But pulling Blackwater’s license may be all the Iraqis can do. Should any Iraqis ever seek redress for the deaths of the civilians in a criminal court, they will be out of luck. Because of an order promulgated by the Coalition Provisional Authority, the now-defunct American occupation government, there appears to be almost no chance that the contractors involved would be, or could be, successfully prosecuted in any court in Iraq. CPA Order 17 says private contractors working for the U.S. or coalition governments in Iraq are not subject to Iraqi law. Should any attempt be made to prosecute Blackwater in the United States, meanwhile, it’s not clear what law, if any, applies.

“Blackwater and all these other contractors are beyond the reach of the justice process in Iraq. They can not be held to account,” says Scott Horton, who chairs the International Law Committee at the New York City Bar Association. “There is nothing [the Iraqi government] can do that gives them the right to punish someone for misbehaving or doing anything else.”

L. Paul Bremer, then the head of the Coalition Provisional Authority, the initial occupation government of Iraq, issued CPA Order 17 in June 2004, the day before the CPA ceased to exist. “Contractors,” it says, “shall not be subject to Iraqi laws or regulations in matters relating to the terms and conditions of their Contracts.”

The Iraqi government has contested the continued application of this order, but because of restraints that inhibit the Iraqi government from changing or revoking CPA orders, Order 17 technically still has legal force in Iraq. Furthermore, as Peter W. Singer, an expert on private security contractors who is a senior fellow at the center-left Brookings Institute, points out, in order for the Iraqi government to prosecute those contractors, the U.S. government would have to accede to it. And that, Singer says, poses a whole new set of thorny questions.

“The question for the U.S. is whether it will hand over its citizens or contractors to an Iraqi court, particularly an Iraqi court that’s going to try and make a political point out of this,” Singer says. If the United States is not willing to do so because of concerns that the trial will be politically motivated, he adds, there’s a new question at hand. “If we really say that openly, doesn’t that defeat everything we heard in the Kabuki play last week with [General David] Petraeus and [U.S. Ambassador Ryan] Crocker, that everything was going great? What happens if we say, ‘No, we don’t think you can deal with this fairly in your justice system?’”

That leaves international and U.S. law. But international law is probably out. Even before the Bush administration, the United States had established a precedent of rejecting the jurisdiction of international courts. The United States is not, for example, a member of the International Criminal Court in the Hague. (In 2005, the government of Iraq announced its decision to join the court; it reversed that decision two weeks later.)

U.S. law, meanwhile, is hopelessly murky. More so than in any of America’s previous conflicts, contractors are an integral part of the U.S. effort in Iraq, providing logistical support and performing essential functions that were once the province of the official military. There are currently at least 180,000 in Iraq, more than the total number of U.S. troops. But the introduction of private contractors into Iraq was not accompanied by a definitive legal construct specifying potential consequences for alleged criminal acts. Various members of Congress are now attempting to clarify the laws that might apply to contractors. In the meantime, experts who spoke with Salon say there’s little clarity on what law applies to contractors like the ones involved in Sunday’s incident, and the Bush administration has shown little desire to take action against contractor malfeasance.

In June of this year, the Congressional Research Service — a nonpartisan research arm of Congress — issued a report on private security contractors in Iraq that included a discussion of their legal status. The report’s authors gave a bleak picture of prospects for prosecution under U.S. law, referring at one point to “the U.S. government’s practical inability to discipline errant contract employees.”

The problem is that no one seems quite sure what law, if any, would apply to security firm contractors, and any potential applications are untested and would be vigorously challenged. Uniformed military personnel are subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice, and “persons serving with or accompanying an armed force in the field” are technically subject as well. But the application of the UCMJ to these contractors would undoubtedly be challenged on constitutional grounds, and even if it were to hold up in court, the CRS report noted a particular irony: At least one court has held that “a serviceman who had been discharged was no longer amenable to court-martial.” In other words, Blackwater could protect its employees from the UCMJ simply by firing them.

Another potential avenue for prosecution is the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act of 2000, or MEJA, which applies to civilians. Originally written only to cover civilian employees of the Department of Defense and contractors working for the DOD, it was changed after the Abu Ghraib scandal, which involved contractors not working for DOD, to cover persons “employed by or accompanying the Armed Forces outside the United States.” But even that definition might be too narrow to apply to the Blackwater employees in question. Those employees, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack confirmed in an interview with Salon, work for the State Department, not the DOD. “[They] report to our diplomatic security office in Baghdad.”

Horton says he believes that “Blackwater is preparing to make the argument, if they ever get in the crosshairs of this, that they are there with a Department of State diplomatic contract and, therefore, MEJA doesn’t apply.”

Rep. David Price, D-N.C., is the sponsor of a law that attempts to deal with this loophole, the Transparency and Accountability in Military and Security Contracting Act of 2007.

“I just want to know whether it can and will be prosecuted if prosecution is warranted, and I don’t think we have the clear legislative coverage of this that we should,” Price said in an interview Monday. “If the contractors were under a DOD contract, that wouldn’t be the question so much as whether the administration’s doing its job pressing forward, but here you do have a real question about whether it has the authority in the first place.”

Singer concurs. “There’s a lot of stuff that could be done. It’s just there’s no easy answers,” he says. “You could use them as a test case for UCMJ. You could hand them over to the Iraqis. President Bush says it’s a functioning democracy. You could try to test out MEJA on them. You could investigate it and find out that actually it was a rightful shooting. There’s lots of coulds, but there’s no silver-bullet solution. We’ve painted ourselves in a corner.”

Back in Baghdad, the Iraqis may not have the power to enforce the one action they’ve taken so far, the simple revocation of Blackwater’s license. A spokesman for Iraq’s Interior Ministry, Brig. Gen. Abdul Kareem Khalaf, told reporters Monday: “We have revoked Blackwater’s license to operate in Iraq. As of now they are not allowed to operate anywhere in the Republic of Iraq. The investigation is ongoing, and all those responsible for Sunday’s killing will be referred to Iraqi justice.”

But it’s not clear that Blackwater even has a license to revoke. Speculation abounded on Monday that it did not. On June 16, the Washington Post reported that “Blackwater USA … [has] not applied, U.S. and Iraqi officials said. Blackwater said that it obtained a one-year license in 2005 but that shifting Iraqi government policy has impeded its attempts to renew.”

Lawrence T. Peter, the director of the Private Security Company Association of Iraq, an industry trade group, told the Post on Monday that Blackwater did have a license. He seems to be contradicted by his own organization’s Web site, however, which lists Blackwater as in the process of obtaining one. Salon contacted Peter to ask whether Blackwater was licensed. He did not answer the question, but a spokesman did forward a statement emphasizing that members of his trade group “pride themselves” on abiding by the “Rules for Use of Force” in effect.

By Monday afternoon, Iraqi officials seemed to be backing away from their earlier statements, making their pronouncements about Blackwater’s license much less definitive. Time magazine reported that “a senior Iraqi official … said that prime minister Maliki is expected to discuss the episode at a cabinet session scheduled for Tuesday and that, as far as the license being permanently revoked, ‘it’s not a done deal yet.’”

Additional reporting by Erin Renzas.

So how is the State Department responding? Well, we’d like to be able to tell you. But having just read the transcript from today’s State Department press briefing, all we can really say is that Sean McCormack, the assistant secretary of state for public affairs, is a little light on facts, or at least ones he’s willing to share.

Reporter: Do you have anything more to say about the incident involving Blackwater in Baghdad?

McCormack: Not much more than I said this morning. As I indicated to you, Secretary [Condoleezza] Rice intends to call Prime Minister [Nouri al-] Maliki about it and express regret for the loss of innocent life. At this point we’re still investigating what happened. Our Diplomatic Security Bureau is taking the lead on that investigation. They’re working with Multi-National Forces-Iraq, who are going to support them in that investigation. I wouldn’t try to draw any conclusions here. As we know, Iraq is — can be a very difficult place for our diplomats to operate in. And certainly people need to realize the environment in which our people operate …

Reporter: Have you been informed that the company has in fact lost its license, if it had one in the first place, to operate?

McCormack: We have not. I’ve seen the comments from the Iraqi Ministry of Interior. We have not received that notification.

Reporter: Are you aware if they did have a license?

McCormack: I don’t — I don’t — I don’t know what the requirements are for operating in Iraq like that. You might check with the company in question.

Reporter: Can you speak to the larger question of contractors providing security in Iraq: how many there are, to the extent you can tell us?

McCormack: I asked that question about the overall numbers. Apparently, it’s not something that we give out. I think you can understand why, because people can start doing calculations backwards and potentially gain some insight into how those contractors operate to protect our personnel …

Reporter: Can you talk about how much money is involved in the contracts?

McCormack: Good question. I didn’t ask that. I will see if that’s something we can offer up.

Reporter: And, lastly, can you talk about what would happen if a private contractor’s license is lost, whether it’s Blackwater’s or somebody else’s? What would that do …

McCormack: That’s a hypothetical question. I’m sure, however, that in every instance we would be able to ensure that our people are protected and able to do their jobs.

Reporter: You weren’t able to provide any details about the incident itself, how many cars were in the convoy, where exactly it was. Can you confirm any of those details?

McCormack: I don’t have any details at this point that I can offer in public. It was a chief-of-mission convoy that was going outside the international zone. And, as you know, recently there have been some car bomb explosions outside the international zone. So, again, I urge people to keep that in mind. We are going to make this as open and transparent an investigation, and, inasmuch as we can, share the results so that people know what we know …

Reporter: When incidents such as these happen, do you suspend the services briefly of the company you’re investigating or does it just continue as normal until you’ve completed the investigation?

McCormack: That’s a call for the security officials on the ground, in terms of their operational tempo and what they do in response to a particular incident. If they feel as though they need to take some action, I’m sure that they will …

Reporter: Have other incidents of this nature been reported about Blackwater in recent months?

McCormack: You know, I couldn’t tell you.

Reporter: Do you know if the individual contractors involved in this have been suspended or what’s happened to them?

McCormack: No, I don’t. I don’t have an answer to that. Again, I don’t — I caution everybody, let’s not leap to conclusions. There was a loss of life here. There was a firefight. We believe some innocent life was lost. Nobody wants to see that. But I can’t tell you who was responsible for that. So, again, let’s not jump to any conclusions here …

Reporter: OK … Who is in charge of these people? The question was asked, you know, do numbers — do they get suspended if there’s an investigation going on, like a police officer would in a, you know …

McCormack: I can’t tell you exactly.

Reporter: Because the waters here are really murky, in terms of where do these people report to. Does the State Department have the authority, if there’s an investigation going on, to …

McCormack: I can’t tell you what the — I can’t tell you exactly what the contract specifies. But our — these people work as part of our security operation there. They report to the regional security officer there. And look, if our regional security officer doesn’t want somebody going out, or a certain group going out, they’re not going to go out. If the ambassador or the people at the embassy don’t want somebody to go out, or a group to go out, they’re not going to go out. I’m not saying that’s the case right here. But these folks work in support of our people at the embassy and we appreciate what they do. They’re taking real risks to allow us to be able to do our job. But in terms of the specific contractual arrangements, in terms of discipline, I don’t know. I really don’t.

Reporter: Many Iraqis think that these security contractors operate outside the law and that they’re not held accountable when incidents such as these happen. Under what law would they be held accountable? Would it be U.S. law?

McCormack: Right.

Reporter: I mean, what are the rules of engagement — sorry, that’s two questions. What are the laws of engagement here and under what law would they be held accountable, Iraqi or U.S.?

