http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080317/scahillA senior foreign policy adviser to leading Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has told The Nation that if elected Obama will not “rule out” using private security companies like Blackwater Worldwide in Iraq. The adviser also said that Obama does not plan to sign on to legislation that seeks to ban the use of these forces in US war zones by January 2009, when a new President will be sworn in. Obama’s campaign says that instead he will focus on bringing accountability to these forces while increasing funding for the State Department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security, the agency that employs Blackwater and other private security contractors.
Obama’s broader Iraq withdrawal plan provides for some US troops to remain in Iraq–how many his advisers won’t say. But it’s clear that Obama’s “follow-on force” will include a robust security force to protect US personnel in Iraq, US trainers (who would also require security) for Iraqi forces and military units to “strike at Al Qaeda”–all very broad swaths of the occupation.
“If Barack Obama comes into office next January and our diplomatic security service is in the state it’s in and the situation on the ground in Iraq is in the state it’s in, I think we will be forced to rely on a host of security measures,” said the senior adviser. “I can’t rule out, I won’t rule out, private security contractors.” He added, “I will rule out private security contractors that are not accountable to US law.”
But therein lies a problem. The US Embassy in Iraq is slated to become the largest embassy in world history. If Obama maintains that embassy and its army of diplomats and US personnel going in and out of the Green Zone, which his advisers say he will, a significant armed force will be required for protection. The force that now plays that role is composed almost exclusively of contractors from Blackwater, DynCorp and Triple Canopy. And at present, these contractors are not held accountable under US law. Obama and a host of legal experts, including in the Justice Department, acknowledge that there may be no current US law that could be used to prosecute security contractors for crimes committed in Iraq, such as the killing of seventeen Iraqi civilians last September in Baghdad’s Nisour Square.
Obama’s proposed increase in funding to the diplomatic security division would ostensibly pave the way for a protective force composed entirely of US government personnel, but the process of building that force would likely take a long time. Short of dramatically reducing the US civilian and diplomatic presence in Iraq that necessitates such a security force, Obama may have no choice but to continue the contracting arrangements with firms like Blackwater if he is elected President.
The irony is that it was Senator Obama who sponsored a bill in February 2007 defining a legal structure to prosecute State Department contractor crimes in US courts. Obama staffers say they will “fight like hell to get it passed.” But it may not pass before the next President takes power. Even if it does and Bush signs it, serious questions will remain unresolved about how contractor crimes can be monitored effectively. The senior adviser acknowledged that Obama could find himself in a situation where, as President, he continues using forces he himself has identified as “unaccountable.” The Obama campaign, in other words, may have painted itself into a corner.
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llinois Democrat Jan Schakowsky, one of Congress’s sharpest critics of the war contracting system, says of Schmitz’s remark, “That’s why some of us have been really careful about not just talking about a troop withdrawal but a contractor withdrawal as well.” Obama, she says, should make it impossible for Schmitz and others “to think that Barack Obama would be creating new opportunities for Blackwater after our troops are withdrawn.” The clearest way for him to do that would be to endorse legislation banning the use of Blackwater and other mercenary firms in Iraq. In November Schakowsky and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders introduced the Stop Outsourcing Security (SOS) Act, which mandates that US personnel undertake all diplomatic security in Iraq within six months of enactment. The bill has twenty-three co-sponsors in the House and one–Sanders–in the Senate. Sanders said he’d “love” it if Obama and Clinton signed on. “If either of them came on board, we’d certainly see more Democratic support,” says Sanders. Will Obama do that before November? “The answer is no, in all candor,” says the senior Obama adviser. “Obviously it’s a dynamic situation, and he’ll continue to analyze it.”
Schakowsky is pressing Obama to support the bill and says that if he becomes President she will urge him to “cancel” any remaining Blackwater contract in Iraq: “There’s plenty of justification to say this company is trouble, and there’s no point in continuing our contract with them.”
The senior adviser said, “Senator Obama is concerned that Blackwater remains in Iraq, and he’s concerned that they remain in Iraq and other countries totally unaccountable to US law and totally unaccountable to the law in the country in which they are operating.” Which raises the question: If he’s so concerned, why not throw his support behind a ban on the use of these forces in Iraq?
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