Dahr Jamail on Iraq : The Story Beneath the Story

A Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle, which the US military now uses for most of its patrols in Iraq's Sadr City. Photo by Dahr Jamail / truthout.

'The political divides across the country run deep, and this thin, fresh, external skin of the lull in overall violence camouflages the plight of the average Iraqi.'

A Capped Volcano of Suffering

By Dahr Jamail / January 29, 2009

Baghdad today, on the eve of provincial elections, feels like it has emerged from several years of horrendous violence, but do not be misled. Every Iraqi I've spoken with feels it is tenuous, the still-fragile lull too young to trust.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees provides recent statistics showing that more Iraqis continue to flee their country than are returning. Two studies show the number of dead Iraqis to be between 1.2-1.4 million, and the number of those displaced to be nearly five million, or one in six Iraqis. During 2006 and 2008, scores of bodies were found on the streets of Baghdad and fished from the Tigris River as death squads and sectarian militias raged. All but one of my Iraqi friends and translators have either fled the country, or been killed. It is nearly impossible to meet a family that has not had a family member killed or wounded

Only within the last half-year has violence lessened, and street life returned to something akin to "normal," which means that as opposed to 50-250 Iraqi being slaughtered each day, now it is an average of one, sometimes two dozen per day.

The relative lull has allowed me to travel around Baghdad with relative ease, eat at restaurants, and even conduct interviews on the street; all of which was unheard of during my last visits to Iraq. I've been taking stock of what has changed, and what hasn't.

One of the first things I noted that has not changed did not occur in Iraq. Rather, when arriving in Amman, Jordan and exiting the airplane, I strode into customs to find a Jordanian man holding up a Blackwater USA sign, to be met by four rough looking middle-aged men. The next day, whilst flying into Baghdad, the commercial jet did a "soft-spiral" descent into Baghdad airport, unlike the hard corkscrew descent that they all did when I was last in Iraq, so as not to be shot at by resistance fighters just outside of the airport perimeter.

The infrastructure remains in shambles. The generator at my hotel is running more than it is shut off. Throughout Baghdad, there's an average of four hours of electricity per 24 hours, and people are left with no choice but to drink tap water, when it runs -- water heavily contaminated by waterborne diseases, fuel, sewage and sediment. Jobs are scarce, and people are suffering greatly. The anger about this seethes just beneath the surface everywhere I turn.

Previously, while these conditions were similar, there was still some hope that things might improve. That hope has shifted into a resignation of what is. A surrender into a daily life of trying to find enough money to buy food.

"In 2004 it cost me $1 to fill my car," my interpreter Ali told me yesterday as we drove to Fallujah. "Today it now costs $35. It used to be in Iraq a family could easily live off $500 for two months. Today we are lucky if that lasts a week, because the prices of everything have gone so high."

Beggars are present at most intersections. Where they are not, Iraqi children walk between the rows of cars carrying cigarettes, fruit, or sweets to sell to drivers stuck in the ever-present traffic.

Salah Salman, a day laborer in Sadr City I spoke with the other day, raged against the upcoming elections which are set for January 31. He spoke with me while we stood near a street strewn with garbage near a busy traffic circle.

"I'll not be voting for anyone. We cannot trust any of the candidates, just like during the elections of 2005. What have they done for us? What services have they provided our country? They have achieved nothing for us!"

Like the 2005 elections (and most elections across the globe, for that matter), there are thousands of politicians running on various platforms, from unifying Iraq, to bringing electricity, to improving security, to promoting reconciliation. Most Iraqis I have spoken with about the elections are not holding out much hope.

"New thieves will replace the current thieves," an Iraqi refugee in Amman told me before I flew into Baghdad.

Obvious differences are present. The most evident reason for the decline in US military casualties in Iraq over the last year is that there are clearly far fewer patrols being carried out by US forces, whereas before patrols roamed the streets incessantly. The patrols I do see are carried out in the new Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles, which are mine-resistant beasts that slowly crawl through the congested streets of Baghdad.

Instead, Iraqi security forces abound. Speeding through the streets with blaring sirens are Iraqi Police in huge, brand new Ford and Chevrolet trucks, which have clearly found their new market since the US has tired of the gas-guzzling behemoths. Further, Iraqi military abound, roaming around in brand new Humvees of the ilk traded in by the US military's upgrade to MRAPs. So much security is deployed on the streets of Baghdad it is impossible to travel more than 15 minutes without finding another checkpoint. To live in Baghdad, like it is to live in many other Iraqi cities, is to live in a police state.

