Matters Blackwater (Merged thread)

[Tom Odom]

Another_Black_Day_For_Blackwater

By ROBERT Y. PELTON
www.iraqslogger.com
01/23/07

Blackwater USA contractors are reeling from the loss of five
colleagues and a Little Bird helicopter in Baghdad today. IraqSlogger
has the exclusive details.

At 10:30am Baghdad time today a Blackwater PSD was escorting a State
Dept official to anministry meeting in Baghdad. The convoy began to
take small arms fire. They called for backup and the Blackwater quick
reaction force team responded from the Green Zone. They were also
ambushed by machine gun fire from the left and right. They limped back
to the Green Zone with two blown out tires. There were violent attacks
on two more Blackwater QRF teams and insurgents took a number of
casualties.

Blackwater dispatched their Little Bird helicopters to provide aerial
cover and suppressing fire. Blackwater has three Boeing Little Birds
(similar to Hughes 500) base out of the Green Zone that carry two
pilots and two door gunners each. The two door gunners hang out of the
rear doors of the helo with SAWs (Squad Automatic Weapons) designed to
provide suppressing fire.

Once the Little Birds engaged the insurgents, one door gunner was
killed and the rotor blades were damaged, and it returned to base.
Another Little Bird was shot down instantly killing all four aboard.
The shoot down was instaneous and no radio call was sent before
impact. The former 160th pilots are famous for their low-level, high
speed flights above Baghdad's rooftops. A tactic designed to avoid
small arms fire.

Then four Blackwater mobile teams were sent to recover the downed
helicopter. In addition a U.S. QRF was dispatched. An Army Apache
helicopter and a Stryker company came upon the downed helicopter. The
weapons had been stripped but the bodies were intact. Some of the
Blackwater pilots were the same pilots who served in Somalia during
the infamous "Black Hawk Down" incident.

The five dead mentioned include the one door gunner and the entire
crew of the relief Little Bird.

Blackwater has had a string of unfortunate incidents including most
recently the murder of an Iraqi security guard by one of its employees
while drunk on December 24th, an air crash of one its Casa 212
aircraft in Bamyian Valley in Afghanistan and the infamous murder of
four of its employees in Fallujah in 2004 by insurgents.

Ansar al Sunna has claimed responsibility for the downing of the
Little Bird but there is no confirmation of this claim.

This came in on the intelligence share forum on AKO this morning. We have discussed PMCs before on this site. I sympathize with the employees who were lost in this incident and their families. However, I still strongly question the wisdom of building private direct action military capacity outside normal channels of government command and control.

Best

Tom

[marct]

See also http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2007/0...elicopter.html

Marc

[carl]

Does anyone know if and where the following info is available:

1. Is there an entity other than the Dept. of Labor that tracks the number of civ. contractors killed and wounded in Iraq?
2. How accurate are the Dept. of Labor stats?
3. Some of the wounds are probably serious, does anyone track the quality of treatment these people receive?

I agree with the Tom about it being unwise to rely so heavily on civilian contractors; but, for whatever reason, they are putting themselves on the line and they should be looked after.

[Stan]

Tom, a good pen, if I may say so.

You brought with you (10 years ago) a relatively simple and safe self-imposed ROE policy. We had no need to prove ourselves, we were more concerned with survival, and rightfully so.

You said to me early on, "go in with a spirit of acceptance, not judgement, things will more than likely work better". Well, you did have few at our favorite restaurant before that statement, but I recall it to this day !

You would later tell me to be careful - but you did that a lot !

When the Sozias Director (former Israeli LTC) came to snatch his blue flag, we would laugh, but we could see his experience in his words and jestures. He was indeed more than sufficiently trained and experienced to later make such absurd statements, and prepared to back them.

We would later see what inexperience does. A dumb attack was what I thought with perceptive folks all around us. They were however dealing with the FAZ (Zairian Armed Forces), not Iraq.

Indeed, an unfortunate incident with more US losses.

Regards, Stan

[SWJED]

24 January Associated Press - 4 Americans in Iraq Crash Shot in Head.

Four of the five Americans killed when a U.S. security company's helicopter crashed in a dangerous Sunni neighborhood in central Baghdad were shot execution style in the back the head, Iraqi and U.S. officials said Wednesday.

