I was unaware of the extent of military privatization! 1 out of 10.

One of these articles mentions that during the Gulf War I the ratio of private to non-private personnel was 1 to 100. It is now 1 to 10.
I never realized how thoroughly the military was being privatized. Not
just the service areas, either. Our son was here today, former Navy, and he
did not believe me at all that areas were being privatized. I did a search,
and here are a few I came up with. He was stunned, and very displeased.
Guess that will teach them to argue with me. One son left to convince, and
he's a tough one.

http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2003/19/ma_365_01.html
SNIP....."As the U.S. military wages the war on terrorism, it is
increasingly relying on for-profit companies like Blackwater to do work
normally performed by soldiers. Defense contractors now do more than simply
build airplanes -- they maintain those planes on the battlefield and even
fly them in some of the world's most troubled conflict zones. Private
military companies supply bodyguards for the president of Afghanistan,
construct detention camps to hold suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay,
and pilot armed reconnaissance planes and helicopter gunships to eradicate
coca crops in Colombia. They operate the intelligence and communications
systems at the U.S. Northern Command in Colorado, which is responsible for
coordinating a response to any attack on the United States. And licensed by
the State Department, they are contracting with foreign governments,
training soldiers and reorganizing militaries in Nigeria, Bulgaria, Taiwan,
and Equatorial Guinea......" END SNIP

More articles:
http://www.icij.org/dtaweb/icij_bow.asp?Section=Chapter&ChapNum=2

http://www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2003/07/23/202.html

http://www.casi.org.uk/discuss/2003/msg03891.html

http://www.leanleft.com/archives/001507.html

http://www.privatization.org/

Guess I have just not been paying attention. That....or the news has been
falling down on the job.

I was shocked at the extent of merc use in the military when I heard about it (about a year ago). It's the medias fault.

...."This mix of profit motive with the fog of war raises several concerns. First, the good of private companies may not always be to the public good. All the normal worries one has with contractors (overcharging, overbilling of hours, poorly trained workers, quality assurance) raise their ugly head; but in this case one is not dealing with a new plumber -- lives are at stake. For example, a former DynCorp employee has accused the company of cutting costs by hiring former waiters and security guards to work as mechanics on Army helicopters......."

This is from the Moscow Times article above.

especially mothers backed up by computers. I wasn't aware of all this, either, and so far have only read the 7 page article at your first link.

How do "foreign nationals" in our military fit into the picture, if at all? On a flight back from Europe a few years ago, we were seated near several rather loud and obnoxious men from one of the Scandinavian countries. It turned out that all of them were serving in the U.S. military. They were not American citizens and didn't intend to become American citizens. It made us wonder if there was a trend of foreign nationals serving in our military, as part of the whole "volunteer Army" bit. (It also made us grateful that most transAtlantic flights aren't disrupted by loud-mouths, whatever their nationality, not to mention raising questions about the wisdom of serving alcoholic beverages on planes.)

I'd be interested to know what the percentage of non-Americans serving in the American military is, and what advantages, or disadvantages, result.

As our son pointed out, if the private "soldiers" behave badly it reflects on our country. They may not be citizens, but that does not matter.

This has really surprised me lately, how extensive this practice has become. It really bothers me.

Yep, we told them and our daughters we know best, but when they are grown what can you do. ;-)

their accents would tell Americans that they weren't born here, but send them into Iraq or Africa and would anyone know they were actually Swedes? And in US uniforms, their origin doesn't matter, anyway. They become the US when they put on the uniform.

I'm embarrassed by American tourists abroad when they behave badly, but the American military really has a responsibility to represent the country well. That used to be drummed into them but I don't know if it is today. Growing up in the military culture, I know how civilians judge all military by the few who behave badly, just as townies in college towns judge all students by the acts of a few.

It's nice when the "kids" figure out how smart we are, though, isn't it?