Contractors are visible flying overhead, often in their two-person Kiowa helicopters. They are running the security at the airport and in the Green Zone, which has been called the International Zone for some time now. The mercenary company Triple Canopy employs former Central American death squad members and various nationals from Uganda, a now mostly de-colonized country, to check ID badges at the countless checkpoints I walked through to obtain my mandatory press card inside the heavily fortified compound. Thus, the changing of the face is complete - Iraqi security forces and private contractor mercenaries are now the face of the US occupation of Iraq.

The political divides across the country run deep, and this thin, fresh, external skin of the lull in overall violence camouflages the plight of the average Iraqi. Prices of everything from bottled water to tomatoes have skyrocketed, while jobs have become increasingly scarce. While the major US news outlets have downgraded their staff in Iraq, or pulled out entirely because they feel Iraq is no longer an important story, for most Iraqis who remain here, there is no other option. Flee with no money and become a refugee, or remain and try to survive.

Will the elections bring a lasting stability? Or will groups who feel entitled to power that don't obtain it democratically resort again to violence that will shred what is left of this shattered country?

We shall soon find out.

[Dahr Jamail, an independent journalist who grew up in Houston, is the author of "Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches From an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq," (Haymarket Books, 2007). Jamail reported from occupied Iraq for eight months as well as from Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Turkey over the last four years.]

Source / truthout

Thanks to Bob Simmons / The Rag Blog

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New Reports : Did KBR Poison GIs in Iraq?

Welder testing for hexavalent chromium. Photo by Orbital Joe.
In 2003, James Gentry and his men were responsible for guarding a KBR-run power plant. The soldiers were stationed there for months before being informed that the site was contaminated with a chemical known as hexavalent chromium.

By Paul Riechkoff / January 9, 2009

James Gentry served his country honorably as a battalion commander in Iraq. Now, he is dying of a rare form of lung cancer. And he's not the only one. A troubling number of troops in Gentry's Indiana National Guard unit have bloody noses, tumors and rashes. And tragically, one soldier has already died.

New reports suggest these injuries may be the result of exposure to toxins at a KBR-run power plant in Southern Iraq. In 2003, James and his men were responsible for guarding that plant, and protecting KBR's employees. The soldiers were stationed there for months before being informed that the site was contaminated with a chemical known as hexavalent chromium.

Hexavalent chromium is a deadly carcinogen. It's the same toxin that Erin Brockovich became famous for campaigning against. James believes that it was the inhalation of this chemical that caused his cancer, and the other rare illnesses among the Guardsmen who served at the plant.

But this is not just some sad story about accidental chemical exposure. This is a question of responsibility. CBS News has uncovered evidence that KBR may have known about the contamination at the power plant months before it took any action to inform the troops stationed there.

If the CBS story is proven true, checks need to be written, contracts should be cancelled, and heads must roll. James signed up to serve his country, and he was told to protect KBR contractors. He did his job. But it doesn't seem like KBR did theirs. If the company neglected to take quick and decisive action, it must be held responsible for the months of avoidable toxic exposure that may be taking the lives of American servicemembers.

From burn pits to power plants, we are hearing more and more about troops who have been exposed to toxins while serving our country overseas. Senator Evan Bayh of Indiana has announced that he will reintroduce legislation to create a medical registry for military personnel exposed to toxins. That's a vital first step towards discovering the full extent of toxic exposure in Iraq and Afghanistan, and is critical to preventing a replay of the Agent Orange situation after Vietnam.

We need real answers from KBR. And so far, the company has denied any wrongdoing whatsoever. Iraq and Afghanistan veterans will stand behind our brothers and sisters in demanding accountability. The veterans' community will fight back, and we need everyone's help. Add your name to IAVA's petition, and tell KBR to come clean now. KBR must tell Congress and the American people what they knew, and when they knew it. James Gentry and his fellow soldiers deserve the truth.

[Paul Rieckhoff, 33, is the Executive Director and Founder of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA). A non-partisan non-profit group with over 100,000 members around the world, IAVA was founded in 2004 and is America’s first and largest Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans organization. Rieckhoff was a First Lieutenant and infantry rifle platoon leader in the Iraq war from 2003-2004. He is now a nationally recognized authority on the war in Iraq and issues affecting troops, military families and veterans.]