McCormack: It’s a good question. You know, I could probably give you an answer that is a commonsense, man-in-the-street answer, but that wouldn’t have necessarily been run by lawyers first. So I’d want to actually consult with the lawyers, kind of, before I give you a definitive answer …

Reporter: Do you know if there’s any sort of diplomatic immunity for these? Do they carry a black passport, do you know?

McCormack: I don’t know. I suspect not, but I don’t know.

“Our war on terror begins with al Qaeda, but does not end there … This war will not be like other wars. Americans should not expect one battle, but a lengthy campaign, unlike any other we have ever seen … Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists. From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime … But the only way to defeat terrorism as a threat to our way of life is to stop it, eliminate it, and destroy it where it grows … I ask for your … patience in what will be a long struggle.”

I consider myself an independent conservative who still thinks Bush & Cheney are much better than the last administration, if for no other reason than they are not adulterers and liars, and I believe character counts. Bush in my opinion is very honest, loyal, wise and walks with much integrity. He confounds his critics by doing what he says and saying what he does without wavering.

Bush did not steal the 2000 election! He won every time the votes were counted. History will show that the opposition tried to steal that election but failed. He did not lie about WMD in Iraq! His administration inherited an intelligence organization that made him believe WMD were being stockpiled in Iraq, along with a stated policy of regime change.

Bush is mature, acts responsibly and governs by doing what is right, living by the creed “the buck stops here.” The previous administration governed by polls and acted like “the buck never got here.” After 9/11, and with current knowledge of the day, had Bush not invaded Iraq, I believe he would have been acting as irresponsibly as the previous president.

I do not believe foreign policy under Bush has created more terrorists. On the contrary, it has revealed them.

I also think that a quick retreat from the Middle East would be the same as circling our wagons while waiting for 9/11-inspired attacks to continue here with greater and greater lethality by an enemy who will use WMD as soon as possible. Just try to imagine 9/11 with nukes.

If we choose defeat by giving up and retreating now, even if we are able to avoid attacks at home, we will be back in the Middle East within 10 years facing a much stronger and emboldened enemy with WMD at a cost to the United States in lives and resources hundreds of times higher than at present levels. Victory in the Middle East will be much less costly in a slow deliberate struggle over a long run and should be treated with the same patience that has kept us in Japan, Germany and Korea for more than 40 years.

James Randall

You make a very powerful statement about the crisis of terrorism facing Western culture. Too many of my fellow Democrats seem to underestimate the dangers and difficulties looming over the next century. Western values of individualism and free expression would be obliterated under the fundamentalist regime sought by militant jihadists.

When you say that we are in a “60-plus-year ideological struggle,” I assume you are thinking of the start of the Cold War, when the United States and the Soviet Union, allies against Hitler, became bitter rivals for world influence in a nuclear arms race that cast a terrifying shadow on anyone who grew up (as I did) in the 1950s.

The Soviet Union, a mammoth entity, would eventually disintegrate because of its economic inefficiencies as well as its restless constellation of striving regions and ethnicities. I must confess I don’t see the logic in your conflating the ponderous bureaucratic labyrinth that was the Soviet Union with the small, agile, anarchic cells of terrorists who bedevil us now — and who in fact humiliatingly drove the Soviet Union out of mountainous Afghanistan.

Similarly, I don’t share your admiration of President Bush’s post-9/11 speech about terrorism. His warning to the world — “Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists” — may please the ear with its syntactical symmetries, but it reveals a shockingly simplistic reading of geopolitics and indeed of life itself.

Since when did any nation — even America, which I love — become the dictatorial arbiter of morality? On what authority did President Bush, imperfectly advised by incompetent or mendacious underlings, divide the human race into those with us or against us? Who are we to demand or enforce such exclusivity and privilege? Why should our own self-interest take priority over that of all others? This is hubris, the excessive pride that both the Hebrew Bible and Greek tragedy warned against.

I agree with you that the Republicans did not “steal” the 2000 presidential election from Al Gore, and that history will indeed show that the Florida controversy was preplanned and fomented by a cadre of Democratic partisans, above all that braying ass, Rep. Robert Wexler of Florida. It has always baffled me why Republicans failed to take a more aggressive stance toward rampant voting irregularities in big-city Democratic wards from coast to coast. That stuff has been par for the course for ages: We all know that John F. Kennedy (whom I campaigned for as an adolescent) won the White House by a slim margin thanks to Mayor Richard J. Daley’s hanky-panky in Chicago.

As for WMD, yes, there were certainly chemical weapons stockpiled after Iraq’s long war with Iran in the 1980s. But anyone could have predicted that those weapons would have seriously degraded over the following decade and that they could not have posed a threat to the continental United States. Condoleezza Rice’s sensational pre-invasion speculation about a “mushroom cloud” over an American city was putting the cart way, way before the horse. There was little evidence that Saddam Hussein, with his disintegrating infrastructure, was anywhere near being able to produce, much less deliver, nuclear weapons to targets outside his own dusty garden.

Yes, President Bush is unwavering in his policy. He proclaims it and sticks to it. You may be right that this is a noble proof of character, deep and resolute. On the other hand, it could also be a sign of rigidity and limitation. Strategy in war or football should be adaptive, constantly adjusting to changing circumstances. In my view, the president has shown terrible judgment in choosing advisors (from the vice president on down), who have not served him well. My lack of confidence in the president’s managerial ability is based on his weird reluctance to fire anyone, no matter how mediocre. This is not the trait of a strong, capable leader who claims to serve a higher cause.

You speak of my party wanting to “choose defeat,” while yours wants “victory.” Is that stark opposition truly our only choice? Or has your party painted itself into a rhetorical corner with its polarized talk of victory and defeat? Isn’t it possible that you have created a nightmare of words from which we cannot wake up? I don’t regard the prudent preservation of American lives and treasure as a “defeat” but rather as a sensible acknowledgment of the reality principle. Not all of our desires, hopes, and ideals can come to pass. That is the human condition.

You say that if we don’t stay and win in Iraq, we’ll be back there in 10 years. I think you might well be correct. The Iraq chaos, which we instrumentally helped foment, will probably spread and destabilize the entire Middle East — a momentum that has already begun. By removing that despicable autocrat, Saddam Hussein, we conveniently did Iran’s work. There’s no stopping the jockeying of power now — Iran eyeing Iraq’s Shiite territories; Turkey ready to smash the independence movement among Kurds (who have been playing the United States for a fool).

But next time around, we will hopefully have the support of other powers in the region, such as Saudi Arabia (a corruption-riddled regime with strong Bush ties), which can’t afford the implosion of Iraq. Meanwhile, the massacre of our hapless soldiers, along with the waste of billions of our tax dollars, must stop. There is no clear way to define “victory” in this folly — which tried to jump-start Western democracy in a country with none of our long traditions of civil law or free speech.

We need to rest our military and return our overextended National Guardsmen to their families. We must conserve our resources and rethink our global strategy against terrorism. Homeland security must be radically strengthened, above all at our ports. Emergency evacuation and relief plans for major cities such as New York are still pathetically rudimentary. We should take care of our own business before trying to run everyone else’s.

I feel very sorry for the Iraqis, who have been brutalized by decades of tyranny and strife. But quite frankly, as an opponent of the war, I feel no responsibility for them. They must resolve their own thousand-year history of sectarian violence. It’s their civil war: Let them fight it.

American troops out of Iraq now!

You wrote: “But do conservatives really see war as the ultimate solution? There are over a billion Muslims in the world. If the West is to win, it must be by art, culture and persuasion and not by the sword.”

We don’t see war as the ultimate solution, but you must admit that sometimes the sword is the only answer. My penchant for Klimt, taste for Miles Davis, and towering logic would not likely impress the type of man who hacked off Nick Berg’s head. But I think my M240 machine gun may help me deal with him and others of the sort.

I agree with your sober assessment of the Iraq invasion as the wrong move at the wrong time. I thought it was a good idea four years ago because I expected better, more flexible leadership from the Bush administration. Knowing what I know now, I see that it was folly. But the major part of their failure was in not accounting for the second- and third-order effects of the invasion. I feel those that call for a near-term withdrawal from Iraq make the same mistake. Yes, the war has fed anti-U.S. sentiment, and it has likely created many thousands of possible terrorists. But just because we walk away from Iraq doesn’t mean they’ll stop hating us. For better or worse, we must stay until that country is stable, peaceful and functioning under some sort of representative government.

It will likely take a few years for us to achieve some success against the insurgency and at least a few more for us to finally stabilize Iraq. Our presence may be required for another decade. It will be costly in lives and resources. But we can’t afford the alternative. If Afghanistan and Somalia became breeding grounds for terrorism after we ended our involvement, how much more virulent an enemy will be bred in a nation as vast, populous and accessible as Iraq? And what of the Iraqis themselves? Can we afford to leave 50 million people to their own devices after we shattered their society? Would you blame them if they all hated us forever after?

The war has been bungled by the Pentagon and the White House. But part of the bungling comes from their desire to avoid a prolonged conflict, understanding as they do the American need for a quick and easy solution to every problem. Inspiring leadership could address that need, but again, we obviously lack it at the moment. I think the Army now recognizes that this is a classic insurgency and we have to put more troops on the ground to defeat it. If we just stick around, if we refuse to blink (as one of your other respondents put it), we can and probably will win. For Iraqis, for the region and for the West, failure will be much more costly than another decade in Mesopotamia.

I enjoy your column immensely because you force me to answer tough questions about my ideas and you always offer sober-minded answers to your critics. Plus you’re usually damn entertaining!

Ryan A. Edwards
USMA Class of 1996
Iraq, Feb 2005-Apr 2006
Columbus, Ohio

Thank you very much for your thoughtful letter, and thank you above all for your service in Iraq. Whatever our diverse opinions on the wisdom of the Iraq incursion, all Americans owe a profound debt to the men and women who have volunteered to defend our liberty.

I certainly agree that force is absolutely necessary for dealing with bona fide terrorists. As a supporter of the death penalty, I would applaud the execution, in the field or after trial, of any and all committers of atrocities.

However, in calling for the persuasion of art and culture, I was speaking of the larger task before us: How do we convince the rising and future generations of young Muslims that the West is not the Great Satan that must be destroyed by any means necessary? There is no finite group of “bad guys” (the Bush administration’s juvenile term) who can be identified and obliterated. Many Muslims are cautious or wavering in their sympathies; let us beware of pushing ambivalence into open hostility. I could care less who does or does not hate us. The real issue is when hatred takes the next step into active terrorism.

I am less sanguine than you about the possibility of Iraq’s becoming, even over the next decade, “stable, peaceful and functioning under some sort of representative government.” There are too many genies out of the box. Aside from its shocking and insupportable costs, long-term American occupation of a Muslim nation is a grievous affront to billions around the world. Our presence there has ceased to have any rationale except to stave off a series of “what ifs” and to avoid the appearance of retreat. Hypotheticals and appearances: Are they worth the death of even one more American soldier?

Be glad our servicemen are willing to fight for your right to opine whatever you like.

People like you do not want the U.S. to win.

You probably love Karl Marx.

You are a left-winger.

Walter Dixon
Fairhope, Alabama

Yes, free speech is one of the great gifts of American culture. But I find it startling, given how much I have written about politics over the past 17 years, to be lumped into the vague, accusatory category of “people like you.”

Do you honestly see the world split down the middle, like a barbecued chicken, between those who want the United States to win and those who do not? Are there no historical examples of grievous political or military errors that you have pondered and weighed against current events?