A senior Iraqi military official said a machine gunner downed the helicopter, but a U.S. military official in Washington said there were no indications that the aircraft, owned by Blackwater USA, had been shot out of the sky. Two Sunni insurgent groups, separately, claimed responsibility for the crash.

In Washington, a U.S. defense official said four of the five killed were shot in the back of the head but did not know whether they were still alive when they were shot. The defense official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the record...

[sgmgrumpy]

1. Is there an entity other than the Dept. of Labor that tracks the number of civ. contractors killed and wounded in Iraq?

The only one I know of that is even close to being accurate. I am told the numbers are actually much higher.


http://icasualties.org/oif/Civ.aspx

[Danny]

It is tragic, this loss of civilians. But I would like to pose the simple question, "what do the losses have to do with whether firms like Blackwater are used at all?"

In other words, you can question the wisdom of the use of contractors, or you can justify their use. But the connection of the two issues (a) the use of them, and (b) potential or actual losses, elludes me.

It is either justified or not, regardless of the losses incurred - it would seem to me. Or perhaps I am missing the point. Perhaps this is simply a convenient opportunity to mention your general reluctance to use contractors, regardless of the fact that they sustained losses today.

T'would be a fairly significant change. Contractors are in significant use today in Iraq. In fact, it would seem that they have had relatively few casualties given the high usage (not to belittle the tragedy of the losses at all, just making statistical observations). It might be an informative statistic to know just how many contractors there are at any one time, compared with casualty rate. Then, compare this with Marines, Soldiers, etc.

[Culpeper]

Wasn't there something in the news not too long ago that will place these types of security personnel under the UCMJ? Blackwater is another example of the new face on today's battle front. Apparently, Blackwater et al brings a certain amount of hatred against them from the enemy. You see, the enemy gets to execute these guys and the counterinsurgency gets hammered for far less offenses. Nevertheless, a successful counterinsurgency has to maintain a higher standard than the insurgency. Why is it that America always has to fight ruthless people. I think the last somewhat civilized and professional military we went up against was the Germans.

I wonder what people working for a company like Blackwater are going to do on their own for the execution, if true, of their fellow employees? I can understand shooting down the chopper in a fight but to murder the wounded really pisses me off. I realize that Blackwater folks are professionals but do you think they will exact some revenge?

[Jedburgh]

....Contractors are in significant use today in Iraq. In fact, it would seem that they have had relatively few casualties given the high usage...

There are more "contractors" KIA/WIA in Iraq than you hear about in the headlines - partly because the stories get buried, partly because often they are not Americans. Just recently Unity Resources Group, a company with which I have some contact, lost three personnel in an ambush in Baghdad - but although the principal was a US citizen (also killed), none of them were.

Wasn't there something in the news not too long ago that will place these types of security personnel under the UCMJ?

Washington Post, 15 Jan 07: New Law Could Subject Civilians to Military Trial

[SWJED]

21 February Virginian-Pilot - Blackwater Brass Forms Intelligence Company by Bill Sizemore.

Cofer Black, vice chairman of Blackwater USA, announced Tuesday the formation of a new CIA-type private company to provide intelligence services to commercial clients.

The executive roster for the new venture, Total Intelligence Solutions, is loaded with veterans of U.S. intelligence agencies, including two other Blackwater officials.

A spokeswoman for Total Intelligence said there is no corporate affiliation with Blackwater, the Moyock, N.C.-based private military company, but the new firm clearly has a Blackwater stamp...

Blackwater's primary specialties are tactical training and security, but it is no stranger to the intelligence world. The 10-year-old company's first security contract, awarded in 2002, was for a classified operation. In his book "Licensed to Kill: Hired Guns in the War on Terror," author Robert Young Pelton identified the company's client as the CIA.

The concept of marketing intelligence services to commercial clients is not new, Pelton said Tuesday, but the new venture represents "a continuing evolution in what Blackwater's doing."...

[jcustis]

Certainly a natural progression, given BW's network of contractors around the world. Outside of money, I'm ever so curious as to what other intangibles are making them so successful, compared to folks like MPRI. Or is it mostly hyped capability that still relies on getting the right people in after contract award?