They fly helicopters, guard military bases and provide reconnaissance. They're private military companies--and they're replacing U.S. soldiers in the war on terrorism

At a remote tactical training camp in a North Carolina swamp, six U.S. sailors are gearing up for their part in President Bush's war on terrorism. Dressed in camouflage on a January afternoon, they wear protective masks and carry nine-millimeter Berettas that fire nonlethal bullets filled with colored soap. Their mission: recapture a ship--actually a three-story-high model constructed of gray steel cargo containers--from armed hijackers.
…
Because they operate with little oversight, using contractors also enables the military to skirt troop limits imposed by Congress and to carry out clandestine operations without committing U.S. troops or attracting public attention. "Private military corporations become a way to distance themselves and create what we used to call 'plausible deniability,'" says Daniel Nelson, a former professor of civil-military relations at the Defense Department's Marshall European Center for Security Studies. "It's disastrous for democracy."
…
When the companies do screw up, however, their status as private entities often shields them--and the government--from public scrutiny. In 2001, an Alabama-based firm called Aviation Development Corp. that provided reconnaissance for the CIA in South America misidentified an errant plane as possibly belonging to cocaine traffickers. Based on the company's information, the Peruvian air force shot down the aircraft, killing a U.S. missionary and her seven-month-old daughter. Afterward, when members of Congress tried to investigate, the State Department and the CIA refused to provide any information, citing privacy concerns. "We can't talk about it," administration officials told Congress, according to a source familiar with the incident. "It's a private entity. Call the company."

The lack of oversight alarms some members of Congress. "Under a shroud of secrecy, the United States is carrying out military missions with people who don't have the same level of accountability," says Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), a leading congressional critic of privatized war. "We have individuals who are not obligated to follow orders or follow the Military Code of Conduct. Their main obligation is to their employer, not to their country."
…
The companies don't rely on informal networking alone, though. They also pour plenty of money into the political system--especially into the re-election war chests of lawmakers who oversee their business. An analysis shows that 17 of the nation's leading private military firms have invested more than $12.4 million in congressional and presidential campaigns since 1999.
…
The United States has a history of dispatching private military companies to handle the dirtiest foreign assignments. The Pentagon quietly hired for-profit firms to train Vietnamese troops before America officially entered the war, and the CIA secretly used private companies to transport weapons to the Nicaraguan contras during the 1980s after Congress had cut off aid. But as the Bush administration replaces record numbers of soldiers with contractors, it creates more opportunities for private firms to carry out clandestine operations banned by Congress or unpopular with the public. "We can see some merit in using an outside contractor," Charles Snyder, deputy assistant secretary of state for African affairs, recently told reporters, "because then we're not using U.S. uniforms and bodies."
…
Despite such experiences in the field, the Bush administration is rapidly deploying private military companies in the Persian Gulf and other conflict zones. By March, DynCorp alone had 1,000 employees in the Middle East to assist in the invasion of Iraq. "The trend is growth," says Daniel Nelson, the former professor at the Pentagon's Marshall Center. "This current president and administration have--in part because of September 11, but also because of their fundamental ideology--taken off constraints that somewhat limited the prior administration." According to some estimates, private military companies will double their business by the end of the decade, to $200 billion a year.

President Bush only has to look to his father's war to see what the consequences of this trend could be. In the Gulf War's single deadliest incident, an Iraqi missile hit a barracks far from the front, killing 28 Army reservists who were responsible for purifying drinking water. Other troops quickly jumped in to take their place. "Today, the military relies heavily on contractors for this support," Colonel Steven Zamparelli, a career contracting officer, notes in the Air Force Journal of Logistics. "If death becomes a real threat, there is no doubt that some contractors will exercise their legal rights to get out of the theater. Not so many years ago, that may have simply meant no hot food or reduced morale and welfare activity. Today, it could mean the only people a field commander has to accomplish a critical 'core competency' task such as weapons-system maintenance...have left and gone home."
http://indyweek.com/durham/2003-07-23/cover.html
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=174742
http://www.thehighroad.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=35837

SNIP...."By March, DynCorp alone had 1,000 employees in the Middle East to assist in the invasion of Iraq......"

