U.S. House Panel Puts Iraq Contractor Abuse Claims ‘On the Record’

Above: A private helicopter with 'security' forces employed by Blackwater hovers over Baghdad in 2004.

The 145,000 U.S. troops in Iraq are just a little more than half of the personnel on the U.S. payroll involved in military operations there. There are also 126,000 private contractors, a force author Jeremy Scahill calls “the world’s most powerful mercenary army.”

Contract workers in Iraq are wasting millions of dollars, committing crimes — including killings — with impunity, and undermining the efforts of U.S. military personnel to develop trust with Iraqi people, Scahill and filmmaker Robert Greenwald told the House Appropriations defense subcommittee May 10.

The abuses the pair cited are not new, but were being presented for the first time “on the record” before a congressional subcommittee, said Rep. James Moran, D-Va.

“We need to get them on the record” so they can be considered during House Appropriations Committee deliberations on the 2008 Defense Appropriations Bill, he said.

Read the rest at Defense News

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