Corporate Warriors
Thank you for maintaining this site. Do you have a statistic about how many “contractors” have been killed /injured in Iraq?
Sam Koritz replies:
David Lazarus wrote about this subject in the January 21 San Francisco Chronicle (“Taking the War Private“), citing anonymous US officials’ claims that several dozen contractors have been killed in Iraq. He also refers to a claim by the Guardian that, with over 10,000 employees in Iraq, private companies funded by the US government are now the “second-biggest U.S. coalition partner in Iraq.” He further quotes Peter Singer of the Brookings Institution and author of Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry as saying:
“Contractors aren’t factored in when figures are given for troops killed or injured in Iraq. There’s no official accounting of this. Almost everything we know about them comes from the few stories that get told and a lot of rumors.”
(Also, check out Chronicle guest reporter Sean Penn’s creepy interaction with armed DynCorp employees in Iraq, “2nd Act A Year Later, Sean Penn Returns to Iraq and Files a Personal, Candid Report From the Front.”)
I am an intern at the American Friends Service Committee in Pasadena, CA. We will have a commemoration event of those who died in Iraq. Would you know or have a source of how many Iraqi soldiers were killed?
Thank you!
Mike Ewens replies:
There are no official numbers for Iraqi soldiers killed, and I suspect that there never will be. Here is the only link that I know of: “List of casualties in Iraq war,” SMH.com.au.
Sorry I couldn’t be more help.
RE: the statistic is “547 US soldiers killed in Iraq.” Question: Does this include or exclude the soldiers who were critically injured or wounded, put on a plane for evacuation to Germany, and then died OUTSIDE of Iraq?
Mike Ewens replies:
Yes it does. I believe that there have been at least a dozen such deaths and all are recorded.
Update
Yesterday a headline appeared on your site, “The UN agreed there CAN be elections by June 30th.” NOW today the link is gone and the headline is, “UN says not enough time to hold elections by June.” What gives? Are you running BOGUS stories? The same man is mentioned in both stories as the source. SLOPPY Reporting on your part. I’ll read everything now with doubt until its CONFIRMED by reliable sources! Or maybe I’ll just go to CNN and get the story STRAIGHT the First Time!
Eric Garris replies:
Believe it or not, events change. Both versions of the story were from USA Today, and the same writer wrote the update.
Sharon’s Escape from Alcatraz
I‘d like to chime in on the Gaza settlements debate (“Sharon’s Escape from Alcatraz” in the February 13 Backtalk):
Somewhere between David Bedein and Ran HaCohen is the position I agree with. Bedein mentions that Arabs see all post-1948 settlement of conquered lands (including the Galilee, the Negev, and seaside cities evacuated in the war) as illegal, but that they do not see the Gush Katif block of settlements as illegal because they were built on uninhabited land. HaCohen seems to say that to even recognize this claim is “extremist” and therefore, it would seem, the claim is invalid. I take exception to that. They are certainly immoral, if not illegal, but I do agree that the time has passed for a direct return of the lands over which large cities have been built. A solution, however, along the lines of the “one state solution,” would be to allow Arab settlement of any and all lands inside of Israel that are owned by the State – without the need for purchase. The State has no legitimate business owning land anyhow. (Side note: I advocate this for the problem of American Black “reparations” for slavery, and for the plunder of the Indians’ land, too: the Federal Government owns about 1/3 of the country’s land – give it away!)
I vehemently disagree with HaCohen that land in Gaza is owned by Gazans even if they are not using it or if no individual has claimed it. It’s collectivism like that that has the world in the state it is in now. The State of Israel has no right to claim huge swathes of uninhabited land as its property, to be doled out to Jews only, just as Gazans have no collective claim to uninhabited, unclaimed land in Gaza. Gazans even recognize this:
“Before 1967, recalls the old man in the group, he and his neighbors and relatives worked the lands where the Kfar Darom greenhouses now stand. They leased the land from the Egyptian Custodian of Enemy Property, because the area was under private Jewish ownership. Kfar Darom, so they say in Gaza, is the only settlement that is ‘registered in the Tabu.’ This means it was built not on lands confiscated from the Palestinians, or on ‘state’ lands, but on land purchased by Jews before 1948.”
