Military - new material (59)
01 August 2006
Corporate Mercenaries: the threat of private military and security companies. War on Want, October 2006, pp. 29. With as many as 48,000 mercenaries operating in Iraq this report examines the role of private military and security companies (PMSC). It attacks the British government for its attempts to privatise the Iraq war, pointing out that no prosecutions have followed "hundreds of accounts of personnel from private military and security firms committing abuses". The UK has one of the most developed PMSC sectors in the world but has no legal or democratic controls over it, despite commitments made by the government four years ago. Among the companies operating in Iraq is Tim Spicer's UK-based, Aegis Defence Services, whose security guards were recently shown randomly shooting automatic rifles at civilian cars in a film on a website run by a former employee. Aegis, which co-ordinates private military and security firms in Iraq, has seen its turnover soar from £554,000 in 1993 to £62m in 2005 - three-quarters of this comes from Iraq. The report makes five recommendations: i. The UK government must legislate "to control the PMSC sector as an urgent priority"; ii. "Legislation must outlaw PMSC involvement in all forms of direct combat and combat support", iii. Other PMSC services must be "made subject to individual licensing requirements and open to prior parliamentary and public scrutiny."; iv. Strict controls should be put in place to ensure "senior defence or security officials or ministers of state are not allowed to take up any lobbying role for five years after completing their government service." and v. Any government department which outsources a service must remain fully responsible for the conduct of the PMSC. Available at: http://www.waronwant.org/Corporate+Mercenaries+13275.twl
Report on postwar findings about Iraq's wmd programs and how they compare with prewar assessments together with additional views US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. 8.9.06, pp. 148. This report has been described by the Democratic Senator for Michigan as a "devastating indictment of the Bush-Cheney administration's unrelenting, misleading and deceptive" attempts to create a link between two of the USAs former allies, Saddam Hussein and Osama bin-Laden. While the belief that Saddam Hussein was responsible for the 11 September attacks is still widely credited in the USA, for the rest of the world these claims were neocon propaganda from start to finish. Unfortunately, this report doesn't offer any proposals for the hundreds of thousands who have suffered as a result of the totally unfounded claims. This is the second Senate Intelligence Committee investigation, the first looked at another hoary old neocon myth - Saddam's weapons of mass destruction: http://intelligence.senate.gov/phaseiiaccuracy.pdf
A very honest general, Sarah Sands. Daily Mail 13.10.06, pp 12-13. This is an interview with the most senior commander of the British Army, General Sir Richard Dannatt, in which he calls for British troops to be pulled out of Iraq because their presence exacerbates the security problems in the country and will allow the "Islamist threat" to make "undue progress". Dannatt says: "We are in a Muslim country and Muslims' views on foreigners in their country are quite clear. As a foreigner you can be invited into a county, but we weren't invited, certainly by those in Iraq at the time. Let's face it, the military campaign we fought in 2003 effectively kicked the door in. That is a fact. I don't say that the difficulties we are experiencing around the world are caused by our presence in Iraq, but undoubtably our presence in Iraq exacerbates them." Putting aside the illegal Iraq war, Dannatt has a more benign view of Blair's Afghanistan adventure believing that "we can get it right in Afghanistan"; seemingly by pulling troops out of Iraq and sending them to Helmund province. However, he describes the Helmund situation thus: "Our troops are<