Deniable, disposable casualties
SOMETHING WAS missing from my local Memorial Day parade.
There were soldiers, sailors, World War II veterans, firefighters, Girl Scouts, soccer players, marching bands, flag-draped floats and even a festive contingent from the Board of Education. But there was no float memorializing the hundreds of civilian contractors killed in Iraq.
It's fashionable to look down on the civilian contractors employed by firms such as Halliburton and Blackwater. When contractors make the news, it's usually in the context of stories about waste and fraud in reconstruction or service contracts, or human rights abuses committed by private security contractors. So when civilian contractors die in Iraq, most of us don't waste many tears. These are guys who went to Iraq out of sheer greed, lured by salaries far higher than those received by military personnel, right? If they get themselves killed, who cares?
But we should all care. Not because it's our patriotic duty to support the lucrative corporate empires that employ the thousands of civilian contractors in Iraq, but because most of the men and women employed by these corporate giants are in Iraq at our government's behest.
They drive trucks containing supplies for troops in the field. They operate dining halls at military bases, guard buildings, install and maintain computer and telephone systems and train local officials. They're part of our war -- and just like those who serve in the military, they pay for our government's mistakes with their health and their lives.
In Iraq, civilian contractors form a vast parallel army. In the Persian Gulf War, fewer than 10,000 civilian contractors accompanied more than 500,000 military personnel. In Iraq today, an estimated 126,000 Defense Department civilian contractors support 145,000 troops. Thousands more civilians work under contract to other U.S. government agencies.
A combination of poor record-keeping, corporate stonewalling and the Bush administration's penchant for secrecy has prevented even the Government Accountability Office from getting solid numbers on civilian contractors in Iraq. Prime contractors subcontract out much of their work to other companies, which in turn subcontract out much of their work to other companies, which in turn