Kfar Darom was built on the site of a kibbutz that was established in 1946 on land legitimately purchased from its previous owners. After 1948, when Egypt ran the show, and the kibbutz was abandoned, the locals leased the land from the state custodian of the Jewish-owned land. Just because the Israelis, when they took Gaza in 1967, returned the land to its owners, doesn’t mean this was an illegitimate taking of Arab land.
The Gush Katif bloc (of which Kfar Darom is not a part, by the way) is not an outrage because Jews live there. It is an outrage because the lives of Palestinians who live near it are living hells due to the strangling web of Israeli security around the settlements. The exclusion of non-Jews from using roads and common lands and beaches, etc. is an outrage. Destroying Arabs’ houses to create a “security zone” around the privileged Jews is an outrage. Shooting children playing too close to settlement walls is an outrage. It is the manner in which the Jews live in Gaza, not the very fact that they do, that is an outrage.
More:
“‘But we also had lands registered in the Tabu, where Israel is today,’ someone hastens to mention. ‘So they should let us go back to them, too.'”
I couldn’t agree more.
HaCohen says “even if the dunes were empty, they belong to the Gazans and not to Israel, just like empty dunes in Florida belong to the State of Florida and not to neighbouring Cuba.” As I said above, ownership of this sort is illegitimate. States have no right to use force to keep people from using unclaimed land on this earth, no matter the location. And being from Miami, I feel I should I mention that there are indeed whole walled, gated communities where only Cubans live.
Another note: I do obviously agree that the State of Israel should not be funding settlement of land, no matter how legitimately owned by the settlers. And it definitely should not be trashing all of Palestine to make these bourgeois farmers more comfortable.
Confirmation
I wrote here to Justin Raimondo last week. Could you please confirm whether he received my letter. Thank you in advance.
Sam Koritz replies:
Email messages sent to Backtalk are forwarded to Antiwar.com’s columnists and editors, and are very seldom lost. I would estimate that fewer than 1 in 1000 emails is mishandled. Due to the overwhelming quantity of email, however, we are unable to confirm the receipt or processing of specific messages.
Saudi Arabia’s Wall
You denounce Israel for building a wall because it is built partially over purportedly disputed territory. Yet, you have not denounced Saudi Arabia for building a wall over disputed territory with Yemen. Indeed, this appears only the latest double standard by your organization. I am sure you denounced the occupation of Gaza and West Bank by Egypt and Jordan, the occupation of Lebanon by Syria, the murder of Palestinians by Syria and Jordan and Christian Lebanese, the murder of Kurds by Iraqis, the discrimination against non-Muslims by Saudi Arabia, Iran, Pakistan and all those other “Islamic” states. If you have not, then why are you attacking Israel?
Eric Garris replies:
We did run a couple of articles attacking it, and I have been looking for more. We are clearly against this, and would appreciate and links and/or sources you can offer.
Bush’s Guard Service
You guys are Antiwar, but you think Bush should have fought in Vietnam? What kind of sense does that make? Admit it, you aren’t antiwar, just anti-Republican-war.
Eric Garris replies:
You are incorrect, we applaud Bush for not going to Vietnam. That is one of the few things we like about him. Please take a look at our position on this: “Both Parties AWOL,” by Justin Raimondo.
I have been a Republican for over 20 years. We started Antiwar.com in 1995 to protest against Clinton’s wars.
I‘ve read your stuff with great interest, but by defending Novak I think your ideology is showing. If exposing the pernicious neocons’ “soft underbelly” was his noble goal, he could have done so without naming Plame, but simply saying they were trying to get him to break the law and undermine what’s left of our intelligence capability for purely venal purposes. His dissembling about what he knew since he clearly stated she was an operative simply makes him look like a patsy.
