The dark truth about Blackwater

When the U.S. military shifted to an all-volunteer professional force in the wake of the Vietnam War, military leaders set up a series of organization "trip wires" to preserve the tie between the nation's foreign policy decisions and American communities. Led by then Army Chief of Staff Gen. Creighton Abrams (1972-74), they wanted to ensure that the military would not go to war without the sufficient backing and involvement of the nation. But much like a corporate call center moved to India, this "Abrams Doctrine" has since been outsourced.

The use of contractors in Iraq is unprecedented in both its size and scope. Estimates of the number of contract personnel in Iraq vary widely. In 2006, the United States Central Command estimated the number to be around 100,000. (That it turned out to be such a perfectly round figure indicated that the estimate was actually what researchers call a "WAG," short for "wild ass guess.") In 2007, an internal Department of Defense census on the industry found almost 160,000 private contractors were employed in Iraq (roughly equal to the total U.S. troops at the time, even after the troop "surge"). Yet even this figure was a conservative estimate, since a number of the biggest companies, as well as any firms employed by the State Department or other agencies or NGOs, were not included in the census.

What matters is not merely the numbers, but the roles that private military contractors play. In addition to war gaming and field training U.S. troops before the invasion, private military personnel handled logistics and support during the war's buildup. The massive U.S. complex at Camp Doha in Kuwait, which served as the launch pad for the invasion, was not only built by a private military firm but also operated and guarded by one. During the invasion, contractors maintained and loaded many of the most sophisticated U.S. weapons systems, such as B-2 stealth bombers and Apache helicopters. They even helped operate combat systems such as the Army's Patriot missile batteries and the Navy's Aegis missile-defense system.

Private military firms -- ranging from well-established companies, such as Vinnell and MPRI, to start-ups, such as the British Aegis -- have played an even greater role in the post-invasion occupation. Halliburton's Kellogg, Brown and Root division, recently spun off into its own firm, currently runs the logistics backbone of the force, doing everything from running military mess halls to moving fuel and ammunition. Other firms are helping to train local forces, including the new Iraqi army and national police.

Then there are the firms such as Blackwater that have played armed roles within the battle space. These firms do everything from helping guard facilities and bases to escorting "high-value" individuals and convoys, arguably the most dangerous job in all of Iraq. Such firms are frequently described as "private security" or "bodyguards," but they are a far cry from rent-a-cops at a local mall, or bodyguards for Hollywood celebrities. They use military training and weaponry to carry out mission-critical functions that would have been done by soldiers in the past, in the midst of a combat zone against fellow combatants. In 2006, the director of the Private Security Company Association of Iraq estimated that just over 48,000 employees from 181 of such "private security companies" were working in Iraq.

As it has been planned and conducted to date, the war in Iraq would not be possible without private military contractors. Contrary to conspiracy theories, the private military industry is not the so-called decider, plotting out wars behind the scenes like Manchurian Global. But it has become the ultimate enabler, allowing operations to happen that might otherwise be politically impossible. The private military industry has given a new option that allows the executive branch to decide, and the legislative branch to authorize and fund, military commitments that bypass the Abrams Doctrine.

It is sometimes easier to understand this concept by looking at the issue in reverse. If a core problem that U.S. forces faced in the operation in Iraq has been an insufficient number of troops, it is not that the U.S. had no other choices other than using contractors. Rather, it is that each of them was considered politically undesirable.

One answer to the problem of insufficient forces would have been for the executive branch to send more regular forces, beyond the original 135,000 planned. However, this would have involved publicly admitting that those involved in the planning -- particularly then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld -- were wrong in their slam of critics like Army Gen. Eric Shinseki, who warned that an occupation would require far more troops. Plus, such an expanded force would have been onerous on the overall force, creating even more tradeoffs with the war in Afghanistan, as well as broader global commitments.

Another option would have been a full-scale call-up of the National Guard and Reserves, as originally envisioned for such major wars in the Abrams Doctrine. However, to do so would have prompted massive outcry among the public (as now the war's effect would have been felt deeper at home) -- the last thing leaders in the executive branch or Congress wanted as they headed into what was a tight 2004 election season.

Some proposed persuading other allies to send their troops in to help spread the burden, much as NATO allies and other interested members of the U.N. had sent troops to Bosnia and Kosovo. However, this would have involved tough compromises, such as granting U.N. or NATO command of the forces in Iraq or delaying the invasion, options in which the administration simply had no interest. This was the war that "was going to pay for itself," as leaders like then Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz infamously described in the run-up to the invasion, and to share in the operation was to share in the spoils. Plus, much of the world was vehemently opposed to the war, so it was unlikely that NATO allies or the U.N. would agree to send the needed number of troops.