Your assumption that those who oppose the Iraq war must be Marxists or radical leftists does grave disservice to American political dialogue. It is clearly based, in my case, on a doubtlessly blissful ignorance of my actual views. Though I voted for Ralph Nader in the 2000 election, I am a libertarian Democrat who has been regularly vilified by other Democrats because I think for myself and refuse to mouth the rote platitudes of the party line. Far from being a Marxist, I have praised capitalism for having produced the modern emancipated woman, among other things. Marx was an important political theorist, but the application of his ideas to living societies has been generally disastrous.

The automatic political stereotyping displayed in your letter has been rampant among both Republicans and Democrats for a decade. It inflames the process and produces paralysis in Congress. This strident partisanship has made many cable TV talk shows virtually unwatchable.

Some Democrats want to blame talk radio for this sorry development. But as a long-time fan of that medium, I beg to disagree. The major talk show hosts, such as Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, are dynamic personalities who balance attack and scorn with humor and creative improvisation. The mutterings among Democrat senators about a restoration of the Fairness Doctrine (to engineer political balance in broadcasting) should appall every defender of free speech. Talk radio is an art form like any other entertainment genre: Liberals must study and master it and build an audience from the bottom up.

My husband, Donald Neil, was killed on March 8 at an ammunition supply point outside Najaf. He was a private contractor who was over there destroying the tons of ammunition that Saddam bought with his oil revenues. This, apparently, was how Saddam bought respect in the outside world. My husband was one of the contractors being paid absurd amounts of money from the government treasury under the aegis of Halliburton.

My first comment on your column was simply, “How could any of these politicians have learned anything from the consequences of the Vietnam War?” Most every one of these political hacks was dodging the draft legally in order to (as it was so delicately phrased) “preserve their political viability.”

This was not colossal ineptitude but a deliberate, calculated move to enrich cronies. I don’t believe that it was Mr. Bush’s intent. I think he believed all that high-minded crap. It is pretty clear that thinking in tonalities and grappling with complex concepts is not one of Bush’s strong suits. The only one who was inept in this was the president.

Did you know that there are over 100,000 contractors in Iraq? While my husband was doing something that I honestly believe was good for world security, most of the contractors over there are either truck drivers or security personnel. Some of the truckers have started talking about how they were ordered to drive empty trucks across the desert in dangerous areas so that Halliburton could bill by the trip.

Blackwater Security (an octopus firm with deep roots in Republican Washington, which pretty much fields Bush’s mercenary army) is suing the survivors of the four contractors slaughtered and then dragged through the streets, to try to keep them from accessing the real story about what happened to their loved ones. I have not been told what really happened to my husband (we have two children).

But the fact is this was ALL about enriching the war profiteers, and I am sure (as it sounds like you are) that it was Dick Cheney who came up with the plan. And sold it to our dimwitted commander in chief as a holy crusade.

And the REAL reason that we cannot bring the troops home? Because they are the cheap labor protecting Halliburton’s gravy train. Think about it, and check Halliburton’s profits for the last five years. And the unholy grotesque disgrace in all of this? The fact that Halliburton has now moved its corporate headquarters offshore to avoid paying taxes on its obscene profits — a fair percentage of which will probably end up in Cheney’s blind trust. My question: Where is the “liberal media,” which ought to be all over this story? They could bring the troops home, win a Pulitzer Prize, and bring down the administration if someone would just put the pieces together like I have. This isn’t rocket science — it’s corruption so “in your face” it is sickening. Where is Woodward? Where is anybody?

Cynthia Neil

May I extend my condolences for the death of your husband. You and your family are certainly owed a full explanation of the circumstances surrounding that tragic event.

According to investigative journalist T. Christian Miller, who was interviewed last week on NPR, the number of private contractors in Iraq (180,000) has now exceeded that of American troops. He is the author of a devastating exposé, “Blood Money: Wasted Billions, Lost Lives, and Corporate Greed in Iraq.” Though future historians will not paint a pretty picture of Halliburton, we should remember that the Clinton administration was hand in glove with it too.

I agree with you that President Bush was essentially well-motivated but staggeringly ill-advised in approving the invasion of Iraq. I think of Vice President Cheney (whom I loathe) as more of a rigid ideologue than a greedy tycoon, because he shows no signs whatever of sybaritic materialism. But your hard-hitting letter has made me reevaluate my position: Accumulation of wealth for its own sake may be Cheney’s strange perversion, one that Dante would have devised a special little torture for in his Inferno.

I sit in an undisclosed location in Nature’s furnace (the Middle East) and have noticed an utter lack of interest on the part of soldiers in learning the culture and language of the people here. Having learned Hebrew, Spanish and Greek to differing levels of fluency, it strikes me as odd that one of the world’s most diverse nation-states has some of the most linguistically ignorant citizens. Is my arrow off the mark, or have you noticed this as well?

Most befuddled,
T. Asher
Neutered Combat Soldier
Kuwait

I was most intrigued to receive your e-mail from the kuwait.swa.army.mil domain. It is dismaying but unsurprising to hear of the lack of cultural preparation or training of our troops in the Middle East. Ignorance and lack of curiosity do trickle down from the top in the Bush administration. While many of our soldiers have made great strides in winning the confidence of the population in relatively tranquil areas of Iraq, there has been less interest in dialogue elsewhere, because of the imminent risks. But that excuse won’t wash for those stationed in Kuwait.

You are quite right to lament the lack of language skills among the general American population. Europeans grow up hearing many languages because of geography: It’s a survival skill on a continent where nations are sometimes the size of one of our smaller states. Americans in border states generally acquire a facility with basic Spanish. Aside from that, English is king here (and perhaps properly so). As the current international lingua franca, English is automatically expected by surly American tourists abroad. Language instruction, as a discipline as well as a genuinely scholarly vehicle of multiculturalism, clearly needs to be expanded in American primary schools.

Daniel Helming, in his letter to you, claims that President Bush was “in an upwardly mobile Texas suburb only since high school.” George W. was born and raised in Midland, Texas (where I also grew up); he attended San Jacinto Junior High (which I also attended approximately 10 years later) and then moved to Houston and I believe a Houston prep school. His family has deep roots in Midland since George H.W. settled there and made his millions. George W.’s accent, attitudes and values are 100 percent authentically Midlander. It is a right-wing city and voted Republican when the rest of the state was staunchly Democratic. To me George W. exemplifies the men kicking back at the Midland Petroleum Club saying, “We gotta get rid of high taxes” and “Too many welfare queens” and “We gotta get the government off our backs.” He was a stealth candidate for these values, fooling many Americans into thinking he must be an East Coast patrician “moderate” like his dad. I know his type very well — the joking Texas frat rat with a mean streak who matures into a small-town country-club Republican with a mean streak. Except this one became president — and Washingtonians like David Broder still like him!

Tom Moody

I am most appreciative of your sharply observed survey of Midland sensibility and manner. As a native of pugnaciously independent upstate New York (a cosmos away from Manhattan), I am always fascinated by the intricate subtleties of American regionalism.

Subject: Media blackout on impeachment?

I would love to hear your thoughts about presidential and vice presidential impeachment. In spite of the multitude of impeachable offenses, including breaking actual laws like the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the War Crimes Act of 1996, the U.N. Convention on Torture and the Geneva Conventions (treaties are “the law of the land” according to the Constitution), and constitutional abuses such as violating the presentment clause of the Constitution through signing statements, this impotent Congress remains terrified of the I-word. Meanwhile, the administration remains “disinclined” to comply with subpoenas.

Currently 79 towns and cities have passed impeachment resolutions, and 11 state Legislatures have considered such measures. A bill in Congress to impeach Cheney now has seven co-sponsors. And yet the mainstream media will not touch this subject. It’s as if they are taking Nancy Pelosi’s declaration that impeachment should be “off the table” for Congress to include them as well.

Lisa Moscatiello

While I would love to have Congress nail Dick Cheney to the wall (like one of his flea-bitten hunting trophies), I just don’t see convincing evidence of an impeachable offense by either him or George Bush. There’s an accumulation of gross improprieties, yes, but none of them thus far in my view would necessarily lead to conviction and ousting from office. Whether Democrats like it or not, Bush is a duly elected president and has considerable latitude (including pardons) in that role.

Beyond that, I think the impeachment scenario is a distracting fantasy that could end up losing the Democrats the next election. The public will not look favorably on Congress (already rock bottom in the polls) tying itself up in knots with endless investigations and show trials. Democrats should be focusing their energies on devising a winning campaign strategy for 2008. Obsessing on the past, particularly via the maddeningly quibbling trivialities that an army of lawyers would bring to this project, is a dead end.

I just read your article that included a slam against Newt Gingrich. I have been reading his ideas for about two years and don’t find anything erratic about him or his ideas. He is on a steady track to produce solutions for American problems. As far as I can tell, he doesn’t qualify as “seedy.” He returned legal money that was a book advance. Have there been any legal scandals connected to him? The only problem has been his girlfriend/wife situation. I don’t know the details, but it does go in the direction of tacky.

He is a very brilliant man who has a great way of looking at the problems in the USA. Please get over your liberal viewpoint and watch his June 8 speech on the American Enterprise Institute Web site.

Donald Salisbury

After he engineered the dazzling success of the Republican takeover of Congress in 1994, Newt Gingrich began to drift. It was his fellow Republicans, not Democrats, who found his stewardship erratic. Gingrich talks a good line. In fact, that’s basically all he does — talk. Gingrich could not consolidate the Republican gains, and he was eventually demoted as a party leader. His lack of managerial skills and consistency would make him a poor choice as a presidential candidate.

Yes, there have been unsavory reports about Gingrich’s callous behavior toward his ex-wives, but that’s not why I called him seedy (a physical description of his damp look and shifty-eyed manner). After squirmingly watching and listening to him for years, I find him to be overall a depthless thinker, spewing out an endless stream of bright but disconnected “ideas” whose main function is to advertise his own putative brilliance. He’s showy and narcissistic, with a smirky adolescent precocity. I love eloquence but despise glibness — in politicians or professors.

However, if you find stimulation and value in Gingrich’s books and speeches, then nothing I say should dissuade you!

I was reading your article on Al Gore and thought you might enjoy a pic I Photoshopped a little while ago. It is on my Web site here.

Paul Atroshenko
Sydney, Australia

This is wonderful! I burst out laughing at the self-divinizing apotheosis of that egregiously pulpit-pounding, wannabe preacher, the Rev. Al Gore.

Subject: Al Gore Warm and Fuzzy
I am a nuclear engineer with 25 years’ experience in nuclear operations, design and calculations. I am very versed in atmospheric computer modeling (radio-nuclide release constituent decay and dispersal is one of my bailiwicks). Based on similar parameters found on Mars, I fully believe that the Earth is in a solar-induced warming trend.

I too felt that the rumbling for “run, Al, run” from the Democrats’ primary wonks is a reflection of the suspicion that their sanctified candidates have little chance of winning against the “I can nuke Iran in three notes” Republicans. I have seen the enticements for Big Al to run in everything from bar bathroom graffiti to the exalted Nobel Prize committee.

Now on to Al (financially convenient lies) Gore and his hijacking of an unresolved scientific problem for his own political purposes. I firmly believe that his folly (along with the U.N. stating that the science is settled) will, in the very near future, wipe the slate clean of left-wing candidates off of our dear departed mother Earth — most of them flattened by embarrassment and ridicule for perpetrating a hoax and attempting to gain further control of industry and hard-earned capital via CO2 penalties. Except of course in Kookville, where the bigger and more obvious the lie, the greater the glory. It’s very sad to see one of the parties in this two-party system making a fast exodus to that vicinity.