Having said that, I do agree with your antiwar focus, and general anti-elitist opinions. In fact, they support my long-held contention that centrist Democrats and Republicans are far more closely aligned than those further to their own parties extremes. What I learned in my anti-Vietnam war days was that so-called John Birchers were equally against the war, but more importantly, against the elitist CFR conspiracy, something even the far left sneered about at the time. I never warmed up to the organized side of the antiwar movement of the day because they were so taken in by the neo-liberal myth, and failed to see how the elites were hell bent on subverting sovereignty wherever it could be found. Our Iraqi adventure is just another stone in the path to one world under Rothschild and Rockefeller.
Keep up the great work.
There seems to be one question in the whole Plame affair that no one asks, especially the television and print media. The neocons contradict themselves very blatantly, but keep talking and no one notices. The “sources,” most assuredly neocons, make the claim that they asked Bob Novak not to reveal Plame’s identity as a CIA employee. One would think that if they did not want this persons affiliation with the CIA revealed, they would not have told Mr. Novak, nor would they have told the six other journalists who claim the information. One has to ask what the point is in revealing the name of an agent if you don’t want other people to know about it. There is only one obvious answer, and that is that the neocons deliberately and without doubt intended for Plame to be outed as a CIA employee. …
Mr. Novak is a man of his word, and unlikely to reveal his sources, even as they stab him in the back and smear him, which is indeed unfortunate in this instance. He seems more and more irritated by the neocon smears lately though, and he may just surprise us.
I think your view and description of Robert Novak’s role in the outing of Valerie Plame is way off-center. You seem to think he was helping to blow the whistle on the people in the Bush administration who gave out her name in order to punish her husband Mr. Wilson. I think he was actually a participant in trying to punish Joe Wilson or, at least, didn’t care either way as long as he got a “scoop.”
Carl Hess the former Goldwater speech writer turned libertarian said something once about right-wing journalists that reminds me of Novak and a lot of the older cold war era conservative reporters (and probably a lot of younger ones too). He said it was easy being a conservative journalist because the Government (CIA, FBI etc.) did all your investigation and leg work for you and brought it (including, “raw data”, smears and disinformation) to friendly reporters who could be relied on write it up and give it the “right” slant. I think Novak basically built his career on this kind of “reporting” and he was just doing what he had always done when he published the information about Plame. …
It isn’t just partisanship that inspires the left anti-Bush brigade to pursue Bush over his military records. It’s the sheer hypocrisy. When he did all that stuff, he supported the war openly – he says he still supports it. But while his dad’s influence helped to smooth the way for him to avoid service (in spite of the family’s official support for the war) lots of kids were kidnapped and sent over to be killed – whether they believed in the war or not. Now this person who so easily avoided military service (without going to jail or being labeled a draft dodger as Clinton was for more or less openly opposing the same war) has seen fit to send a new generation into war, taunting an enemy he has never faced and never will face with “bring em on.” Now he’s a tough guy, a REAL patriot,a “WAR president.” It is to puke.
I remember that soldiers on American bases were encouraged not to salute their “commander in chief” when the label of draft-dodger was affixed to Clinton – talk about partisanship. Now Clinton’s successor – more adept at keeping out of harm’s way than Clinton (I hate to find myself in the position of defending Clinton, by the way – he was a war criminal too – but his opposition to the Vietnam war had at least an element of honesty) – seems to be getting a get-out-of-jail-free card – and certainly NOT for the first time, it would seem – from that same military establishment. And why? Because, unlike war resisters, he gave lip service to the war, however successfully – and illegally – he avoided getting shot at.