Source / The Huffington Post

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Charges Likely Against Blackwater Guards in Shooting of Iraqi Citizens

An Iraqi policeman inspects a car that was destroyed when Blackwater security guards opened fire in Baghdad, killing 17 civilians. Photo by Khalid Mohammed / AP.
'An Iraqi government investigation concluded that the security contractors fired without provocation'
By Del Quentin Wilber and Karen DeYoung / August 17, 2008

Federal prosecutors have sent target letters to six Blackwater Worldwide security guards involved in a September shooting that left 17 Iraqi civilians dead, indicating a high likelihood the Justice Department will seek to indict at least some of the men, according to three sources close to the case.

The guards, all former U.S. military personnel, were working as security contractors for the State Department, assigned to protect U.S. diplomats and other non-military officials in Iraq. The shooting occurred when their convoy arrived at a busy square in central Baghdad and guards tried to stop traffic.

Blackwater has said its personnel acted in self-defense.

The sources said that any charges against the guards would likely be brought under the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act, which has previously been used to prosecute only the cases referred to the Justice Department by the Defense Department for crimes committed by military personnel and contractors overseas. Legal experts have questioned whether contractors working for the State Department can be prosecuted under its provisions.

The sources cautioned that prosecutors are still weighing evidence gathered in a 10-month investigation that began shortly after the shootings. A federal grand jury has heard testimony from about three dozen witnesses since November, including U.S. and Blackwater officials and Iraqis, according to two of the sources.

Target letters, often considered a prelude to indictment, offer suspects the opportunity to contest evidence brought before the grand jury and give their own version of events. The letters were sent this summer, although the sources, who agreed to discuss the case only on the condition of anonymity because of its sensitivity, said a final decision on whether to indict may not be made until October, about a year after the incident.

The U.S. attorney's office in Washington and the Justice Department's National Security Division are leading the investigation. Channing Phillips, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office, declined to comment, as did Justice Department spokesman Dean Boyd. A spokeswoman for the FBI's Washington field office, which investigated the shooting on the ground in Iraq in the weeks after the incident, also declined to comment.

Anne E. Tyrell, a spokeswoman for North Carolina-based Blackwater, said that the company believes the guards fired their weapons "in response to a hostile threat" and is monitoring the investigation closely.

"If it is determined that an individual acted improperly, Blackwater would support holding that person accountable," Tyrell said in a statement. "But at this stage, without being able to review evidence collected in an ongoing investigation, we will not prejudge the actions of any individual. The company is cooperating fully with ongoing investigations and believes that accountability is important."

Earlier reports on the investigation indicated that the FBI had focused on three Blackwater guards among a larger but unknown number present at the time of the Sept. 16 incident in Baghdad's Nisoor Square. None has been publicly identified, and authorities did not say which six received the target letters.

The shooting, and the perceived failure to hold anyone accountable for it, has fueled congressional dissatisfaction with the government's use of private security contractors in a combat zone. Contractors working for the Defense Department are now explicitly liable for crimes under laws covering the military, but several efforts in Congress to extend that jurisdiction to State Department contractors have failed.

The incident also angered Iraqi political leaders. U.S. contractors have been exempt from Iraqi law under a decree imposed by the U.S. occupation administration in 2003.

Seeking to respond to widespread fury among Iraqis over the Nisoor Square incident, the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki insisted in negotiations over a new bilateral security agreement with the United States that all contractors come under Iraqi legal jurisdiction. Facing pressure to finalize an agreement by the end of the year, the Bush administration agreed to meet the Iraqi demand, according to officials close to the discussions. But the administration continues to insist on immunity from Iraqi law for military and official Defense Department personnel, the officials said.

Blackwater is one of three U.S. security firms under contract with the State Department to provide personal security in Iraq. The State Department in May extended Blackwater's contract for another year, saying that while the case was still under investigation it had no enforceable cause to cancel it.

Lawyers for the Blackwater guards have argued in ongoing discussions with prosecutors that the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act, known as MEJA, can be applied only to contractors working for the Defense Department, two sources said. That position appeared to be buttressed by the Congressional Budget Office, which said in a report on contractors in Iraq released last week that MEJA "does not apply to civilians working . . . for federal departments or agencies other than DOD [the Department of Defense]."

Legislative proposals to extend MEJA's provisions beyond the Defense Department -- which have been repeatedly opposed by the White House -- have made the same point.