Let me now introduce you to the skewers that will likely slay the CO2 piglet running amok:

First up, there’s logic: 95 percent of the Earth’s greenhouse gases is that ethereal substance known as H2O. Peek out your window — you might be able to see a little bit of it. Without it, the Earth would be a balmy zero degrees F (ice skating galore). Of the remaining 5 percent greenhouse gases, 4.5 percent is attributed to CO2. Of this 4.5 percent, only 0.3 percent is caused by human activities such as burning fossil fuels, mowing Al Gore’s lawn, belching, etc. The remaining 4.2 percent of CO2 emanates from the Earth itself. If 0.3 percent sounds insignificant, it’s because it is.

Faults in the convenient references: Al Gore (and the U.N.) exclusively use Antarctic ice-core data of ancient air bubbles supposedly trapping the precise amount of CO2 that existed then versus now. This data set has recently been shown to be flawed by experiments proving that those ancient air bubbles did not encapsulate the CO2 but allowed some of it to escape, thus making the data look as if modern CO2 readings are significantly higher (20 percent) than in the past. More reliable proxy indicators for CO2 such as ocean sediment do not show a significant increase due to human activities.

The onset of global cooling: As the word cycle suggests, there will be a downside to the Earth’s warming cycle. Most analysis indicates that in five years’ time the warming peak will be over and any left-wing environmentalists left standing will have to find a new donkey to ride into the wallets of industry.

Let me finish by saying that the prior and coming relegation of the Democrats to a kook fringe is in no one’s best interest. Although a conservative on defense and economics, I tend to be socially liberal and have an innate fear of a one-party state, even if that party is the one I usually vote for (I amaze my friends by telling them how I voted for Ed Rendell here in Pennsylvania).

Innocenzo Iannuzzi
Pittsburgh, Pa.

Bravo for your invigorating deconstruction of current propaganda! I too am very concerned about the potential damage to Democrat credibility coming from the grab-bag Gore crusade, with its wild exaggerations and hypocritical sanctimony. It does make liberals look like ditzes — the last thing the party needs in a presidential campaign where no-crap national security issues will be paramount. Environmentalism is of vital importance to our future, but it cannot be based on lies.

A quote from you in the London Sunday Times Online stunned me and rattled me to my core:

“The problem is not hunting guns but these semi-automatic weapons. He [the shooter at Virginia Tech] could not have cut down that many people so quickly or with such brutal efficiency without them. They have no use except for commandos, swat teams and paramilitary organizations.”

Dr. Paglia, semiautomatic weapons have been in use for over 100 years in self-defense, military and hunting arms (notice the order) in this country.

I counter that these weapons have as much legitimate use by the lawful citizen as they do by any authority figure. I will not challenge you on that. Theoretically, the narcissistic, petulant madman of Virginia Tech may have been less effective with a single-shot pistol in his carnage. You might be correct.

Would any of the victims of the attention-starved fool at Virginia Tech have been better served by total disarmament, good psychotherapy skills, a single-shot pistol or a Colt .45 with seven rounds in the gun and 14 more in spare magazines?

But I will counter. Will my wife, or my sister, or my daughter be viewed as more noble in your mind when six predators have decided to make her their quarry because she uses a single-shot, muzzle-loading pistol of the finest 18th-century technology to defend herself? Will her rape and annihilation by psychopaths make it OK, since she didn’t have the primitive audacity to defend herself with a Beretta M9 with a 16-round capacity?

She is not a commando, or a SWAT team member or paramilitary. Therefore her options for self-defense shall be limited to what was hip at the time of the hand-powered printing press, the messenger on horse, and sail ship?

As a rigid defender of ALL rights enumerated in the Constitution of the United States and Bill of Rights, I firmly disagree with your assessment. First, a law-abiding citizen should never have to be forced into a “fair fight” with a criminal. Those who choose to do violence on their brothers and sisters to make a quick buck or to satisfy a primal itch should be rewarded with the title of “most hazardous job” in the country. Should they be resisted by citizens armed with Glocks, SIGS, AR15s, SPAS 12s and HK 94s, [that] would show me a population preoccupied with the defense of its life and liberty.

Second, saying that effective self-defense is the purview of government is an abomination in the face of liberty. If commandos, SWAT and paramilitary organizations are to be the only carriers of modern arms, then suck in the fumes of child-flesh and CS gas from the inferno at Waco. That is the smell of a government with a monopoly of force and the belief that it can exercise it on any whim that strikes its fancy.

The idiot at Virginia Tech is an aberration. While he did his violence, 60 million to 120 million (depending on whose propaganda you buy) gun owners did NOTHING CRIMINAL that day, and I guarantee you that their collections of guns would make you blush. They tend to never do anything criminal at all. In fact, they have been known to use their arms, semiautomatics and all, to defend themselves and others from the will of the predators over 2 million times a year.

Dr. Paglia, I am a citizen of this country, first and foremost. I will always see it that I have a duty to provide for the protection of my family and myself, and that it is the government’s job to provide collective security. I will use every tool available to me to defend my life and liberty to their fullest extent. Be that a snub-nose .357, a two-by-four, a tire iron, or a crew-served 7.62x51mm machine gun — that is my choice.

If you think that private citizens bearing modern arms is an anachronism, look up the timeline of Reinhard Heydrich’s life. You tell me whether the commandos, SWAT and paramilitary of that day should have had the monopoly of effective force in Czechoslovakia.

What happened at Virginia Tech was despicable and outrageous. To think that to prevent it or anything like it means that moral women and men should give up their ability to resist these horrible acts, in some false hope that the lack of materiel changes the evil in some men’s hearts, is equally despicable and outrageous.

P.S. Re-read “Federalist 46.” James Madison — a lover of big government if there was one back then — lays it all out.

Scott Pacer
Waxhaw, N.C.

What an extraordinary manifesto! As so often over my years with Salon, I am deeply impressed yet again with the mental energy and power of argumentation possessed by gun-owning defenders of the Second Amendment.

I am very grateful for your learned input on this issue. I was certainly aware of the long history of automatic weapons, but it was my understanding (please correct me if I am wrong) that pre-modern versions were relatively unwieldy and of cannon or rifle dimensions. It is semiautomatic weapons of the hand-held pistol size that are plaguing our drug-infested inner cities and ending up in the clutches of lunatics like the Virginia Tech shooter.

Surely you don’t suggest, in reviewing the Virginia victims’ options, that all college students should be armed? For every rare instance where an assassin was foiled, there would be a thousand accidents or hothead duels, from the jostling cafeteria line to brawling keg parties. Ideally, college campuses should be gun-free zones, but as a non-gun-owning supporter of the Second Amendment, I also see the injustice in denying students their basic rights as citizens.

I’m a bit uneasy about the drama you postulate of your wife, sister, or daughter menaced by six psychopathic predators yet helpless without a high-tech automatic weapon. Is this a likely scenario in contemporary America? And would a person of either sex, trained or untrained, realistically be able to stop six determined attackers?

I heartily agree that Americans are constitutionally guaranteed the right to bear arms. And I also agree that the ever-present potential for tyranny was shown by the arbitrary intrusiveness of government power at Waco. But do we really want a nation wedded to suspicion and paranoia and armed to the teeth, with citizen at war with citizen? The American fixation on guns is an archaic vestige of the long-vanished Wild West. Surely it’s time for our patriotic symbolism to evolve.

You stated: “A recent caller to Sean Hannity’s radio show, hosted that day by WABC’s always lively Mark Simone, shockingly denied that Mormons are Christians. The implication was that evangelical Protestantism is absolute truth — which would also put Roman Catholicism beyond the pale.”

I don’t know what the caller said, but the assertion that excluding Mormons from Christianity would favor evangelical Protestantism and would put Roman Catholicism outside of Christianity as well would very much surprise the Vatican. You see, it was in fact the Vatican that told the rest of Christianity that Mormons are not Christian, and having had this brought to their attention, all the Protestant denominations that have considered the question have agreed.

It started out when the Vatican was asked whether the Mormon baptism rite was valid. If you are Protestant and convert to Catholicism, you are not re-baptized; your baptism is considered valid and you are considered a Christian. It’s just that you are (according to them) misled about some of the proper Christian doctrine and the nature and level of authority granted to the Roman Catholic Church. But Mormon baptism is considered invalid, and its adherents are not considered Christian.

The actual (and quite brief) ruling by Pope John Paul II in August 2001 is here, and a lengthy explanation of it is here.

The LDS [the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints] is officially considered a non-Christian “cult” by the Roman Catholic Church. Since then, several other denominations have taken up the question and have agreed with the RCC. In fact, I have not found any denomination that does consider Mormons to be Christian. You need to do your homework here.

Ronald Fox
Willow Springs, Ill.

Many thanks to you and to the other Salon readers who sent detailed, indignant letters about Mormonism. It is true that I am perhaps excessively hypersensitive (given that I’m a professed atheist) to the arrogation to themselves by evangelical Protestants of the term “Christian.”

Whatever the official ruling of the Vatican, however, it is in my view absurd to deny that Mormonism, despite the mythic claims of its founder, is a historical branch of Christianity. Assertions that belief in the divinity of Christ is a priori definitional of Christianity simply replay the theological disputes of the Middle Ages, when losers in the heresy wars were burned at the stake.

In the map of world religions, Mormonism is indisputably a subset of Christianity. It is perhaps futile to appeal to believers to overlook doctrinal differences, so I’m scarcely optimistic about convincing anyone. But my passionate interest in and commitment to religious study (which I have long argued should be integrated into primary and secondary education) is on the record. One example is my essay, “Religion and the Arts in America” (a lecture I gave at Colorado College in February), which has just been published by Arion and should be posted on its Web site by next week.

I feel compelled to write in response to the Salon reader who disparaged the Metropolitan Museum of Art in your April 10 column, questioning whether the museum has been sanitized due to the lack of visible, Viagra-like erections in the Greek and Roman galleries. Your reader, as well as anyone visiting New York, would do well to visit the recently reopened Greek and Roman galleries. There are plenty of butts, penises and breasts on display and, yes, even a few erections on the Greek vases in the upstairs gallery.

The renovation of the galleries has been an ongoing affair that was begun in 1990, and the results are well worth the wait. The space is truly a great addition to the museum and to the arts and culture of New York City. It is really more of a reinstallation, rather than a renovation, as the galleries were originally located in the space but were broken up and moved to make way for the museum’s restaurant and some offices in the 1950s. Many of the pieces on display have been in storage since the 1950s, when classical art was not in vogue and not seen as a priority. Plus there was some sort of a backlash against promoting the art of the Roman empire, as it mirrored too closely the recent wartime events. Art and politics — but classicism always makes a comeback.

As a native New Yorker, I regularly attend the Met, and the admission fee is suggested — which means you may pay what you wish. This is truly unique among New York institutions, as it makes the museum accessible to anyone regardless of their income. Don’t feel bullied into paying the full suggested amount — the Met is a very rich institution; let the tourists be suckered into it. So I am happy to report that the Met is alive and well, and not censoring itself for the sake of middle American tourists.

As a bit of a culture vulture, on the same day that I visited the Met, I had also visited some contemporary art galleries down in Chelsea. While there definitely are contemporary artists who are making engaging and interesting work, so much of what is on display in the Chelsea scene seems very sophomoric and immature.

I just have this feeling that not much of what is being produced today, or being promoted by galleries in the inflated art market, has very much staying power, in contrast to the classical art at the Met. But then again, Warhol — one of my heroes as well — was not exactly embraced with open arms when he first appeared on the scene, and is now viewed as one of the greatest American artists. I guess time will tell with regard to today’s contemporary art.

