…citing on exploitable vulnerabilities.'”

In this context, Washington Post columnist Jim Hoagland’s comment that “the FBI’s attempts to break and then use Pentagon analyst Larry Franklin in national security sting operations look to be truly Nixonian in character and method” has it exactly backwards (but what else do you expect from a dolt like Hoagland?). It is the Israeli government’s inclination to spy on everyone and everything that is “truly Nixonian in character.”

Paraphrasing Haig: ‘Do you honestly believe that the Israelis, a nation of Jewish refugees who lost at least 6 million to the Nazis, could engage in such police-state tactics as wiretapping (and otherwise spying) on their own allies?’

An honest answer: Absolutely positively yes.