But the question has never been tested in court. Some outside legal experts said that prosecutors would be able to make a compelling argument that MEJA covers Blackwater guards involved in the shooting under a 2005 amendment that expanded MEJA's provisions to include contractors "supporting the mission of the Department of Defense."

"You are dealing with a military environment," said Scott Silliman, a law professor at Duke University who specializes in national security matters. "If the contractors were not there, those State Department folks would be guarded by the military. Prosecutors could argue to the judge that those facts fit within the definition of furthering the [Defense Department] mission in Iraq."

Among other possible complications in potential legal action against the Blackwater contractors are interviews some of the guards gave to officials from the State Department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security immediately after the incident. The interviews were conducted under legal protections against self-incrimination granted to government employees, and the guards were informed that they could not be used by FBI investigators or in a potential prosecution.

Several former prosecutors and defense attorneys said that the government would have a difficult time proving the case even if it overcame the jurisdictional question. They noted the hurdles facing prosecutors in domestic police shooting cases, adding that such cases are exceedingly hard to win.

Trying to convince jurors that guards committed a crime by opening fire in a war zone "makes it an exponentially tougher case to prove" than a bad police shooting, said George Parry, a former federal and state prosecutor in Pennsylvania who handled law enforcement shootings as a prosecutor and defense attorney. Parry does not represent anyone in the Blackwater matter.

The former prosecutors and defense attorneys said defense lawyers would work hard to put jurors inside the war zone and portray the guards as having to make split-second decisions in an environment where insurgents dress like civilians and attacks could occur anywhere, at any moment. Witnesses in such situations also often contradict each other, and evidence gathered in Baghdad may not meet the same forensic standards that jurors are used to seeing in the United States, the lawyers said.

The Nisoor Square incident took place on a Tuesday afternoon. A Blackwater team arrived in several vehicles at the intersection -- accounts differ as to why they were there -- and tried to stop traffic. Shooting erupted, leaving numerous Iraqis dead and wounded. Blackwater officials have said the guards came under fire; investigations by the U.S. military and the Iraqi government -- and initial findings by the FBI -- concluded that no one fired except the contractors.

Source / Washington Post

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McCaskill Takes On Military Industrial Complex

A Governmental Accountability Office report has found that Defense Contract Audit Agency officials and major defense contractors successfully pressured Pentagon auditors to hide damaging facts about the performance and costs of weapons systems. Photo by Joseph Kaczmarek / AP.
Freshman senator files scathing report
By Matt Renner / July 25, 2008

A scathing report accusing government auditors of corruption, issued by the government's top investigative body, prompted a freshman senator to call for firings "by nightfall" on Thursday.

In her first term, Senator Claire McCaskill (D-Missouri), a former prosecutor and Missouri state auditor, has taken the lead in figuring out whether the US military gets what it pays for from contractors

In an impassioned speech on the floor of the Senate, McCaskill outlined the findings of a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report, which found that Defense Contract Audit Agency (DCAA) officials and major defense contractors successfully pressured Pentagon auditors to hide damaging facts about the performance and costs of weapons systems.

The DCAA has "gotten caught in what could be the biggest auditing scandal in the history of this town, and I'm not exaggerating here. I will guarantee you, as auditors around the country learn about this, they're going to have disbelief and raw anger that this agency has impugned the integrity of government auditors everywhere by these kinds of irresponsible actions," McCaskill said.

McCaskill fired off letters to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and DCAA Director April G. Stephenson, demanding accountability and a full explanation of the issues the GAO report raised. In a July 11 letter, Stephenson said that DCAA did not agree with the "totality" of the report but was addressing some of the issues raised.

The GAO, the top nonpartisan governmental investigative body in Washington, DC, looked at 14 audits performed by the 4,000-member DCAA, the internal government audit team that is supposed to oversee contracting for the Department of Defense (DoD) and other government agencies. Zero of the 14 audits met government standards.

The report, titled "DCAA Audits: Allegations That Certain Audits at Three Locations Did Not Meet Professional Standards Were Substantiated," was based on over 100 interviews with current and former auditors and a review of the 13 sets of "working papers" - the documentation auditors use to backup their conclusions.

The report found, in every case, the working papers did not support the conclusions of the auditors - a clear violation of auditing principles. In addition, the investigation revealed that supervisors at the DCAA "dropped findings and changed audit opinions," and that the DCAA did not allow auditors sufficient time to do thorough work.