The one thing that I can say, though, is that what seems to be the major problem in contemporary art is that a lot of the work is too intellectual. It is too elitist. Anyone can walk through those classical galleries and be moved by the sculptures on view — they speak not just to beauty but to the human condition, which hasn’t changed much since Greek and Roman times. Warhol is the same — even if you don’t think about his work intellectually, it still grabs you with its garish colors, or its banal pop imagery. I think too many artists today spend too much time thinking and not enough time just letting the work speak for itself, on some instinctual level. I am curious to hear your thoughts on this subject.

Thomas P. Fernez
New York

Thank you for this most reassuring report about the sexual candor of the Met’s new Greco-Roman galleries. I haven’t been able to get to New York to see them but hope to soon.

I empathize with your dispirited reaction to the tired gestures of so much contemporary art, which is enervated by its own self-consciousness. The chic Manhattan art world, riven with status anxiety, is certainly cut off from general human experience. Andy Warhol never lost his Pittsburgh working-class roots. Hence the sense of wonder and pleasure that infused his incandescent icons of movie stars.

For contemporary art to revive, it must shed its residual, shallow postmodernist ironies and re-embrace emotion and spirituality. I recommend that aspiring artists contemplate nature, study religious art, read poetry, and listen to grand opera, folk music, and classic rhythm and blues. Now kick out the jams!

Thanks for helping my regain some sanity. I just read your response on the death of Baudrillard, and I feel some liberation. I was once a student (both undergrad and grad) at the USC Film School focusing on media theory and criticism. I was on track to get a Ph.D. and pursue a career as a professor.

The problem was theory, which was steeped in poststructuralism. I felt like I was eating a giant marshmallow that never got any smaller. But most frustrating was the reverence for the marshmallow. Don’t question the marshmallow — revel in its bountiful love and grace. There is only one marshmallow, and its prophets are the French thinkers.

For the love of …

I took a master’s and left academia. I pursued writing and photography and eventually started making greeting cards. Now, the greeting card industry as a whole takes a lot of ribbing, mostly deserved. But anytime I’ve begun to denigrate my own position in culture, I comfort myself by thinking, “At least I’m not preaching that crap.”

I reject the marshmallow and all that goes with it.

Michael Caulder
Nuk-u-lur Greeting Cards

I can’t tell you how many confessional letters I’ve received like yours since I arrived on the scene with my first book in 1990. The teaching profession in the humanities has lost an entire generation of smart, imaginative young people who were driven away from graduate school because of its infestation by pointless, pretentious, Continental “theory.” What a disaster for American intellectual life!

Not much will change until the oppressors (my baby boom generation of trend-chasing p.c. faculty) retire over the next 10 to 15 years. Then perhaps young people can begin to breathe free and reclaim their own originality. Meanwhile, congratulations on finding your niche. As a veteran purchaser of greeting cards, I’m very happy that you’re there!

Was interested to see the Bach references in your last Salon column. Those antiquated (and now extremely unfashionable) recordings had a big influence on me as a teenager too.

One of the great things about being a Johann Sebastian Bach fan is that it seems possible, anytime, anywhere, to stumble on new masterpieces. For me, last year, it was BWV 50 & BWV 664. The first, with a St. Michael’s Day text from the book of Revelation, is music suitable for the capture of bin Laden, or a dragon-slaying.

The second, dating from around 1716, has an unearthly modernist feel to it, with an ending right out of the Two-Part Inventions. This sort of writing displays Bach in full genius mode, completely unlike any of his contemporaries.

2007 has been a banner year. For the first time, I have really been digging deep into the cantatas. The real gems in that selection were the opening choruses of BWV 34 and BVW 110. You will never find these pieces in a “greatest hits” Bach compilation, yet they are just as good as anything else in his repertoire.

In the last few weeks, I have enjoyed for the first time (ah, the joy of discovery!) the opening choruses of BWV 79 and BWV 127. The first takes the “Christian soldier” idea to the highest possible level. It has several Mozartean flourishes near the beginning, and the three-part fugato, which is pure operatic hustle and bustle, bears more than a passing resemblance to the overture of Mozart’s “Magic Flute,” a fact which I noticed while watching an episode of “Inspector Morse” last Saturday evening. “Things that make you go hmm.”

The opening of BWV 127 comes from an entirely different world. CPE Bach said his father had a strong predilection for the “serious, elaborate, and profound.” We have this here in spades. Beethoven never heard this piece, but I am sure he would have loved it. Indeed, the first instrumental section after the initial entry of the chorus sounds exactly like part of a “development section” of a Beethoven symphony, especially in this old-fashioned recording by Karl Richter. One of Beethoven’s struggles was a successful attempt to “get serious” after the sometimes excessive frivolity of the classical era. Bach never had to get serious.

The opening of BWV 127 is also important for other reasons. It is a chorale fantasia, where the chorale egg comes before the chicken, on a par with the two great fantasias from the St. Matthew Passion, and the dozen or so other Bach masterpieces in this genre.

These display Bach as Houdini, weighed down by the chains of a well-known — to the point of boredom — centuries-old melody. Around these melodies, which he cannot alter for the sake of mere convenience, Bach constructs the most elaborate and profound structure possible. Though he was a believer, innovation was a compelling artistic necessity. What will I find next?

Eric Fern

I am thrilled to be able to share your Bach discoveries with Salon readers through the magic of the Web. What a glorious river of sound!

My constant message to everyone is: Don’t passively wait for instruction from our flawed educational system. Take charge of your own cultivation and enlightenment. The world of great art waits out there for your exploration.

Unhappily, even my use of the term “great” is currently polemical. Greatness was thrown out the window when identity politics and poststructuralism invaded the university. Bach is one of the Dead White European Males who were demoted by campus theorists, whose approach to art is little more than sneering vandalism.

Like you, I fervently believe in “genius” (another discarded term). Of course, I’m Italian, and we’ve had so many of them!

How ’bout a shout out to David Bowie for inspiring what you called Madonna’s “brilliant facility for changing styles and personae”?

[Video link.]

[from this article:]

DAVID BOWIE AND BRIAN ENO (1995)

By Dominic Wells

David Bowie: Could I just ask you first, do you mind terribly if we also tape this? Just for our own usage.

Dominic Wells: So you can sample me and stick me on your next album?

DB: Actually, it is likely. I nearly sampled Camille Paglia on this album, but she never returned my calls! She kept sending messages through her assistant saying, ‘Is this really David Bowie, and if it is, is it important?’ (laughs), and I just gave up! So I replaced her line with me.

Brian Eno: Sounds pretty much like her.

Michael Erlinger

What a fabulous retrospective video of David Bowie’s peak period! My hair literally stood on end as I watched it, so eerily electrifying do I still find Bowie’s androgynous theatricality.

Bowie had an incalculable impact on me in the 1970s as I was writing “Sexual Personae,” which began as my doctoral dissertation at Yale. His “Aladdin Sane” album (1973) was the key motif of my madly hectic years as an annoyingly prankish, loud-mouthed Amazon feminist at Bennington College, my first teaching job. “Lady Grinning Soul,” a spooky song on that album, is a Romantic masterpiece in the dark artistic line of Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

I am skeptical about any influence of Bowie on Madonna, however. As a native of metropolitan Detroit, she was a product of the disco era of funk-flavored dance music. Her performance work has been a singular blend of Martha Graham modern and Bob Fosse jazz dancing. She definitely could have used some of Bowie’s avant-garde and futuristic flair. Also, Bowie is a cosmopolitan connoisseur, whereas Madonna’s studies of the arts, encouraged by her brother Christopher, have been erratic. She’s too hyperkinetic and impatient to focus on anything beyond extreme yoga.

I appreciate your flagging that cringe-making excerpt from the 1995 conversation between Bowie and Brian Eno. It alludes to one of the bigger screw-ups of my career as a public figure. Here are the facts.

One day in Philadelphia, I was contacted by my New York publisher: a call had been received claiming that David Bowie wanted my telephone number. I burst out laughing. “Oh, sure, David Bowie wants my phone number — that takes the cake!”

The mere idea seemed absolutely preposterous. In that period, when I was appearing on TV a lot (there were far more substantive shows than now — “Crossfire,” “CNN & Company,” etc.), I was constantly besieged with weird fan letters and calls as well as unwanted gifts. (I hate gifts!)

We tried to authenticate the call, but the replies seemed oddly ambiguous. What was abnormal was the wary-making request for my phone number. Surely it would have been more persuasive and professional for Bowie’s people to leave me his number. So nothing happened.

Long afterward, I learned that Bowie had wanted permission to use an excerpt from “Sexual Personae” on his new album. Of course I would have thrown myself on the floor and offered the obeisance of a fervent acolyte to him. If he was drawn to “Sexual Personae,” it is because he was rightly detecting his own massive influence on my thinking.

Bowie is a true genius of modern art.

- – - – - – - – - – - -

Camille Paglia’s column appears on the second Wednesday of each month. Every third column is devoted to reader letters. Please send questions for her next letters column to this mailbox. Your name and town will be published unless you request anonymity.

“This industry really didn’t exist 10 years ago,” says Peter Singer, a national security fellow at the Brookings Institution and author of “Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry.” A decade ago, mercenary soldiering was less the stuff of corporate America than the inspiration for Soldier of Fortune fantasies. Now, as Singer reported in Salon, the industry generates over $100 billion annually worldwide.

As little known as these companies are to the general public, they are only too familiar in Washington, where they have deployed a different kind of mercenary force — phalanxes of lobbyists — along with the ammunition of modern political warfare, campaign contributions. And they have found eager friends, particularly among Republican leaders in and out of Congress.

“The move into the political game tends to happen for three reasons,” Singer says. “One, this business is growing. Second, companies that are in other industries move into the sector, bringing influence and lobbyists to bear.” Examples include Halliburton and, in the case of private security firms and other companies that provide combat- or intelligence-oriented services, firms like CACI and Titan. Finally, Singer says, “A lot of firms have picked up lobbyists as they’ve gained a public profile.”

Blackwater, the firm that guards Coalition Provisional Authority chief Paul Bremer, and whose men were killed at Fallujah, has hired the well-connected Alexander Strategy Group to guide it through the current publicity storm and help influence Congress on whatever rules are generated to govern private militias in war zones, according to the Hill newspaper.

Alexander may turn out to be a clever choice: Ed Buckham, former chief of staff to House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, is Alexander’s chairman. Tony Rudy, another former top DeLay operative, and Karl Gallant, who once ran DeLay’s leadership PAC, are also onboard.

Blackwater also works other angles. One of the firm’s founders is Michigan native Erik Prince, a former Navy SEAL. His father, Edgar Prince, helped religious right leader Gary Bauer found the Family Research Council in 1988. Erik Prince’s sister, Betsy DeVos, is the chairwoman of the Michigan Republican Party. But Blackwater is a relative newcomer to the Washington influence game, especially compared with CACI and Titan, which have been trailblazers.

For more than four years, CACI has employed the Livingston Group and its “strategic partner,” Louisiana law firm Jones, Walker, Waechter, Poitevent, Carrere and Denegre, to represent the company’s interests in Washington. Since 2000, CACI has poured $160,000 into Livingston and $150,000 into Jones, Walker.

The Livingston who gave the firm its name is former House Appropriations Committee chairman Bob Livingston, the Louisiana Republican designated as Newt Gingrich’s successor to the speaker’s gavel in 1998. Amid the House debate over the impeachment of President Clinton, Livingston dramatically announced his retirement because of his own sexual peccadilloes. “Livingston is the only former chairman of the powerful Appropriations Committee now in private practice,” reads a bio on his firm’s Web site.