Alarming.

Also alarming:
SNIP...."In the Gulf War's single deadliest incident, an Iraqi missile hit a barracks far from the front, killing 28 Army reservists who were responsible for purifying drinking water. Other troops quickly jumped in to take their place. "Today, the military relies heavily on contractors for this support," Colonel Steven Zamparelli, a career contracting officer, notes in the Air Force Journal of Logistics. "If death becomes a real threat, there is no doubt that some contractors will exercise their legal rights to get out of the theater....."

I don't remember those 28 soldier making much news back then. Also it looks like some of those contractors just exercised their legal rights.

Our son has had time to absorb some of this now, and he emailed that he was stunned. It is not something to be proud of.

They are one of the largest private contractors of the US government in wartime activities.

I just purchased the rest of the article from Mother Jones that I quoted above. I guess I am old-fashioned enough to believe that what a military does, they do it in my name, too....privatized or not.

This is alarming:
SNIP...."The largest beneficiary of this privatized war has been DynCorp, which is helping Colombia's national police destroy coca crops with aerial defoliants. But according to experts familiar with the war, the company's role goes well beyond spraying fields. DynCorp employees "are engaged in combatant roles, fighting in counterinsurgency operations against the Colombian rebel groups," says Peter Singer, a foreign-policy fellow at the Brookings Institution and author of Corporate Warriors. "Indeed, the DynCorp personnel have a local reputation for being both arrogant and far too willing to get 'wet,' going out on frequent combat missions and engaging in firefights." DynCorp has not responded to the allegation.

Relying on DynCorp and other private military companies has enabled Washington to circumvent Congress and avoid attention. "If the narcotraffickers shot American soldiers down, you could see the headlines: 'U.S. Troops Killed in Colombia,'" says Myles Frechette, the U.S. ambassador to Colombia during the Clinton administration. By contrast, the 1992 assassination of three DynCorp employees, whose helicopter was shot down during an anti-drug mission in Peru, merited exactly 113 words in the New York Times. (In February, when another aircraft crashed during a drug operation in Colombia, three employees of Northrop Grumman were taken hostage.)....."

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,935689,00.html

SNIP...."A US military contractor accused of human rights violations has won a multi-million-dollar contract to police post-Saddam Iraq, The Observer can reveal.
DynCorp, which has donated more than £100,000 to the Republican Party, began recruiting for a private police force in Iraq last week on behalf of the US State Department.

The awarding of such a sensitive contract to DynCorp has caused consternation in some circles over the company's policing record. A British employment tribunal recently forced DynCorp to pay £110,000 in compensation to a UN police officer it unfairly sacked in Bosnia for whistleblowing on DynCorp colleagues involved in an illegal sex ring....."

One of the many problems with privatization is you can't order civilians into a war zone.

-----------------
Some of Army's Civilian Contractors Are No-Shows in Iraq

BY DAVID WOOD, Newhouse News Service

U.S. troops in Iraq suffered through months of unnecessarily poor living conditions because some civilian contractors hired by the Army for logistics support failed to show up, Army officers said.

Months after American combat troops settled into occupation duty, they were camped out in primitive, dust-blown shelters without windows or air conditioning. The Army has invested heavily in modular barracks, showers, bathroom facilities and field kitchens, but troops in Iraq were using ramshackle plywood latrines and living without fresh food or regular access to showers and telephones.

Even mail delivery -- also managed by civilian contractors -- fell weeks behind.

Though conditions have improved, the problems raise new concerns about the Pentagon's growing global reliance on defense contractors for everything from laundry service to combat training and aircraft maintenance. Civilians help operate Navy Aegis cruisers and Global Hawk, the high-tech robot spy plane.