[Bill Moore]

Blackwater is networked with the special operations community and can frequently get the best people who are already well trained and vetted. MPRI used to focus on rank (or status) instead of skills. Although I worked with MPRI in Africa and was more than a little impressed at the talent they brought to bare on the problem; however, MPRI was (I don't know currently) more focused on preparing for peacekeeping and peace enforcement missions, not providing security and venturing into the dark side. Two different missions, unless MPRI has changed their focus. I do know they were bought out (they kept their title MPRI) by another Co, and that they have migrated into recruiting and ROTC, who knows what else?

[wierdbeard]

If anyone has a POC for the HR dept of TIS I would appreciate it. I'd like to see what may be available on the outside since re-enlistment time is here...

[SWJED]

Total Intelligence Solutions - should find at least some type of HR link there...

[Noble Industries]

Corporate intelligence companies, ones that you can Google and find a business card for, will be a thing to watch. Especially in terms of oversight.

I imagine that for those who could find them, much like the A-Team, there were always companies that handles intelligence type operations, if only within the business/corporate context.

Outsourcing, it’s not just for telephone companies!

[SWJED]

20 February Virginian-Pilot - Pentagon Investigates Blackwater's Expense Tab by Bill Sizemore.

A two-year investigation has finally begun to shed some light on the trail of taxpayer dollars that paid for Blackwater USA's famously ill-fated security mission in Fallujah, Iraq, in March 2004...

Blackwater was at the bottom of a four-tiered chain of contractors. The Moyock, N.C.-based company says it billed the next company up the chain $2.3 million. At the top of the chain was KBR, a subsidiary of Vice President Dick Cheney's former employer, Halliburton Co

Now the Pentagon has calculated that by the time KBR got around to billing the government, the tab to the taxpayers for private security work had reached $19.6 million...

Last week, federal investigators identified $10 billion they said has been squandered in the war because of contractor overcharges and unsupported expenses. More than a quarter of that amount, $2.7 billion, was charged by Halliburton.

Because of the Fallujah ambush and its fallout, Blackwater is center stage in a case study of the booming, multi layered world of wartime contracting and whether the safety of America's private soldiers takes a back seat to corporate profits...

Double-billing by security contractors is another concern of congressional investigators. A January 2005 audit of a different Blackwater contract, with the State Department, found that Blackwater was charging the government separately for "drivers" and "security specialists," who were in fact the same people.

The audit also found that Blackwater was improperly including profit in its overhead costs, resulting "not only in a duplication of profit, but also a pyramiding of profit because, in effect, Blackwater is applying profit to profit."...

[120mm]

Nothing pisses me off quicker than tying Halliburton to VP Cheney. Or the phrase "corporate profits".

I think it's time we started talking about the obscene "government profits" by "excessive and duplicative taxation and regulation".

Or the obscene "media profits", caused by republishing old news as new news.

[Menning]

I just finished reading Scahill's Blackwater. Is anyone else familiar with the book? I'm looking for some general feedback regarding the accuracy of Scahill's reporting/research and depiction of Blackwater USA. Also, does the ultimate fate of Executive Outcomes have any bearing on U.S. PMCs? For those out there with boots on the ground experience, what are the major positives/negatives of the privatization of services in combat zones?

[Michael Shannon]

I've spent just over three years in Iraq as a security contractor and have read Scahill's book. My critical observations are he complains about Black Water's revenues without considering expenses, he doesn't take into consideration what a soldier actually costs to deploy long term versus a contractor and how many troops are actually needed to replace a single contractor and he doesn't provide any suggestions as to how to provide security for private orgnanizations in a war zone.

[Granite_State]

I just finished reading Scahill's Blackwater. Is anyone else familiar with the book? I'm looking for some general feedback regarding the accuracy of Scahill's reporting/research and depiction of Blackwater USA. Also, does the ultimate fate of Executive Outcomes have any bearing on U.S. PMCs? For those out there with boots on the ground experience, what are the major positives/negatives of the privatization of services in combat zones?

Just posted on this in another thread, but I'd really recommend Robert Young Pelton's Licensed to Kill. Deals heavily with Blackwater, and also has a couple chapters on Executive Outcomes, Sandline, and the implications of PSCs vs. PMCs.

Could read Singer's book too, although Erik Prince criticizes him as having "very soft hands." But he would, I suppose.