Livingston’s former top staffers, who have joined him in the private sector, also work on the CACI account, according to lobbying filings with the House and Senate. In addition, the two firms employ former legislative liaisons (bureaucratese for lobbyists) from the Navy, Air Force and Coast Guard — all registered to lobby for CACI.

More than 92 percent of CACI’s $843 million in revenues last year came from the federal government — 63 percent from the Pentagon alone. The company’s lobbyists are essential in the continuing effort to grease that wheel of fortune.

Titan’s lineup of lobbyists is even broader. Its in-house team includes chairman Gene Ray, a former top Air Force official; John Dressendorfer, a former White House lobbyist under President Reagan who also worked in President Nixon’s Pentagon; Lawrence Delaney, who closed out his service to the Clinton administration as acting undersecretary of the Air Force; and, for good measure, Susan Golding, a former Republican mayor of San Diego.

Titan’s hired guns include the law firm of Copeland, Lowery, Jacquez, Denton and Shockey, which employs Letitia White, a longtime staffer to Rep. Jerry Lewis, R-Calif., to work on Titan’s issues. Lewis, by the way, is the chairman of the defense subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee. The firm American Defense International, also employed by Titan, includes Van Hipp, a former deputy assistant secretary of the Army under then Defense Secretary Dick Cheney who was later appointed the No. 2 lawyer in the Navy, and Michael Herson, a former special assistant to then Secretary Cheney.

What’s more, Titan has engaged the services of NorthPoint Strategies, composed mainly of former top staffers to Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham, R-Calif. Cunningham, a former member of the Armed Services Committee, as it happens sits on the Appropriations defense subcommittee as well as the Intelligence Committee.

All told, Titan has spent $1.29 million since 2000 on Washington lobbying. In 2003 alone, it paid NorthPoint $240,000. And its lobbying has paid off. Last year, the company had revenues of $1.8 billion, according to its annual report: “Our revenues from U.S. government business represented approximately 96% of our total revenues for the year ended December 31, 2003.”

This revolving door between congressional staffers or retired military personnel and lobbying firms is not circumscribed by the requirements of the House and Senate lobby registration. Most of the private contractors operating in Iraq have high-ranking retired brass in their executive suites. CACI’s board of directors, for example, features retired Gen. Larry Welch, a former Air Force chief of staff. Carl Vuono and Ronald Griffith, the president and executive vice president, respectively, of Alexandria, Va., firm MPRI, which is helping to train and equip the new Iraqi Army, are both retired generals.

But preexisting relationships are only one weapon in the Washington operator’s arsenal. Money remains one of the most important tools.

Not surprisingly, these companies have been very generous to the Republican Party. Titan’s PAC, for example, has contributed a dozen times more money to Republicans than to Democrats during this election cycle: It kicked in $182,000 to Republican committees and candidates, including $10,000 apiece to the leadership PACs of Lewis, Cunningham, Senate Appropriations Committee chairman Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, and House Armed Services Committee chairman Duncan Hunter, R-Calif. (whose leadership group is called Peace Through Strength PAC). Titan’s PAC also gave the maximum $10,000 to the campaign committees of Cunningham, Lewis and Hunter. Democrats have received a mere $15,000 from Titan.

In addition, top executives with Titan have contributed in excess of $58,000 to political candidates and committees since 2000, more than $49,000 of that amount going to Republicans. Ray alone gave $28,000, the bulk of it to Republicans. Reps. Cunningham and Hunter each got from Titan executives at least $10,000 (not including the $3,000 given to Hunter’s Peace Through Strength PAC). The Democrat who has received the most money from Titan executives is Rep. John Murtha of Pennsylvania, the ranking Democrat on the Appropriations Committee’s defense subcommittee.

CACI executives gave a total of $29,250 over the same time period, $25,750 of it to Republican interests. J.P. “Jack” London, CACI’s CEO, alone gave $10,000, all to Republicans.

Some of the private security firms in Iraq are clearly fresh to the political game: Three executives from Triple Canopy — whose forces fought a pitched battle against Iraqi insurgents in April — each wrote $2,000 in checks to the Bush-Cheney campaign in March.

While Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has now testified on Iraqi prisoner abuse — some of it carried out by workers employed by private firms — no hearings have yet been scheduled on the widespread use of mercenaries to fill jobs once performed by U.S. soldiers. And deployment of such workers is unlikely to decrease as election year contributions grow: The number of hired mercenaries is expected to double after the June 30 hand-over of “limited sovereignty” to an Iraqi government.

The four men killed in Fallujah were not U.S. troops but rather employees of a little known company, Blackwater USA, that resides within an industry that until last week, few people even knew existed. Breaking out of the “guns for hire” mold of traditional mercenaries, corporations like Blackwater sell the sorts of services that soldiers used to provide. Known as “private military firms” (PMFs), they range from small companies that provide teams of commandos for hire to large corporations that run military supply chains. This new military industry encompasses hundreds of companies, thousands of employees, and billions of revenue dollars.

In Iraq, they’re also accounting for a growing share of the force and the casualties. There are 15,000 private personnel carrying out mission-critical military roles, and they have suffered at least 30 to 50 killed in action, including the four dead contract workers whose bodies were discovered on Tuesday. Scores more have been taken captive in just the last week.

The Bush administration was unwilling to enlist serious assistance from the United Nations or from most of our NATO allies, but thanks to the PMFs that employ private soldiers of more than 30 nationalities, it has been able to assemble an international coalition of sorts in Iraq. But it is more a “coalition of the billing” than of the “willing.” Indeed, there are more private military contractors on the ground in Iraq than troops from any one ally, including Britain. One single company, Global Risks, has a reported 1,100 employees in Iraq, including 500 Nepalese Gurkha troops and 500 Fijian soldiers, ranking it sixth among troop donors.

Working in over 50 conflict zones, the industry is emblematic of a broader globalization. PMFs and their clients are located worldwide, but their single largest client is the U.S. taxpayer; our government has signed over 3,000 contracts with private military firms in the last decade. The reliance on this industry was driven by changes in the market after the end of the Cold War. It boomed in an era of military downsizing (the U.S. military is about one-third smaller than it was during the 1991 Gulf War) and the increasing demands of new deployments, the more-technical requirements of modern warfare, and privatization as a new vogue of government.

While Congress and the senior leadership at the Pentagon do not have an exact handle on the numbers, an estimated 15,000 to 20,000 private military personnel are in Iraq. They are carrying out essential jobs that soldiers have done in the past — from handling logistics and maintenance to training the local army to fighting pitched battles — and they have taken more casualties than any ally. However, while performing tasks crucial to the operation, they are not formally part of the force, creating a critical disconnect in such areas as intelligence sharing, as well as confusion over rights and responsibilities in the midst of combat.

The size and scope of the private military contingent in Iraq also cut to the heart of the most troubling questions about the Bush administration’s handling of the war. They point up the administration’s inadequate planning and preparation, its lack of transparency about the war’s financial and human cost, and its sense of denial about whether it put enough American troops on the ground to accomplish the task handed to them. The hiring of such a large private force and the ensuing casualties that it has taken outside of public awareness and discussion have served as a novel means for displacing some of the political costs of the war. Even more troubling, the growth of such an ad hoc market arrangement, lying outside the chain of command, makes an already tough mission even more difficult, and risks lives on both the troop and contractor side.

Until Fallujah, the private military industry was largely hidden behind the headlines, present in the world’s hot spots but never fully acknowledged. When a CIA plane mistakenly coordinated the shootdown of a planeload of American missionaries over Peru in 2001, few realized that the plane was manned by contractors for Aviation Development Corp., based in Alabama. When suicide bombers attacked an American compound in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, last spring, few understood what it meant that the targets worked for Vinnell Corp., a Fairfax, Va., defense contractor that trains Saudi Arabia’s and Iraq’s armies. When Palestinian militants killed three Americans in Gaza last fall, most didn’t realize that they were private military contractors working for DynCorp, a multifaceted government services firm, based just outside the Washington-Dulles airport. When a planeload of men was arrested in Zimbabwe last month, with the local regime claiming they were picking up weapons on their way to an alleged coup plot in Equatorial Guinea, few understood what it meant when they turned out to be employees of Logo Logistics, a PMF registered out of the British Virgin Islands. When the State Department spokesman noted that President Aristide of Haiti left office accompanied by his personal guards, he left out the part that Aristide had outsourced his protection to the Steele Foundation,, a San Francisco firm.

Though it’s little more than a decade old, the privatized military industry has an estimated $100 billion in annual global revenue. In fact, with the recent purchase of MPRI by a Fortune 500 firm, L-3, many Americans already unknowingly own slices of the PMF industry in their 401Ks.

The firms’ growth is also perhaps best evidenced in the way they have begun to play the age-old Washington game of lobbying. Employing mostly former senior government and military officers, the firms already enjoy broad familiarity with the government contracting process as well as informal connections with former colleagues and subordinates. But like any other mature industry, PMFs also feel they must employ lobbyists and make political campaign donations to stay ahead of each other. In 2001, 10 leading private military firms spent more than $32 million on lobbying, while they invested more than $12 million in political campaign donations.

Among the leading donors were Halliburton, which gave more than $700,000 from 1999 to 2002, 95 percent to Republicans, and DynCorp, which gave more than $500,000, 72 percent to Republicans. Interestingly, Halliburton’s spending to influence policy declined after its former CEO Dick Cheney became vice president. During the last two years of the Clinton administration, the firm spent $1.2 million lobbying the Senate, House of Representatives, and various executive branch departments. During the first two years of the Bush administration, Halliburton reported spending just $600,000 (getting a much better return on its investment, as its contracts roughly trebled).

But the large corporations are not the only ones that have begun to play the game. With a now public profile, and growing congressional scrutiny, Blackwater reportedly hired Alexander Strategy Group, one of the more influential lobbying firms, just days after the contractors’ deaths. Alexander is run by Tom DeLay’s former chief of staff, Ed Buckham, and also employed DeLay’s wife, Christine.

The private military industry had steadily expanded since its origins at the end of the Cold War, but it has hit new heights in the last three years of the war on terrorism. Indeed, if any operation should have been a purely military one, many thought it would be the response of the United States to Sept. 11, 2001. The military enjoyed broad support with the American people, and the concerns about casualties that had limited military operations in the 1980s and 1990s were set aside.

From the beginning, however, private contractors played key roles in the war in Afghanistan. Their employees deployed with U.S. military forces on the ground (including serving in the CIA paramilitary units that were the first to hit the ground), maintained combat equipment, provided logistical support, and routinely flew on joint surveillance and targeting aircraft. Even the noted Global Hawk unmanned surveillance planes were operated by private employees. The private firms’ role in the region continues today, with contractors now part of the CIA/military operation attempting to run down Osama bin Laden and his associates along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.

In other anti-terrorism operations around the globe, PMFs have played similarly wide-ranging roles. The operations in the Philippines against Islamic guerrillas have DynCorp working on logistics, while other members of the firm are playing a more active role in anti-narcotics and counter-guerrilla operations in Colombia. When the United States deployed a military training contingent to the former Soviet republic of Georgia to help root out radical Muslim terrorists, the team was mostly made up of PMF employees. The Taliban and al-Qaida members unlucky enough to be caught can plan on spending their next years housed in a military prison at Guantánamo Bay, built not by U.S. soldiers but by the KBR division of Halliburton, and interrogated by private contractors from firms like Titan.