I have not read Buckley’s book and doubt that I shall, but his efforts over the years to de-legitimize the people and groups you describe, I really consider less damaging than the casting into the darkness starting in the fifties of the older conservatives who lacked his zeal for the anti-communist crusade. The triumph of the conversion of conservative animosity to communism into broad-based conservative support for the worldwide military and diplomatic crusade involving huge treaty obligations, massive foreign aid, military bases in forty-five countries, all carried out and expanded on a bipartisan, undebated basis – this is surely Buckley’s crucial influence on American conservatives. National Review did not accomplish this on it own of curse [sic], but its importance was vital. About the only opposition to all of this while it was in progress was the Nation magazine. While Welch and Rand were important figures, they were rather too insignificant compared with what happened to the older non-interventionists from the forties and fifties.
(Incidentally, during the fifties and sixties Buckley was an enthusiastic queer baiter. I’m not sure what happened to temper his views of this.)
News: DOD contractors evade $3B in taxes – GAO
I work in a tax office and received this bulletin in my e-mail this morning:
Tax Notes Today
FEBRUARY 12, 2004 THURSDAY
DEPARTMENT: TODAY’S TAX HIGHLIGHTS
CITE: 2004 TNT 29-H
LENGTH: 2204 words
HEADLINE: #H 2004 TNT 29-H SUMMARIES OF TODAY’S IMPORTANT TAX ITEMS.
TEXT: …
DEFENSE CONTRACTORS OWE $ 3 BILLION IN UNPAID TAXES, GAO FINDS.
Published by Tax AnalystsTM
The Defense Department in fiscal 2002 paid billions of dollars to more than 27,000 contractors who owe more than $ 3 billion in unpaid taxes, according to the General Accounting Office, which is expected to officially release its findings on February 12.
The GAO is scheduled to issue its report at a February 12 Senate Governmental Affairs Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations hearing that will examine Department of Defense (DOD) contractors who are “abusing the federal tax system by either failing to file tax returns or not paying their taxes,” according to the subcommittee.
IRS Commissioner Mark Everson is scheduled to testify at the hearing, which will attempt to identify “corrective actions that can be taken to ensure that DOD contractors pay the taxes they owe the federal government,” a subcommittee release said.
In its report the GAO said the DOD has failed to implement procedures set in place in 1997 that are designed to assist the government in reclaiming back taxes from federal contractors. According to press reports, the DOD’s “inconsistent participation” in the tax levy program resulted in only $332,000 being collected from tax-delinquent military contractors. Had DOD implemented the proper procedures, it could have collected at least $ 100 million each year, the GAO said.
Document: (Doc 2004-2935 (1 original page))
Electronic Citation: See 2004 TNT 29-3
“…free England from the grip of an increasingly authoritarian form of socialism.”
I grew up in America but have lived in England for almost ten years at various points in my life. I think you let the right-wing part of your libertarianism get the better of you in the statement above.
The ‘authoritarian’ is too right. New Labour is the most authoritarian party to govern the UK in many decades, perhaps for the 250 years since the Whig oligarchy of the early 1700’s.
But socialist?! A few winters ago, a record number of people died of cold because they could not afford heating. New Labour has cut benefits to asylum seekers and now locks them up in jails (‘welcome centers’ they call them). They are privatizing public goods that even the lying pirate Thatcherites didn’t think of (air traffic control), and are selling off schools and hospitals indirectly through the private-finance initiative. They in no sense care for society, only for big business.
Have the Neocons Killed a Presidency?
“Hearing it, Gore’s rant seemed slanderous and demagogic. For though US policy since Clinton had called for regime change in Iraq, there is no evidence, none, that Bush planned to invade prior to 9-11.”
Ahh, sorry, Mr. Buchanan. According to Paul O’Neill, Bush and his administration had been planning an invasion of Iraq almost as soon as he was in office. Now you may say that Mr. O’Neill is a disgruntled former Treasury Secretary, however I see no reason for him to lie and bring heat down upon himself as he most certainly has with his controversial book.
