Found a nice article on some of the mercenaries that are being hired by us to fight in Iraq in order to bolster our sagging numbers of enlisting troops.
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20050110&s=ackerman
Quote:Tim Spicer's World
by Andrew Ackerman
Military contracts are big game. And one of the most notorious hunters is a former British soldier whose past business ventures include violating a UN arms embargo in Sierra Leone and unwittingly triggering a coup in Papua New Guinea. His name is Tim Spicer, and in March his London-based company, Aegis Defense Services, bagged a $293 million contract from the Pentagon to protect US diplomats in Iraq.
One might think that the government would be wary of awarding such largesse to a man with a dubious background. But not only did the Pentagon have no idea who Spicer was when they gave his company a huge contract, they didn't seem to care when challenged about it.
Five Democratic senators, led by Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts, protested the Aegis contract on humanitarian grounds, urging the Pentagon to reconsider the deal in light of Spicer's background. He is, they noted, a man with a remarkable talent for entangling himself in scandal. In August, they asked Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to review the Spicer deal. In a response last month, the Army admitted that its contracting officer was unaware of trouble spots in Spicer's past, but it refused to reconsider the contract.
"It is significant that the British Ministry of Defense was apprised of our intention...and did not object or advise against the action. Moreover, neither Aegis nor Mr. Spicer are on the...list of parties excluded from Federal contracting," wrote Sandra Sieber, director of the Army Contracting Agency. "We therefore had no legal basis to deny the award to Aegis, which won the competition fairly based on the rules and criteria established by our solicitation."
The $293 million pays Spicer's company to coordinate the dozens of private security forces operating in Iraq and to provide as many as seventy-five of its own teams of bodyguards per day. It's a "costs plus" contract, so Aegis is guaranteed a profit even if its costs increase. Using this type of contract for a firm run by a fellow of dubious ethics seems particularly questionable--especially considering that other contractors, most notably Halliburton, are under investigation for overcharging abuses.
In a country where insurgents are responsible for scores of attacks each day--including a mortar attack at the end of November in Baghdad's Green Zone that killed four workers for another British mercenary company--one might think that few people would be lining up to work as bodyguards. But the business is quite lucrative, and former special forces soldiers are queuing for jobs that can pay more than $100,000 a year. More than fifty private security companies are in Iraq today, with an estimated 20,000 hired guns working for them. Spicer's group is supposed to coordinate them all. And there's one more catch: Spicer appears to have no previous experience handling such a large security operation, nor any ties to Iraq.
Page 2 and 3 are in the link.
I started searching around for other vetting problems the US has been having lately. Remember the Kerik fiasco? It turns out that this sort of thing has been happening a lot lately.
http://www.reason.com/0501/fe.ps.cut.shtml
Once again, there's more in the link. For those who are too lazy, there seem to be quite a few fake degrees that have risen to prominence in our gov't lately, in HS positions no less.
If these people can't even properly screen their own employees, how can they be trusted to compile lists of terrorists? To protect American citizens by screening others?
I was really bothered by this until I realized that the gov't just
doesn't care. Now I'm bothered by that.
Cycloptichorn