In fact, the PMF industry was one of the few whose economic outlook was improved rather than harmed by the 9/11 attacks. While the U.S. and global economy suffered from the shock, the prices of PMFs listed on stock exchanges jumped roughly 50 percent in value, with L-3′s even doubling. A number of firms were launched in the aftermath of the attacks, hoping to tap the boom market. One example is Janusian, a British venture that seeks to provide protection and intelligence against terrorist attacks. “The war on terrorism is the full employment act for these guys,” one Defense Department official commented. “A lot of people have said, Ding, ding, ding! Gravy train!”

But the Iraq War is where the history books will note that the industry took full flight. Iraq is not just the biggest U.S. military commitment in a generation but also the biggest marketplace in the short history of the privatized military industry. In Iraq, private actors play a pivotal role in great-power warfare to an extent not seen since the advent of the mass nation-state armies in the Napoleonic Age.

Before the war, private firms helped out with an array of tasks — operating supply lines, running training exercises, and even assisting with the war gaming and battle planning in the Kuwaiti desert that later proved so successful. The huge U.S. Army complex at Camp Doha, where the invasion was launched, was built, operated and guarded by a vast private operation led by a consortium called Combat Support Associates. (While CSA was operating in Kuwait, firms in the consortium were registered as “100 percent Native American-owned” and thus could use Minority Business Enterprise certifications as a way to gain preference in the government acquisition process.) These roles were not without their risks. Even before the battle started, several private military personnel were killed or wounded in live-fire exercises and, in a taste of what was to come, two civilian technicians were murdered by terrorists in a drive-by shooting in Kuwait.

During the major combat operations phase of the Iraq War last spring, private military employees handled everything from feeding and housing U.S. troops to maintaining sophisticated weapons systems like the B-2 stealth bomber, F-117 stealth fighter, Global Hawk UAV, U-2 reconnaissance aircraft, M-1 Tank, Apache helicopter, and air defense systems on numerous Navy ships. While civilians had always accompanied U.S. forces on deployments, all the way back to the sutlers who sold shoes and other consumer wares at Valley Forge, never had the U.S. military been so reliant on outsiders to accomplish its mission. Indeed, the pre-invasion ratio of private contractors to U.S. military personnel in the Gulf was roughly 1 to 10 (10 times the ratio during the 1991 war). Our allies, including the British and Australians, also depended heavily on contracted support.

During the occupation of Iraq, the demand for private assistance skyrocketed, particularly as the rosy scenarios made by political appointees in the Pentagon before the war proved false. Presently, an estimated 15,000 or more private military contractors are on the ground in Iraq, working for tens of companies and their subcontractors, providing tasks that only soldiers once performed. The CPA estimates that after sovereignty is granted to a largely nonexistent Iraqi government at the end of June, these figures may rise to as high 30,000. Jobs such as guarding the Green Zone in Baghdad will be privatized as well. We don’t know the exact figures, because the Bush administration maintains no formal tracking of the numbers. The very lack of any accounting illustrates the dire need for better oversight and accountability.

Outsourcing has provided a novel means to reduce some of the political costs of the war. Reserve call-ups are lessened and compromises with allies unnecessary. Any public dismay over casualties is also dampened. Unlike the formal reporting of U.S. military casualties, release of such information is at the discretion of each individual firm. Just as no one knows the exact number of private military contractor boots on the ground, so, too, does no one know the number of killed and wounded. From a survey of industry insiders as well as hometown press reports that sometimes announce the deaths, estimates are that between 30 and 50 private military contractors have been killed in the fighting in Iraq, with tens more killed in accidents. Assuming the rough ratio of killed versus wounded that has held among U.S. troop casualties (1 to 6), this means that upward of 200 to 300 private casualties have gone unreported on the public ledger. That is more than the entire 82nd Airborne Division lost in Iraq over the past year.

Private military firms carry out three crucial functions in Iraq: military support, military training and advice, and certain tactical military roles. It is important to note that official U.S. military doctrine has long held that “mission critical” roles must be kept inside the force. It has also held that civilians accompanying the force should not be put into roles where they must carry or use weapons, allowing the carry of sidearms (that is, pistols) only in the most extraordinary circumstances. But what used to be the exception is now the rule.

Military support firms help with logistics and engineering, as well as assisting with tasks such as tactical and non-tactical vehicle maintenance and repair. The major player in this sector has been Dick Cheney’s former firm, Halliburton. Operating under the LOGCAP contract (Logistics Civilian Augmentation Program), Halliburton has done about $6 billion worth of business on Iraq contracts.

Many consider such tasks secondary and in line with the broader military outsourcing of such ancillary jobs as lawn mowing at bases. But they could not be more wrong when it comes to logistics. As official U.S. military doctrine states, “Since the dawn of military history, logistical capabilities have controlled the size, scope, pace, and effectiveness of military operations … Logistical capabilities must be designed to survive and operate under attack; that is, they must be designed for combat effectiveness, not peacetime efficiency.” Or, as Gen. Omar Bradley succinctly put it, “Amateurs talk about strategy; professionals talk about logistics.”

Bradley’s view was proved right in the days after the Fallujah attacks. In an e-mail obtained by Knight Ridder News, a senior U. S. official in Iraq warned his superiors at the Pentagon’s program management office in Baghdad that Halliburton senior executives had said they were “considering withdrawing from the country” because of security concerns. The official noted that a cut in LOGCAP services by the firm would cause the “complete collapse of the support infrastructure” of the operation. Halliburton denied it was considering a withdrawal, while the CPA would not comment. Regardless, it underscored how vulnerable military officers felt the operation had become to outside corporate decision-makers.

As violence spread in the ensuing week, Halliburton and other military support firms put their employees on “lockdown,” and operations were suspended in several key areas. After another fuel convoy was ambushed and seven contractors went missing (one, Thomas Hamill, a dairy farmer turned military convoy truck driver, is presently held captive, while four of the civilians have since been found dead), movement by the firms effectively ceased in large portions of Iraq, including the Kuwait-to-Baghdad supply run. As they lie outside the military code of justice, constitutionally, the military simply can not order these firms to take the risks and truck on as it could have done with military units in the past. Officers have begun to worry about what this will mean for critical fuel and supply stocks they depend on to carry out their missions.

While its scope was debatable, the process behind LOGCAP used to be fairly noncontroversial, as the original contract to provide field logistics support to the U.S. Army was competitively bid out. However, eyebrows began to rise when in the months just before the war, nonmilitary tasks such as oil-well fire fighting and then oil field repair and operation were noncompetitively added to the purview of military logistics. Thus, through LOGCAP, Halliburton cornered the logistics and oil services market and has so far gained a 62 percent jump in revenue.

While the defense has been made that Halliburton is the only firm capable of such a job, it is important to note that Halliburton often acts as a middle man, meaning the U.S. military outsources tasks to a firm that outsources them further. Indeed, those who have seen the recent Halliburton commercials on TV, showing proud American employees serving happy soldiers, would be confused by who actually works at the firm’s kitchens, usually third-world nationals flown in from places like Bangladesh and the Philippines. The contractor-subcontractor relationship has not always been a smooth one, with U.S. forces at risk of the consequences. In February, several of the subcontractor firms publicly complained that they had not been paid by Halliburton, despite its huge revenue stream, and threatened to cut off food service to U.S. troops until they were.

Other concerns in the military-support arena are overbilling and quality assurance. As anyone familiar with construction or home repair will attest, it is essential to have competition to determine the most efficient contractor at the best price; it is also essential to maintain oversight to prevent being bilked and getting shoddy work. In the military effort in Iraq, this basic function has largely been AWOL, mainly as a result of poor planning and the lack of military, as opposed to contractor, oversight funding. The contract management office in Baghdad, for example, originally had five personnel in charge of managing some $18 billion in contracting. It later added nine more, leaving a still-daunting ratio of about $1.3 billion in oversight per person, in the middle of probably the most confusing contract zone in history.

The result has been a series of snafus and suspected swindling, best captured by the weekly drumbeat of financial scandals that Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., has unearthed about Halliburton contracts in Iraq. The allegations circling the firm ranged from charging for tens of thousands of meals never served to soldiers, to billing for inappropriate extras such as adding the firm’s logo to hand towels. But Halliburton was far from the only firm about which these concerns were raised. An investigation by the Pentagon’s inspector general report found Pentagon procurement rules have not been followed in 22 of 24 deals awarded by the Defense Contracting Command for services in Iraq. One of the perhaps amusing examples was the U.S. taxpayer’s purchase of a Hummer H2 (the über-expensive SUV familiar from rap music videos) for a SAIC program manager, which included payment for the charter of a DC-10 cargo jet to fly it to Iraq.

Military consulting firms represent another market sector and carry out a number of military advisory and training services. The responsibility of creating the post-Saddam police, paramilitary forces and army has been outsourced to various firms. The importance of this work is without dispute. The U.S. plan for disengagement from Iraq is dependent on the formation of such local forces, and for decades they will be the operation’s institutional legacy.

DynCorp, a multibillion-dollar government services firm based in Reston, Va., is the major player in the police training program. The contract was originally awarded for $50 million but could be worth as much as $800 million. While the firm relies on the federal government for about 96 percent of its business (it spends more than a million dollars a year on lobbying and has written another dozen checks to the RNC in the last few years), it has a decided public relations problem stemming from the sex-trade scandal in the Balkans. Under two separate contracts in Bosnia and Kosovo, a number of its employees were implicated in sex crimes and the black-market arms trade, including its Bosnia site manager, who videotaped himself raping two young women. Because of a gap in the law, none were ever criminally prosecuted, and the whistleblowers in the incident (as opposed to the perpetrators) later sued the firm after they were fired. The firm has since set up an in-house screening program, which it hopes will avoid such incidents in the future.

Erinys is in charge of the program for setting up a paramilitary guard force for Iraq’s oil fields, obviously key to starting up the economy. Given that it did not exist before the war, Erinys surprised many established firms in the industry by winning the $39.2 million contract. Then, the firm raised eyebrows by importing many former South African soldiers and police who had worked for the old apartheid regime. However, the contract has gone well; since it took charge of operations, attacks on oil pipelines have declined. In little over four months Erinys trained, armed and deployed more than 9,000 Iraqi guards across the country. It plans to expand the force to nearly 15,000. Others credit not the raw numbers but the sensible payoff of local tribal leaders to protect the pipelines, much as what happened with the past regime.

Vinnell, MPRI and Nour USA have been engaged in training and equipping the new Iraq army, a task whose cost could reach as high as $2 billion. Vinnell, a subsidiary of Northrop Grumman, is notable for being the only firm targeted by al-Qaida twice, having offices bombed in Saudi Arabia in 1996 and 2003. MPRI is a firm of primarily former U.S. Army officers, all the way up to four-star generals. The company’s major client is training for the U.S. Army, but it has also worked on contracts in Croatia, Bosnia, Nigeria and Afghanistan. Nour’s contract became particularly controversial when allegations surfaced that the firm was linked with neoconservative darling Ahmed Chalabi, the Iraqi exile leader many blame for the faulty intelligence used to whip up war sentiment in the United States Despite having no operating history, the politically connected firm is alleged by its competitors to have beaten out more established firms by lowballing its contract by several hundred million dollars. The contract has since been suspended and is now being re-awarded, resulting in months of delay in the vital task of readying an Iraqi army. One U.S. Army contracting officer remarked to Jane’s Defense Weekly, ” I’ve been in Army contracting for 28 years and I’ve never heard of it happening like this.”

