BAGHDAD -- Private security companies, funded by billions of dollars in U.S. military and State Department contracts, are fighting insurgents on a widening scale in Iraq, enduring daily attacks, returning fire and taking hundreds of casualties that have been underreported and sometimes concealed, according to U.S. and Iraqi officials and company representatives.
While the military has built up troops in an ongoing campaign to secure Baghdad, the security companies, out of public view, have been engaged in a parallel surge, boosting manpower, adding expensive armor and stepping up evasive action as attacks increase, the officials and company representatives said. One in seven supply convoys protected by private forces has come under attack this year, according to previously unreleased statistics; one security company reported nearly 300 "hostile actions" in the first four months.
Did you know they had their own surge as well?
Did you know that if these casualties were counted with the military's that the overall count would rise significantly?
There’s a lot you didn’t know about a parallel miniwar going on in Iraq that rarely gets reported.
There are a about 100 security companies, private armies, well paid and well organized contractors, and some call them mercenaries, operating at great expense inside Iraq right now.
If they were not there, someone would have to take their place. Most likely a soldier.
This may shock you. But you know who guards at three two star generals? Not a $19,000 a year Marine, but a team of Skeletor like guards, ex military men, very experienced and capable. And most likely a team like this would be upwards of $200,000 a man- This is MY guess, not in the article.
They guard key U.S. military installations and provide personal security for at least three commanding generals, including Air Force Maj. Gen. Darryl A. Scott, who oversees U.S. military contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan.
$1.5 billion of your tax dollars will go to private secjurity companies inside Iraq alone. These private companies will be doing more than guarding generals, they will be providing intelligence for the US Army.
U.S. officials and security company representatives emphasized that contractors are strictly limited to defensive operations. But company representatives in the field said insurgents rarely distinguish between the military and private forces, drawing the contractors into a bloody and escalating campaign. …..The military deleted casualty figures from reports issued by the Reconstruction Logistics Directorate of the Corps of Engineers, according to Victoria Wayne, who served as deputy director for logistics until 2006 and spent 2 1/2 years in Iraq. …"It was like there was a major war being fought out there, but we were the only ones who knew about it," Wayne said. ….132 security contractors and truck drivers had been killed and 416 wounded since fall 2004. Four security contractors and a truck driver remained missing, and 208 vehicles were destroyed. Only convoys registered with the logistics directorate are counted in the statistics, and the total number of casualties is believed to be higher.
This unreported war would actually UP the daily and monthly count of war dead and wounded. It’s just they don’t really include the privatized casualties.
According to the logistics directorate, attacks against registered supply convoys rose from 5.4 percent in 2005, to 9.1 percent in 2006, to 14.7 percent through May 10. The directorate has tracked 12,860 convoys, a fraction of the total number of private supply convoys on Iraqi roads.
Much of the rest of this article follows a narrative about ArmourGroup, a British security company protecting assets transported around Um Qasr.
"That's the fundamental issue: Nothing moves anywhere in Iraq without betting your life."
It’s a long article but a fascinating read and of course, a story came too late and not as interesting as Anna Nicole’s lover.
This is like reading a science fiction. I remember the movie Red Dawn, when Cuban troops invaded North America and took us over. I laughed my ass off. Any Cuban troops who landed inside Detroit in the mid 80s would have had to fight their way out.
But today’s America is almost as strange.
Link here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...