According to GAO investigators, "[W]e also found that contractor officials and the DoD contracting community improperly influenced the audit scope, conclusions, and opinions of some audits - a serious independence issue." In GAO speak, this means private companies and people in the Pentagon conspired to conceal wasteful and fraudulent activity by contractors at the cost of the US taxpayer.

Among the findings of the report:

* The DCAA resident auditor made an agreement with an unnamed aerospace contractor (determined to be Boeing based on the facts contained in the report), one of the five largest government defense contractors, that "limited the scope" of the audit and would allow the contractor to correct problems that were found before the final audit opinion was issued. [Bullet]The resident auditor replaced uncooperative auditors and intimidated others into making unsubstantiated assessments that benefited contractors at the expense of the government. [bullet]Supervisors assigned complex auditing tasks to underqualified subordinates, resulting in incomplete audits.

* DCAA officials threatened staff members with retaliation for speaking with GAO investigators.

* The director of a cost-estimating system for a major defense contractor threatened the DCAA he would "escalate" the issue "to the highest level possible" in the government and within the company in question if the DCAA would not green-light the billing system it identified as problematic.

* The DCAA failed to revisit contracts that were negotiated by a corrupt (and later convicted) Air Force official.

* Mistakes, incompetence or intentional deception by the DCAA has essentially built in defective price-estimating systems that may artificially inflate contract estimates for years to come.

The GAO investigation itself was interfered with. In a letter to top members of Congress, the GAO stated: "we noted a pattern of frequent management actions that served to intimidate the auditors and create an abusive environment ... As a result, some auditors were hesitant to speak to us." Nick Schwellenbach, National Security investigator for the nonpartisan government spending watchdog group, Project on Government Oversight (POGO), said that the GAO report "demonstrates that the government's system of contractor oversight is rotten because the independent government agencies that are supposed to look out for the taxpayers are corrupted," adding "we have senior members inside the DCAA who are retaliating against their own members in favor of the private contractors."

Schwellenbach pointed out that DCAA auditors oversee contracting at a number of different government agencies including NASA, and that NASA's inspector general has previously criticized the DCAA's work. "This looks like it could go even deeper," Schwellenbach added.

"You know, the Department of Defense has been on the high risk list of this government for more than a decade. Scandal after scandal has rolled out of the Department of Defense on contracting ... I took a trip to Iraq just on contract oversight with an auditor's eye, meeting with the people that oversee the contracts in Iraq ... I think we burned up more than $150 billion in just pure contracting abuse," McCaskill said during her speech, adding, "and all this time that we have been wasting hundreds and billions of dollars, the fox was in the chicken coop."

Source / truthout

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Pentagon : The Five Secret Billion-Dollar Companies

Billionaire Ronald Perelman's holding company MacAndrews & Forbes Holdings Inc. received $3,360,739,032 from the Department of Defense in 2007.
Sucking Obscene Amounts of Taxpayer Money
By Nick Turse / June 26, 2008

At $34 billion, you're already counting pretty high. After all, that's Harvard's endowment; it's the amount of damage the triple hurricanes -- Charley, Ivan, and Jeanne -- inflicted in 2004; it's what car crashes involving 15-to-17-year-old teenage drivers mean yearly in "medical expenses, lost work, property damage, quality of life loss and other related costs"; it's the loans the nation's largest, crippled, home lender, Countrywide Financial, holds for home-equity lines of credit and second liens; it's Citigroup's recent write-off, mainly for subprime exposure; it's what New Jersey's tourism industry is worth -- and, according to the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, it's the minimal figure for the Pentagon's "black budget" for fiscal year 2009 -- money for, among other things, "classified weapons purchases and development," money for which the Pentagon will remain unaccountable because almost no Americans will have any way of knowing what it's being spent for.

Now, imagine that, due to a little more Pentagon/Bush administration wizardry, even this black budget estimate is undoubtedly a low-ball figure. One reason is simple enough: The proposed $541 billion Pentagon 2009 budget doesn't even include money for actual wars. George W. Bush's wars are all paid for by "supplemental" bills like the $162 billion one Congress will soon pass -- so the Department of Defense's $34 billion black budget skips "war-related funding." This means that even the overall figure for that budget remains darker than we might imagine (as in "black hole"). The Pentagon not only produces stealth planes, it is, in budgetary terms, a stealth operation. If honestly accounted, the actual Pentagon yearly budget, including all the "military-related" funds salted away elsewhere, is probably now more than $1 trillion a year.