In the shifting battlefield of Iraq, military support and military consulting have become more dangerous. Unlike the firms in such places as Bosnia or Kosovo, in Iraq these contractors have taken an increasing number casualties. While these roles had originally been contemplated to lie outside the battlefield, the front lines have become all-encompassing, bringing everyone under fire. For example, Thomas Hamill, the struggling Mississippi dairy farmer turned convoy truck driver captured by insurgents last week, was doing a job quite similar to, and no less dangerous than, that carried out by Pvt. Jessica Lynch. The only difference is that he is a private contractor and she was regular Army. In response to the reality of these dangers, many of these support contractors and consultants have armed themselves. With the U.S. military unwilling to provide weapons, many are now turning to the black market.

But the most dramatic and controversial expansion of PMF involvement is in the combat realm. Before Iraq, PMFs had fought in several combat zones, the most notable being Executive Outcomes’ participation in the Sierra Leone and Angola wars. But Iraq is the first time that firms have played tactical roles alongside large numbers of U.S. troops in the field.

In Iraq, tactical PMFs, also known as military providers, play three key roles: They help defend key installations, protect key individuals such as Coalition Provisional Authority head Paul Bremer, and escort convoys. Each is obviously critical to the mission’s success. If bases, buildings and other key installations are captured or destroyed, if key leaders like Bremer get killed, or if the supplies don’t flow, then the operation collapses.

A listing of some 20 firms that offer such services is available from the State Department’s Iraq travel Web site, but curiously does not mention Blackwater. The same issues — the contractual process and the lack of oversight — suffuse this sector (in one study of $58 million in protection contracts let by the CPA, five of six contracts were no-bid). But the stakes are far higher than wasted taxpayer money.

Sometimes, these assignments are described euphemistically as “private security” to make them sound less military. But these are not private guards who stroll at the local shopping mall. They involve personnel with military skills and weapons who carry out military functions, within a war zone, against military-level threats. Custer Battles, for example, is a Virginia firm that has the airport security contract in Baghdad. Airport security in this context does not mean bored attendees standing by an X-ray machine, but rather former Green Berets and Ghurka fighters defending the airport from mortars, rockets and snipers.

In short, the roles performed by these firms entail the same risks or even greater ones than those faced by U.S. military forces. As fighting has spread, PMFs have been at the forefront. Blackwater, the firm that lost the four men in Fallujah, just days later defended the CPA headquarters in Najaf from being overrun by radical Shiite militia. The firefight lasted several hours, with thousands of rounds of ammunition fired, and Blackwater even sent in its own helicopters twice to resupply its commandos with ammunition and to ferry out a wounded U.S. Marine. The same night, Hart Group, Control Risks and Triple Canopy were all involved in pitched battles. Unfortunately, the Hart position was overrun. Abandoned by nearby Coalition forces, the firm’s employees had to leave one of their comrades dead on a rooftop on which he and four colleagues had been fighting after their house had been captured.

The extent of these firms’ combat role is largely off policymakers’ radar screen. Not only is Congress woefully ignorant of the contracts that its budgets have paid for, but senior Pentagon officials are, at best, in self-denial about the depth of the outsourcing. When pressed on the issue at a news briefing just days after the Fallujah deaths, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s response was a prototypical nonsensical Rummyism.

Reporter: Why is the armed services privatizing armed security?

Rumsfeld: The armed services are not privatizing armed security.

Reporter: Those men were providing security for…

Rumsfeld: Society.

Reporter: A convoy.

Rumsfeld: The society is privatizing security.

Reporter: However you want to say it.

Likewise, discussions with high-ranking military officers reveal that many at the most senior levels have not factored what privatization means for operations on the ground. One high-ranking general involved in Iraq operations at the Pentagon had not even heard of the battles above, let alone the Blackwater firm, still contending that firms handled only secondary tasks like K.P. duty. Indeed, when the command staff of CENTCOM toured the Najaf battle site just hours after the heroic stand by the Blackwater employees, their briefing did not even mention the key role of the firm in saving the day.

In a field that often lacks transparency and sometimes includes shady characters, Blackwater is a firm with a reputation for professionalism; it has never had a major allegation of malfeasance leveled against it. Perhaps not coincidentally, it is also one of the few that has opened up its facilities to the press.

Blackwater was originally located in the military training sector and got its start in 1996. Founded by an ex-Navy SEAL, Gary Jackson, the firm has a 5,200-square-acre facility located in tiny Moyock, N.C. Moyock may be in the heart of North Carolina’s Great Dismal Swamp, but it is just 25 miles south of Norfolk Naval Base. Blackwater’s facility is the largest privately owned firearms training complex in the nation, and many consider it to have the best tactical shooting program. More than 50,000 personnel have gone through its training, and experts ranging from SEALs to SWAT teams (the World SWAT Challenge is held onsite) laud its facilities. In the current threat environment, the firm has focused on anti-terrorism programs, such as signing a $35 million contract to train more than 10,000 U.S. Navy sailors in force protection.

When the company was founded, Jackson described the business endeavor as like playing “roulette, a crapshoot.” But the firm soon thrived. It later added an overseas contingent and starting offering private military personnel for hire, primarily to the U.S. government. As Jackson discussed with the Guardian newspaper of London, “We have grown 300 percent over each of the past three years and we are small compared to the big ones. We have a very small niche market; we work towards putting out the cream of the crop, the best.”

Although the firm started out employing ex-American military, primarily from the Special Forces, growing demand has led it to look to other and often cheaper labor sources. The firm reports that 30 percent of its current personnel do not have military training, usually being former policemen. In February, it hired some 60 former Chilean soldiers from the Red Tactica firm, offering them contracts worth around $4,000 a month to guard oil facilities in Iraq from insurgent attack. Concerns were raised that many of them had a history with the Pinochet regime. Michelle Bachelet, Chile’s defense minister, questioned “whether paramilitary training by Blackwater violated Chilean laws on the use of weapons by private citizens” and ordered an investigation. Jackson responded, “We scour the ends of the earth to find professionals — the Chilean commandos are very, very professional.”

By the time of the lethal Fallujah incident, Blackwater had expanded significantly and reported that it had 450 personnel on the ground in Iraq (a far different number from the “five to six” one Pentagon general I spoke with thought the firm employed). Plans were in the works to create a training facility for Iraqi forces, parallel to the Moyock one, at a former Iraqi Air Force Base outside Baghdad. Its most visible operation was a $21 million, noncompetitively awarded contract to protect CPA head Paul Bremer. It provided for his security, as well as two helicopters for transport. So, while the U.S. president, U.S. senators, and U.S. generals have official security and transport, in the Iraq War zone, the top U.S. official does not.

The contingent outside Fallujah had some 20 armed personnel whose primary task was reportedly the protection of logistics convoys, manned by another contractor. This involved escorting trucks carrying food, kitchen equipment and personnel for Regency Hotel and Hospitality. Regency is a subcontractor of Eurest Support Services (ESS), which in turn is a division of the Compass Group, the world’s largest food service company. In Iraq, the firm feeds the troops at more than a dozen U.S. base camps.

There is no defining background or single reason why someone enters the private military job market. Typically, some mix of three motivating factors applies: mission, money and personal considerations.

Private military employees often see their jobs as an extension of their public service in the military. They usually have a great deal of pride and patriotism in what they do, and see themselves not just on a business outing but in an endeavor bigger than themselves. This is particularly so in Iraq, where many see themselves as playing a greater part in the war on terrorism (clearly, the patriotic impulse is not as strong for third-party nationals). Retired U.S. military personnel often describe this as their way to get back into the fight.

There is also the related sense of military community and camaraderie that continues into the private sector. It may be a business, but it is a realm where one’s former rank and experience still matter, as opposed to the regular corporate world. Loyalty to one’s colleagues also is important.

Few will deny that another key draw is the pay. “Doing this kind of work for a year means some people have enough to retire on. Iraq is something of a gold mine at present,” says Duncan Bullivant, the head of the British firm Henderson Risk. “The profit margin is incredibly high, way in excess of the risk factor.”

Soldiers within the private military field typically make between two to 10 times what they make with their home-state military. Much as in regular industry, those at the higher end have an elite background, except that in the PMF world, having been in a Green Beret, SEAL or Special Air Service unit supplants being an Harvard or Wharton MBA as a point of distinction. The industry also mirrors global business, in that pay scales back home still matter significantly. So, while a former Green Beret can make up to $1,000 a day in Iraq, a Nepalese Ghurka is paid in the range of $1,000 a month.

Such income opportunities are hard to turn down, particularly in comparison to the meager pay that soldiers often get within the military. It is also at the heart of a growing controversy: How does the industry’s growth affect retention within the military?

This challenge is different from the age-old problem of skilled professionals departing for better-paying civilian careers. Unlike a pilot who retires to go work for an airline, soldiers within the private military industry stay within the same sphere and, indeed, their firms often directly contract back with the military. The military not only prematurely loses the human capital investment it originally made in training soldiers, but then sees these exact skills billed back, at higher rates.

While it is too soon to tell how this all will shake out, it is known that special forces in Australia, Britain and the United States have all grown anxious at the increasing number of early retirements among its most skilled personnel, who depart for the PMF industry. As an illustration, there are reportedly more ex-SAS soldiers working for PMFs in Iraq now than currently serve in the entire elite British force. Indeed, the SAS has been forced to recruit for the very first time in its history, while U.S. Army Special Forces have been compelled to begin recruiting directly from the civilian population. Troubled by this development, the Pentagon recently convened a special working group of senior NCOs to examine how to stem the outflow from Special Forces.

The concern over labor poaching also might affect the National Guard and Reserves, already under incredible pressure to bolster retention. A number of reservists in California recently returned from Iraq were approached by private military firms dangling offers worth more than $120,000, most of it tax free, to return and carry out the same jobs. A particularly alluring selling point made by the firms was that the reservists’ finances were in shambles after being gone a year and many had lost their old civilian jobs in the interim.

Finally, individuals may be drawn into this industry for any number of personal reasons. The industry presents perhaps the easiest and simplest transition for ex-soldiers, and as many note, “It beats working at McDonald’s.” Others may be drawn to the career by comparative excitement and adventure. As one former Marine recon officer notes, “We’re adrenaline seekers, passionate about freedom and serving our country.” Even family issues can come into play. I have met contractors who confessed they simply wanted a year away from their wives’ nagging and others who were looking to escape the recent loss of loved ones.

The four men killed in Fallujah were professionals who had gained these jobs on the basis of their prior special forces expertise. Three had served in the U.S. Army and the fourth in U.S. Navy. Some had gone to work for the industry directly after their military service, while others had turned to the industry several years later. The L.A. Times described one of those killed, 38-year-old former SEAL Stephen “Scott” Helvenston, as “Hollywood’s image of a soldier, blond, bronzed and broad shouldered.” In fact, Helvenston had helped solidify that image, working as a trainer and stunt man for such movies as “Face/Off” and “G.I. Jane” and appearing on two reality series, “Man vs. Beast” and “Combat Missions,” produced by “Survivor” creator Mark Burnett. Helvenston ran his own fitness video business before going over to Iraq just two weeks ago before the attack.

Keith Woulard, a former SEAL who had worked with Helvenston as an instructor at the Navy’s Basic Underwater Demolition School in Coronado, Calif., commented, “A lot of people are saying, ‘Do you think he went over there for the money?’ Of course he did. But that wasn’t his main goal. It was to go over there and help out and put his knowledge to use.”

Tomorrow: Some skeptics begin to question outsourcing

This story has been corrected since it was originally published.