Civilian contractors may work well enough in peacetime, critics say. But what about in a crisis?

much more: http://www.newhouse.com/archive/wood080103.html

Check out the website for BENS, Business Executives for National Security (http://bens.org/). Their website talks extensively about one of their proposals, Tooth to Tail, which advocates privatization of all non-combat services of our military, with existing businesses (such as those owned and operated by BENS members) taking them over. On their website they specifically suggest starting with things like payroll in order to "overcome objections" and then move on to things like inventory control and training.

Frank Carlucci, the Carlyle Group chairman and managing director, is a senior advisor on the Tooth to Tail project. Judicial Watch has copies of letters between Mr. Carlucci and Donald Rumsfield (on Carlyle Group and US Secretary of Defense stationery) discussing what a good idea the Tooth to Tail project is (shown below).

On September 10, 2001 Rumsfeld gave an address to the Pentagon where he used the term "Tail to Tooth" 7 times, including in the form of an e-mail address created for comments and suggestions. He never mentions BENS, but in his speech he lays out the BENS spin on privatization - and that phrase, "Tail to Tooth" is no coincidence.

Link to Rumsfeld's 9/10/01 address to the Pentagon: http://www.defenselink.mil/speeches/2001/s20010910-secdef.html

Just another "public service" brought to you by the founders of PNAC.

Carlucci and Rumsfeld letters

Thanks for sharing this, IkeWarned. I just keep getting these creepy feelings more often now.
That statement about tackling the infrastructure of defense, looks like they went a little too far in "modernizing" this area.

He was SecDef under Clinton.

So this whole privatization thing is really bipartisan.

I wouldnt say its just a GOP thing at all.

of mercenaries.

There was a big push in the DoD to privatize nearly all non-warfighting stuff as a way to achieve savings, and the redirect the savings to pay for new weapon systems.

This is a policy that really started during the Clinton era so it is not really fair to blaim this on Bush or GOP. It is the application of the ideas in the book "Reinventing Government" (by Osborne and Gabler) to the military.

The concept of outsourcing non-core functions is pretty common in the private sector, too. The concept of the vertically integrated corporation, with all functions done in-house, has sort of went by the wayside and big companys usually outsource stuff nowadays A good example is GM: they spun-off their internal parts division...DELCO....into the Delphi Corporation.

So DoD is pretty much following a pattern set by the corporate world, as well as the "Reniventing Government" ideas.

and I can tell you that my #1 concern is not making profit. My #1 concern is that the soldiers I instruct get the best information possible to make thier lives in combat just a little less dangerous.

B

Are you the CEO of the company, or are you just in charge of yourself?

that travels to installations, including Iraq and Afghanistan, to field and then instruct soldiers and marines how to use the equipment.

B

people out there is watching out for our soldiers more than their bank balances. Thanks.

I can see where some things might be better handled by a private company than by the Federal Government. But, oh boy, are we seeing the results now of the lack of oversight and planning.

One lady posted here that her husband was offered over $200,000 to go to Iraq as a civilian worker for 6 months. He turned it down.

The fact that there is no oversight will get our young men and women killed, and it will get more Iraqis killed.

What has happened here in Florida should open anyone's eyes. They turn things over, then walk away and never look back.

Privatization was supposed to identify military functions that could be performed cheaper with contract personnel than with military personnel. The replaced military personnel were supposed to reduce the overall military strength thereby reducing the total DoD budget. If military personnel were retained, the result would be an increase in the DoD budget. CIRCULAR NO. A-76

Now comes Rumfilled with his shell game. He proposes to privatize military functions and move the released military personnel to combat units. The ultimate in Rumfilled privatization would be contract personnel in every position not actually pulling a trigger.

Rumfilled is currently "reconceptualizing warfare" and finding ways to put more troops into combat units without implementing the draft. Money is not a problem because congress has lost control of the purse-strings. See "Rumsfeld Seeking to Bolster Force Without New G.I.`s"

I guess Rumfilled sees himself as the 21st century update of "Sun Tzu" and "Carl von Clausewitz".

Not to worry though, AWOL and his cronies are experienced in avoiding the rigors of combat.