There is, however, another stealth side to the Pentagon -- the corporate side where a range of giant companies you've never heard of are gobbling up our tax dollars at phenomenal rates. Nick Turse, author of the single best account of how our lives are being militarized, our civilian economy Pentagonized, and the Pentagon privatized -- I'm talking about The Complex: How the Military Invades Our Everyday Lives -- now turns to the stealth corporate side of the Pentagon to give us a glimpse into the larger black hole into which our dollars pour.

Tom Engelhardt / TomDispatch / June 26, 2008

Billion-Dollar Babies
By Nick Turse

The top Pentagon contractors, like death and taxes, almost never change. In 2002, the massive arms dealers Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and Northrop Grumman ranked one, two, and three among Department of Defense contractors, taking in $17 billion, $16.6 billion, and $8.7 billion. Lockheed, Boeing, and Northrop Grumman did it again in 2003 ($21.9, $17.3, and $11.1 billion); 2004 ($20.7, $17.1, and $11.9 billion); 2005 ($19.4, $18.3, and $13.5 billion); 2006 ($26.6, $20.3, and $16.6 billion); and, not surprisingly, 2007 as well ($27.8, $22.5, and $14.6 billion). Other regulars receiving mega-tax-funded payouts in a similarly clockwork-like manner include defense giants General Dynamics, Raytheon, the British weapons maker BAE Systems, and former Halliburton subsidiary KBR, as well as BP, Shell, and other power players from the military-petroleum complex.

With the basic Pentagon budget now clocking in at roughly $541 billion per year -- before "supplemental" war funding for Iraq, Afghanistan, and the President's Global War on Terror, as well as national security spending by other agencies, are factored in -- even Lockheed's hefty $28 billion take is a small percentage of the massive total. Obviously, significant sums of money are headed to other companies. However, most of them, including some of the largest, are all but unknown even to Pentagon-watchers and antiwar critics with a good grasp of the military industrial complex.

Last year, in a piece headlined "Washington's $8 Billion Shadow," Vanity Fair published an exposé of one of the better known large stealth contractors, SAIC (Science Applications International Corporation). SAIC, however, is just one of tens of thousands of Pentagon contractors. Many of these firms receive only tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars from the Pentagon every year. Some take home millions, tens of millions, or even hundreds of millions of dollars.

Then there's a select group that are masters of the universe in the ever-expanding military-corporate complex, regularly scoring more than a billion tax dollars a year from the Department of Defense. Unlike Lockheed, Boeing, and Northrop Grumman, however, most of these billion-dollar babies manage to fly beneath the radar of media (not to mention public) attention. If appearing at all, they generally do so innocuously in the business pages of newspapers. When it comes to their support for the Pentagon's wars and occupations in Afghanistan and Iraq, they are, in media terms, missing in action.

So, who are some of these mystery defense contractors you've probably never heard of? Here are snapshot portraits, culled largely from their own corporate documents, of five of the Pentagon's secret billion-dollar babies:

1. MacAndrews & Forbes Holdings Inc.

Total DoD dollars in 2007: $3,360,739,032

This is billionaire investor Ronald Perelman's massive holding company. It has "interests in a diversified portfolio of public and private companies" that includes the cosmetics maker Revlon and Panavision (the folks who make the cameras that bring you TV shows like 24 and CSI). MacAndrews & Forbes might, at first blush, seem an unlikely defense contractor, but one of those privately owned companies it holds is AM General -- the folks who make the military Humvee. Today, says the company, nearly 200,000 Humvees have been "built and delivered to the U.S. Armed Forces and more than 50 friendly overseas nations." Humvees, however, are only part of the story.

AM General has also assisted Carnegie Mellon University researchers in developing robots for the Pentagon blue-skies outfit, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's "Grand Challenge," an autonomous robot-vehicle competition. Last year, AM General and General Dynamics Land Systems, a subsidiary of mega-weapons maker General Dynamics, formed a joint venture "to compete for the U.S. Army and Marine Corps Joint Light Tactical Vehicle (JLTV) program." AM General has even gone to war -- dispatching its "field service representatives" and "maintenance technical representatives" to Iraq where they were embedded with U.S. troops.

