Salon: The Imperial Pentagon

Rumsfeld and his minions are treating Congress as if it's on a need-to-know basis about Iraq -- from the number of private contractors there to how taxpayers' money is being spent to our military strategy.

By Robert Schlesinger

The two companies -- CACI and Titan -- implicated so far in the Abu Ghraib prison scandal are notably missing from a list submitted earlier this month to Congress by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld of private security companies operating in Iraq.

On April 2 -- after a skirmish in Fallujah, Iraq, left four Blackwater employees dead, but before the Abu Ghraib prison scandal broke -- Rep. Ike Skelton of Missouri, the ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, sent a letter to Rumsfeld asking about the private security companies in Iraq: "Specifically I would like to know which firms are operating in Iraq, how many personnel each firm has there, which specific functions they are performing, how much they are being paid, and from which appropriations accounts."

A month later, on May 4, Rumsfeld responded with generic information. The Coalition Provisional Authority has paid $147 million to eight companies, he reported, and he offered a "current listing of known PSCs." Sixty firms were listed, but CACI and Titan were not among them. Also missing from the list were companies like the Vinnell Corp., MPRI International, SAIC, Eagle Group and WorldWide Language Resources, which are involved in training the new Iraqi Army, according to a Web site set up by the Department of Commerce.

Since the prisoner abuse scandal first broke at the end of April, members of Congress have been trying to understand exactly what these independent contractors are doing in Iraq. But questions remain unanswered concerning precisely what contractors did at Abu Ghraib and what they still do in other U.S.-run prisons, to whom they are responsible and, more broadly, what they are doing on such critical missions as counterintelligence. Congress has received only a trickle of information from the Pentagon, and this information is often incomplete if not outright deceptive, according to members of Congress and their staffs.

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http://salon.com/news/feature/2004/05/20/secrets/index.html

That is the agenda of radicals, to dismiss the representative body, and render it impotent. Nothing counts but the movement. Party members of the movement are more important than elected representatives.

The purpose of the contractors and the secrecy surrounding them is to create new and secretive extra-legal and extra-constitutional channels of power, responsive and loyal only to certain personalities. As each potential despot lines his domain with resources and these labyrinthine systems of power spread horizontally throughout the government, they jockey for position in the new dictatorship.

<Nevertheless, members of Congress are determined to get the information they want. So, for example, they have inserted language requiring answers to Skelton's questions into the military authorization bill that is moving through the House. "It's ridiculous to have to put that into law," one Democratic staffer told me. But members believe they have no other option. >

If you are determined to get what you want, you have to block the appropriations, once you give the money, you have no power.

this is an excellent example of somebody who does not use abstractions to describe war. for example, the gov speaks in abstractions when it says, "we're fighting for democracy." or when they say, "operation this and that." you can't fight for a "word," as we all know, but it sounds better than saying, "we're going to iraq to kill people and occupy the land."

this link is an interview with a marine who was part of the invasion and occupation. it gives a much more clear picture of what actually happens in war.

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=18730

this is the sort of reality that the government doesn't want anybody to know about. for if stories like this filled the network news, the war would end very quickly, and that's not good for business. it's much better for the economy if we stick to stories about young women being rescued and courageous football players who trade their lives for god and country.