Outsourcing War Crimes

You'd see them speeding around in SUVs with tinted windows and sipping tea with Afghan warlords and commanders, barrel-chested men in their thirties and forties with short-cropped hair and accents from the South and Midwest. Ask them who they were or what they were up to and you'd get a broad, insolent grin. "Just visiting," one such goon replied. "Didn't you hear? Afghanistan's open for tourism!" He carried enough guns and ammo to take out a large Colorado high school. Who were these guys?

Most journalists assumed that these non-uniformed soldiers were just what they wanted us to believe: U.S.-government employed covert operatives. Why not? Until the fall of Kabul, the uniformed U.S. military presence in Afghanistan was virtually nil. Burly men with big guns ran the war. Besides, Afghanistan is a dangerous, unpleasant and expensive place to live. No one would put in time there without good reason.

But there was no reliable way to know for certain. Roughly a hundred six-man Special Forces commando units authorized to wear local garb, ignore standard rules of engagement and otherwise apply "unorthodox tactics" worked alongside a new CIA "Special Activities Division" composed of about 150 retired fighters, pilots and specialists. These 800 men, not officially employed by the Pentagon, spearheaded the U.S. war against the Taliban, coordinating air strikes, bribing Northern Alliance warlords, and allegedly supervising the massacre of thousands of Taliban POWs. Afghanistan was America's first fully privatized war.

Jack Idema, reportedly retired from the Special Forces in 1992, fought alongside the Northern Alliance in 2001. He had enough money to buy goods and services at inflated war zone prices, not to mention references in the U.S. military--and a lot of chutzpah. He convinced Afghan cops to help him conduct raids. On three occasions he even got NATO's ISAF peacekeeping force to check buildings for mines and bombs. Admitted a duped NATO spokesman: "ISAF personnel believed that was what he purported to be, which was a Special Operations agency and therefore they believed they were providing legitimate support to a legitimate security agency."
more
http://www.jihadunspun.com/intheatre_internal.php?article=11613&list=/home.php&

this.

Duncan Campbell
Thursday July 22, 2004
The Guardian

The saga of "Jack" Idema, the American arrested for running a private interrogation centre in Afghanistan, took a new twist yesterday when he claimed that he was acting with the knowledge and agreement of Donald Rumsfeld's office.
Mr Idema, who has been accused of having a makeshift jail in which detainees were hung by their feet, claimed that US authorities "condoned and supported" his freelance activities.

"We were working for the US counter-terrorist group and working with the Pentagon and some other federal agencies," said Mr Idema, whose full name is Jonathon Keith Idema, before the opening of a court hearing in Kabul, according to Reuters.

He told reporters: "We were in contact directly by fax and email and phone with Donald Rumsfeld's office.

"The American authorities absolutely condoned what we did. We have extensive evidence to that ... We're prepared to show emails and correspondence and tape-recorded conversations."

more
http://www.guardian.co.uk/afghanistan/story/0,1284,1266418,00.html

more
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x701568

and get away with it. Frustrating only because most of the population don't believe it, and even with evidence won't.