As such, it's hardly surprising that, earlier this year, the company received one of the Defense Logistics Agency's Outstanding Readiness Support Awards. Nor should anyone be surprised to discover that a top MacAndrews & Forbes corporate honcho, Executive Vice Chairman and Chief Administrative Officer Barry F. Schwartz, contributed a total of at least $10,000 to Straight Talk America, the political action committee of presidential candidate John McCain, who famously said it would be "fine" with him if U.S. troops occupied Iraq for "maybe a hundred years" (if not "a thousand" or "a million").

Perhaps hedging their bets just a bit, MacAndrews & Forbes is diversifying into an emerging complex-within-the-Complex: homeland security. Recently, AM General sold the Department of Homeland Security's Border Patrol "more than 100 HUMMER K-series trucks for use in border security operations."

2. DRS Technologies, Inc.

Total DoD dollars in 2007: $1,791,321,140

Incorporated during the Vietnam War, DRS Technologies has long been "a leading supplier of integrated products, services and support to military forces, intelligence agencies and prime contractors worldwide"; that is, they have been in the business of fielding products that enhance some of the DoD's deadliest weaponry, including "DDG-51 Aegis destroyers, M1A2 Abrams Main Battle Tanks, M2A3 Bradley Fighting Vehicles, OH-58D Kiowa Warrior helicopters, AH-64 Apache helicopters, F/A-18E/F Super Hornet and F-16 Fighting Falcon jet fighters, F-15 Eagle tactical fighters... [and] Ohio, Los Angeles and Virginia class submarines." They even have "contracts that support future military platforms, such as the DDG-1000 destroyer, CVN-78 next-generation aircraft carrier, Littoral Combat Ship and Future Combat System."

In addition to 2007's haul of Pentagon dollars, DRS Technologies has continued to clean up in 2008 for a range of projects, including: a $16.2 million Army contract for refrigeration units; $51 million in new orders from the Army for thermal weapon sights (part of a five-year, $2.3-billion deal inked in 2007); a $10.1 million contract to build more than 140 M989A1 Heavy Expanded Mobility Ammunition Trailers (to transport "numerous and extremely heavy Multiple Launch Rocket System pods, palletized or non-palletized conventional ammunition and fuel bladders"); and a $23 million deal "to provide engineering support, field service support and general depot repairs for the Mast Mounted Sights (MMS) on OH-58 Kiowa Warrior attack helicopters," among many other contracts.

Fitch Ratings, an international credit rating agency, recently made a smart, if perhaps understated, point -- one that actually fits all of these billion-dollar babies. DRS, it wrote, "has benefited from the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan..."

3. Harris Corporation

Total DoD dollars in 2007: $1,501,163,834

Harris is "an international communications and information technology company serving government, defense and commercial markets in more than 150 countries." It has an annual revenue of more than $4 billion and an impressive roster of former military personnel and other military-corporate complex insiders on its payroll. Not only does Harris assist and do business with a number of the Pentagon's largest contractors (like Lockheed Martin and BAE Systems), it is also an active participant in occupations abroad. On its website, the company boasts that "Harris technology has been used for a variety of commercial and defense applications, including the War in Iraq where the [Harris software] system provided detailed, 3-D representations of Baghdad and other key Iraqi cities."

Last year, Harris signed multiple deals with the military, including contracts to create a high-speed digital data link that transmits tactical video, radar, acoustic, and other sensor data from Navy MH-60R helicopters to their host ships. It also supplies the Navy with advanced computers that provide the "highly sophisticated moving maps and critical mission information via cockpit displays" used by flight crews.

In the first six months of this year, Harris has continued its hard work for the Complex. In January, the company was "selected by the U.S. Air Force for the Network and Space Operations and Maintenance (NSOM) program" for "a base contract and six options that bring the potential overall value to $410 million over six-and-a-half-years" to provide "operations and maintenance support to the 50th Space Wing's Air Force Satellite Control Network at locations around the world."

In May, the company was "awarded a three-year, $20 million contract by [top 10 Pentagon contractor] L3 Communications to provide products and services for a next-generation Tactical Video Capture System (TVCS)" -- a system that integrates real time video streams to enhance tactical training exercises -- "that will support training at various U.S. Marine Corps locations across the U.S. and abroad." That same month, Harris was also "awarded a potential five-year, $85 million Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) contract from the U.S. Navy for multiband satellite communications terminals that will provide advanced communications for aircraft carriers and other large deck ships."

In addition, Harris is now hard at work in the Homeland. Not only did the company pick up more than $3 million from the Department of Homeland Security last year, but national security expert Tim Shorrock, in a 2007 CorpWatch article, "Domestic Spying, Inc.," specifically noted that Harris and fellow intelligence industry contractors "stand to profit from th[e] unprecedented expansion of America's domestic intelligence system."

