DEAL OR NO DEAL. Robert mentioned it this morning, but another important aspect of the Blackwater issue is that the company was awarded a no-bid contract to work in Iraq. Blackwater USA is (well … was) a private firm providing security for U.S. Embassy personnel in Iraq. There had been multiple complaints about the firm over the past years, and a recent incident in which at least eight Iraqi civilians were shot to death after a car bomb attack against a State Department convoy prompted the Iraqi government to revoke their license to work in the country.
But as others have delved into before, Blackwater's contract was a no-bid deal awarded to a major Bush supporter, pretty much on the virtue of being a major Bush supporter. The firm was granted a no-bid contract worth tens of million of dollars at least in part because the owner, Erik Prince, has been a donor to the Bush's campaigns, as well as those of other leading Republicans. Naomi Klein gets into this in her new book, The Shock Doctrine, and it was also examined in Jeremy Scahill's Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army, published last winter.
The other major problem: nobody can really say who's in charge of these contractors that American tax dollars are paying to send over to Iraq. From the Post article:
It was not immediately clear whether Iraq or the United States holds the authority to regulate Blackwater's operations. A regulation known as Order 17 established under the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority headed by L. Paul Bremer effectively granted immunity to American private security contractors from being prosecuted in Iraqi courts.
Another CPA memorandum requires private security companies to register with the Interior Ministry, but some of the companies in Iraq operate without doing so.
Lawrence T. Peter, director of the Private Security Company Association of Iraq, said Blackwater was licensed by the Interior Ministry. But Blackwater acknowledged as recently as two months ago that a license it obtained in 2005 had lapsed, and the company was having trouble getting the license renewed.
To recap: firm gets a lucrative contract from the U.S. government, which they didn't even have to compete with other firms to receive, and is sent to Iraq where it's unclear who should be regulating them. Even with Blackwater out, some other contractor will inevitably step in and get an equally sweet deal.
--Kate Sheppard