The private military industry was an answer to these political problems that had not existed in the past. It offered the potential backstop of additional forces, but with no one having to lose any political capital. Plus, the generals could avoid the career risk of asking for more troops.

That is, there was no outcry whenever contractors were called up and deployed, or even killed. If the gradual death toll among American troops threatened to slowly wear down public support, contractor casualties were not counted in official death tolls and had no impact on these ratings. By one count, as of July 2007, more than 1,000 contractors have been killed in Iraq, and another 13,000 wounded. (Again, the data is patchy here, with the only reliable source being insurance claims made by contractors' employers and then reported to the U.S. Department of Labor.) Since the troop "surge" started in January 2007, these numbers have accelerated -- contractors have been killed at a rate of nine per week. These figures mean that the private military industry has suffered more losses in Iraq than the rest of the coalition of allied nations combined. The losses are also far more than any single U.S. Army division has experienced.

Hence, while private losses were just the "cost of doing business" for a firm in Iraq, they actually had an undisguised advantage to policymakers. The public usually didn't even hear about contractor losses, and when they did, they had far less blowback on our government. For all the discussion of contractors as a "private market solution," the true costs that they hope to save are almost always political in nature.

And when we weigh the devastating consequences that the Iraq war has had on America's broader security and standing in the world, this enabling effect of the private military industry may be its ultimate cost. The underlying premise of the Abrams Doctrine was that, if a military operation could not garner public support of the level needed to involve the full nation, then maybe it shouldn't happen in the first place.

That debate over the ultimate costs of Iraq is one for historians to weigh now. What is clear, however, is that the enabling effect of the military contractor industry is not simply in allowing the operation to occur, but also in how it reinforces our worst tendencies in war.

Lobbyists for military contractors like to talk up how the U.S. war effort is the best supplied and supported military operation in history. Doug Brooks of the International Peace Operations Association, an industry trade group, says, "The fact that troops are going to Iraq right now and actually, in 120 degree weather, putting on weight, kind of shows we are doing too much to support." Brooks is correct on many counts. The operation is one of the most lavishly supported ever, and most of that has been due to contractors to whom we have outsourced almost all the logistics, and the protection of that enormous supply chain.

But it has proven to be remarkably inefficient, all the while undermining our counterinsurgency efforts. According to testimony before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, the Defense Contract Audit Agency has identified more than a staggering $10 billion in unsupported or questionable costs from battlefield contractors -- and investigators have barely scratched the surface.

Such corruption doesn't just represent lost funds; it represents lost opportunities for what those funds could have been used on to actually support the mission: everything from jobs programs to get would-be insurgents off the streets to flak vests and up-armored vehicles for our troops. The situation got so bad that in August the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction (SIGIR) dubbed corruption as the "second insurgency" in Iraq.

While no one would argue that our uniformed soldiers do not deserve the utmost in support, contractors appear to have used this opening to drive a gold-plated train through (or, in the slang of KBR truckers, an opportunity to ship "sailboat fuel," meaning charge for nothing). Halliburton's contract has garnered the firm $20.1 billion in Iraq-related revenue and helped the firm report a $2.7 billion profit last year. To put this into context, the amount paid to Halliburton-KBR is roughly three times what the U.S. government paid to fight the entire 1991 Persian Gulf War. When putting other wars into current dollar amounts, the U.S. government paid just this one firm about $7 billion more than it cost the United States to fight the American Revolution, the War of 1812, the Mexican-American War and the Spanish American War combined. (More, the $2.2 billion that the U.S. Army has claimed Halliburton overcharged or failed to document is almost double the amount in current dollars that it cost the U.S. to fight the Mexican-American War, which gained the territories of Arizona, New Mexico and California.)

Turning logistics and operations into a for-profit endeavor helped feed the Green Zone mentality problem of sprawling bases, which runs counter to everything Gen. David Petraeus pointed to as necessary to winning a counterinsurgency in the new Army/USMC manual he helped write. As retired Marine Col. and expert on "4th generation" war T.X. Hammes described the effect of a profit-seeking approach in an interview with "Frontline": "We get a little carried away, and then we gold-plate ... They could do it, so they did, because it's just money."

Basically, the bigger the bases, the more fast-food franchises, the more salsa dance lessons -- and the more money the firms make, while wrapping themselves in the flag. But while bigger bases may yield more money for stockholders, they disconnect a force from the local populace and send a message of a long-term occupation, both major negatives in a counterinsurgency. Moreover, it puts more convoys on the roads, angering the Iraqis and creating more potential targets for insurgents. "It's misguided luxury ... Somebody's risking their life to deliver that luxury," Hammes says, adding, "Fewer vehicles on the road creates less tension with the locals, because they get tired of these high-speed convoys running them off the road."

Next page: Joyride shootings of Iraqi civilians, and an allegedly drunken Blackwater employee killing one of the Iraqi vice president's guards