4. Navistar Defense

Total DoD dollars in 2007: $1,166,805,361

Still listed in Pentagon documents under its old name, International Military and Government, LLC, Navistar is the military subsidiary of Navistar International Corporation -- "a holding company whose individual units provide integrated and best-in-class transportation solutions." While the company has served the U.S. military since World War I, it's known, if at all, by the public for making some of the Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles designed to thwart Iraqi roadside bombs. As of April 2008, the U.S. military had "ordered 5,214 total production MaxxPro MRAP vehicles" from Navistar and, that same month, the company was awarded "a contract valued at more than $261 million... for engineering upgrades to the armor used on International MaxxPro MRAP vehicles."

But Navistar makes more than MRAPs. Just last month, the company signed a "multi-year contract valued at nearly $1.3 billion" with the U.S. Army "to provide Medium Tactical Vehicles and spare parts to the Afghanistan National Police, Afghan National Army, and the Iraqi Ministry of Defense." This followed a 2005 multi-year Army contract, worth $430 million, "for more than 2,900 vehicles and spare parts."

Quite obviously, the company is significantly, profitably, and proudly involved in the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. As Tom Feifar, the Global Defense and Export general manager for Navistar Parts, put it late last year, "It's an honor to be a part of the effort to support our troops."

5. Evergreen International Airlines

Total DoD dollars in 2007: $1,105,610,723

A privately held global aviation services company, it has subsidiaries in related industries such as helicopter aviation (Evergreen Helicopters, Inc.), as well as a few unrelated efforts like producing "agricultural, nursery and wine products" (Evergreen Agricultural Enterprises, Inc.). Evergreen has been on the Pentagon's payroll for a long time. Back in 2004, Ed Connolly, the executive vice president of Evergreen International Airlines, stated, "Evergreen has flown continuously for the [U.S. Air Force] Air Mobility Command since 1975 and is proud to continue its long standing history of supporting the U.S. Armed Forces global missions with quality and reliable services."

Not surprisingly, Evergreen has been intimately involved in the occupation of Iraq. In fact, in 2004, the company received "approximately 200 awards for its support of international airlift services during the Iraq war" from the Air Force's Air Mobility Command. An Air Force general even handed out these medals and certificates of achievement to Evergreen's employees.

In Amnesty International's 2006 report, "Below the Radar: Secret Flights to Torture and 'Disappearance,'" the human rights organization noted that Evergreen was one of only a handful of private companies with current permits to land at U.S. military bases worldwide. That same year, the company even airlifted FOX News personality Bill O'Reilly and his TV show crew to Kuwait and Iraq to meet and greet troops, sign books and pictures, and hand out trinkets. And just last year the company was part of a consortium, including such high profile commercial carriers as American, Delta, and United Airlines that the Pentagon awarded a "$1,031,154,403 firm fixed-price contract for international airlift services... [that] is expected to be completed September 2008."

Under the Radar

All told, these five stealth corporations from the military-corporate complex received more than $8.9 billion in taxpayer dollars in 2007. To put this into perspective, that sum is almost $2 billion more than the Bush administration's proposed 2009 budget for the Environmental Protection Agency. Put another way, it's about nine times what one-sixth of the world's population spent on food last year.

Tens of thousands of defense contractors -- from well-known "civilian" corporations (like Coca-Cola, Kraft, and Dell) to tiny companies -- have fattened up on the Pentagon and its wars. Most of the time, large or small, they fly under the radar and are seldom identified as defense contractors at all. So it's hardly surprising that firms like Harris and Evergreen, without name recognition outside their own worlds, can take in billions in taxpayer dollars without notice or comment in our increasingly militarized civilian economy.

When the history of the Iraq War is finally written, chances are that these five billion-dollar babies, and most of the other defense contractors involved in making the U.S. occupation possible, will be left out. Until we begin coming to grips with the role of such corporations in creating the material basis for an imperial foreign policy, we'll never be able to grasp fully how the Pentagon works and why we so regularly make war in, and carry out occupations of, distant lands.

[Nick Turse is the associate editor and research director of Tomdispatch. He has written for the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Nation, the Village Voice, and regularly for Tomdispatch.com.]

Source. / AlterNet

The Complex: How the Military Invades Our Everyday Lives by Nick Turse on Amazon.com.

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