I myself recall Mr. Rumsfeld beating the war drums over Iraq in the immediate aftermath of 9-11, wherein he indicated that Iraq and Al Qaeda where somehow connected, and implied that Saddam Hussein was complicit in the deed. In fact, the President repeatedly alluded to an Iraqi Al Qaeda connection up until last fall, when he was forced to admit there was none.
Where there is smoke, there is fire Mr. Buchanan, and I see plenty of smoke in the assertion that Bush planned this invasion from the very start. Mr. Bush’s numerous pathetic reasons for invading Iraq have consistently fallen apart under scrutiny. The only explanation left is that he planned this event, probably as long as PNAC has, and for the same exact reasons as PNAC, along with plenty of financial interests of his own.
… Mr. Buchanan, I suggest you reread what Mr. O’Neill, who actually has a basis from which to speak, had to say on the matter:
“From the very beginning, there was a conviction, that Saddam Hussein was a bad person and that he needed to go,” says O’Neill, who adds that going after Saddam was topic “A” 10 days after the inauguration – eight months before Sept. 11.
“From the very first instance, it was about Iraq. It was about what we can do to change this regime,” says Suskind. “Day one, these things were laid and sealed.”
As treasury secretary, O’Neill was a permanent member of the National Security Council. He says in the book he was surprised at the meeting that questions such as “Why Saddam?” and “Why now?” were never asked.
(See “Bush Sought ‘Way’ To Invade Iraq?“….)
Mr. O’Neills claims, together with the comprehensive documentation to back them up, constitute vastly more than “no evidence,” Mr. Buchanan. And bear in mind Bush’s childish claims about Mr. Hussein trying to “kill my daddy.” Mr. Buchanan again raises improbably apologies for Mr. Bush with his disingenuous claim that Mr. Bush himself was misled by neo-con propaganda.
Never mind that this presumes that Mr. Bush is incompetent to serve as President. Mr. Bush picked the neo-cons (one might argue they picked him, but once elected he did not have to finish the deal, and he could have fired them at any time – in fact he could, and should, still do that, but he has not, preferring instead to continue the charade and lies, all to the great detriment of Mr. Buchanan’s imagined account of what happened), and he is fully responsible for everything they do on his watch. …
I must begin this with a little anecdote. Back a few years I wrote a column for a Black daily in New York City. I always liked you for your honesty and feistiness, but the Black public hate you. So when I wrote a piece that was mostly favorable to you they took me to task. I was right about you.
Now the article. Bush may have entered the presidency not quite knowing about the the neocon intentions and plot, but there is sufficient there to conclude – if O’Neill can be believed – that he was aware of it from the very beginning of his presidency – which, incredible as this may sound, may have been a deal for him to secure the presidency. Remember the plot that was offered up to Roosevelt to try and get him into the last world war? The problem with the Bushes – father and son – is that they lack a sense of scruples and vision. When you start down a road creating rationales for overthrowing governments by brute force instead of working through the local population to attain that object you are eventually going to have it coming back to haunt you. …
Mr. Buchanan’s well-intentioned statement that “there is no evidence, none, that Bush planned to invade prior to 9-11” is clearly wrong. See today’s article from LewRockwell.com, “Find Me a Way To Do This” by Morgan Reynolds.
I agree with Charley Reese that Bush is an established liar and that it’s very important for this to be understood. However I would like to make the point that it may be even more important to recognize that Congress voted illegally and unadvisedly to give the President war making powers. In short, the executive branch has acquired far to much power and the only way to stop this is to vote in assertive legislators.
Every time a new Bush lie is revealed, the failure of Congress to act should also be mentioned. If the failure of our legislators isn’t punished, tyranny is unavoidable no matter who is President.
