[NYTr] Blackwater Is Just the Tip of the Iceberg

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

The Huffington Post - Oct 5, 2007
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/susan-rice/blackwater-is-just-the-ti_b_67379.html

Blackwater Is Just the Tip of the Iceberg

by Susan Rice

he scandal surrounding the conduct of Blackwater contractors in Iraq is
just the most recent example of contractors and criminals run amok in
that ill-conceived war. Since the occupation began, the U.S. military
and its contractors have relied on shady characters and even criminals
to do the outsourced business of supplying the troops, delivering
weapons and making sure the mail arrives.

One such wanted criminal, Viktor Bout, was paid tens of millions of
U.S. taxpayer dollars while illegally flying transport missions for the
United States in Iraq. Bout is the notorious Russian weapons merchant
whose fleet of aging Soviet aircraft rivals that of some NATO countries
in its size and capacity. By marrying his access to Soviet bloc weapons
with his airlift capacity, Bout established himself as the world's
premiere purveyor of illicit weapons to the world's tyrants-- a
one-stop shopping source for everyone from Charles Taylor and his
armies of child soldiers of Sierra Leone and Liberia to the Taliban in
Afghanistan, from Jonas Savimbi in Angola to the FARC rebels in
Colombia.

As shown in the new book "Merchant of Death: Money, Guns, Planes and the
Man Who Makes War Possible" by former Washington Post correspondent
Douglas Farah and the Los Angeles Times' Stephen Braun, Bout flew
hundreds of flights for the Pentagon and its contractors in Iraq. He
did so despite having been: 1) identified by U.S. and British
intelligence as a supplier of weapons, ammunition and aircraft to the
Taliban and, indirectly, to al Qaeda; 2) the subject of an Interpol
arrest warrant at the request of the Belgian government; 3) named in
almost a dozen U.N. public reports as the chief illegal provider of
weapons to Africa's rogue regimes, and; 4) the subject of an executive
order signed by George W. Bush in July 2004 making it illegal to do any
business with Bout. The executive order was followed by an order from
the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) in
May 2005, freezing the assets of Bout, his senior partners and main
companies, again making it illegal for U.S citizens or their government
to do business with any of the named entities.

Yet the flights in Iraq went on, at the request of Halliburton, KBR and
others, on behalf of the U.S. Army, Air Force and Marine Corps, until
early 2006. Farah and Braun, based on flight and refueling records from
Iraq, estimate Bout's companies may have flown up to 1,000 flights as a
secondary contractor for the U.S. government. Each flight cost about
$60,000 -- not a bad chunk of taxpayer dollars. Bout managed to up his
profit margin considerably by having his pilots apply for and receive
special refueling cards that allowed them to gas up for free when they
landed in Iraq.

Using an Amnesty International report as a starting point, the authors
trace a deeply troubling incident that, based on a July GAO report, was
not unique. The GAO report found that tens of thousands of weapons
purchased by the U.S. military and destined for delivery in Iraq remain
unaccounted for.

Some of weapons--200,000 AK-47 assault rifles--were transported by
Bout's aircraft before going AWOL. One of his airlines, Aerocom,
registered in Moldova, obtained a contract from the Pentagon in August
2004 to fly the weapons from Bosnia to Iraq, along with millions of
rounds of ammunition.

But, according to Amnesty International and the authors, there were
several problems with the deal. Aerocom was already named in U.N.
reports to illicit weapons trafficking in Africa, and Bout was on UN
and U.S. sanctions lists. The day before the first flight, the Moldovan
government canceled the Aerocom aircraft's air-operations certificate,
making taking off illegal. Still, the flights went on, although there
is no record of them ever landing in Iraq or of the weapons being
delivered to their declared destination.

Blackwater is just one piece of an entire outsourcing system for which
there is no accountability. Congress is presently debating a number of
bills that would reign in this whole mess of outsourcing gone wild. The
House overwhelmingly passed this week a bill by Rep. David Price to
bring better oversight and legal accountability. On the Senate side,
Senator Barack Obama was the first Senator to introduce legislation on
this subject last February. Obama has also added in a section to ensure
that critical U.S. military functions are not simply handed over to
contractors like Viktor Bout.

It is well past time that the U.S. Congress enacts these bills in to
law. That is, unless we want to keep giving our business to the Viktor
Bouts and Blackwaters of the world. By failing to control the
contractors, or giving contracts to criminal enterprises, we squander
our moral authority, waste tax dollars and undercut our men and women
in uniform fighting far from home.