The War Department
In 1947, as I am sure you are aware, the War Department changed its name to Defense Department. This was clearly done for propaganda. At the very moment in history when the US system was changing gears and becoming an even more militaristic and invasive system, particularly a permanent one, it was apparently felt that one way to disguise this fact was to change the name of the, aptly named, War Department to a more reassuring, innocent, victimist term. My point is this: I think critics should refrain from accepting the propaganda. Whenever the Defense Department or defense contractors are mentioned, as far as we can help it, we might simply tell the truth as it was told pre-1947. The War Department, war or military contractors, the war or military budget. When it can’t be avoided, perhaps refer to the so-called Defense Department, or the like. Just a suggestion. I think it is important that we reject their propaganda terms. Many arguments are won merely by propaganda terms like this. After all, if we are referring to “defense,” who could be against that? But when we say “defense” while we mean military interventionism and sweetheart contracts and subsidies for non-tax-paying military contractors, who are we helping?
As a supporter and reader of Antiwar.com, I’d like to add a couple of footnotes to David Sprowls’ useful remarks and pointers. We are in a global double bind. On the one hand, our sources of prime oil and gas energy (for which there are no ready replacements) are running out and will end up being concentrated in the Gulf and Caspian Basin. On the other hand, the use and abuse of all fossil energy sources is imperiling the millennia-old climate deal that our massively populated societies depend on for their very survival.
The obvious policy approach in the face of looming catastrophe is to:
– Slash oil, gas and coal consumption through taxation, rationing and legally mandated energy efficiency;
– curb and reverse demographic expansion in countries with the highest per capita fossil fuel consumption;
– stall and redefine growth in emerging Third World powerhouses to prevent a repeat of First and Second World trends on a even larger scale;
– develop and deploy solutions to curb or scrub key greenhouse gas emissions beginning with carbon dioxide;
– deploy a new generation of fission power plants on an emergency schedule;
– boost all renewable energy solutions;
– begin a new Manhattan Project for controlled nuclear fusion;
– prepare the agricultural sector for massive adjustment to climate change;
– retool all critical infrastructure for same;
– preemptively manage massive population concentrations to minimize the disruption due to dramatically altered weather patterns.
What is happening under the Bushist Regime is the antithesis of each and every one of these necessary moves to save our collective bacon:
– The American populace is being bribed through subsidized consumption at all costs, lulled into acquiescence by educators, preachers and Big Media, and boosted by uncontrolled immigration;
– the oil cartel is free to increase oil and gas production and sales;
– the nuclear industry is poorly regulated, outdated, and in an economic tailspin;
– China and India are encouraged to follow the deadly Western path to growth;
– the US is attempting to impose military control over the prime oil and gas producing regions and threatening the economies and sovereignty of competitors and partners alike;
– fusion is an afterthought and existing non-fossil fuel energy technologies are marginalized;
– agribusiness and planners are doing nothing to prevent the coming food crunch;
– outdated infrastructure is being perennialized or allowed to rot;
– population concentrations are booming in the worst possible places.
This is a recipe for a return to the Dark Ages, with a nuclear exchange or two along the way between increasingly desperate states wracked by massive migrations, dearth and famine, and general infrastructure collapse. We, or more likely our children and grandchildren, will be back to the population counts and the energy sources of the 19th century, minus sustainable agriculture, sustainable population centers, normal fauna and flora diversity, and a stable climate. God have pity on the survivors.
AWOL Bush Photo Contest
Hello everyone, Scarlet P. the freewayblogger here. Just got back from my weekly LA-SF commute putting signs along the freeway reading simply “AWOL”. I put them on bushes.
It was so fun and easy I thought why not share the love? Thus the idea for a photo contest. Read all about it here: http://www.freewayblogger.com/weblog.htm.
Saddam
If the US doesn’t have any weapons of mass destruction evidence should the US even be keeping him as a prisoner? True he is/was a tyrant and he gassed his own people but does that make him under arrest under current US law? I submit he should be either turned over to the Iraqi people or to the international tribunal for crimes against humanity. The US government has no jurisdiction and therefor is violating international law.
~ S. Malfish
