http://www.newuniversity.org/checkDB.php?id=6675Last year, an unprovoked shooting by Blackwater Worldwide left 17 Iraqi civilians dead and 20 injured in a square in Baghdad. Blackwater is a privatized military firm that provides support for U.S. troops in Iraq, and a law known as Order 17, enacted by the Coalition Provisional Authority, grants all U.S.-employed private contractors blanket immunity from criminal sanctions. Really? They thought that was a good idea? Thanks to this law, Blackwater has been marauding around Iraq and making dozens of fatally retarded decisions, such as driving against traffic and shooting at civilians to make them get out of the way, because they know that there will be no consequences.
Jamie Leigh Jones, a woman working in the Green Zone in Iraq, alleged that she was drugged and violently gang-raped by her co-workers before being thrown into a shipping container. She was then held without food or drink for an undetermined amount of time. Jones’s employer, an engineering and construction company called Kellogg, Brown and Root employed by the United States in Iraq, told the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission that the poor woman was “taken to a secure unlisted living container where she could rest.” Wait, there’s more. The rape kit used by a military doctor to examine the victim was reportedly shipped to Halliburton and KBR, and now the doctor’s notes and photos of her bruises have mysteriously gone missing.
So not only will it be next to impossible for Jones to build a case in court, she apparently cannot even pursue a civil lawsuit. Why? Her employment contract stipulates that all “disputes would be resolved through a binding arbitration process, which lacks (among other things) a jury, rules of evidence, an appeals process … media access and a transcript.” The rapists themselves could technically be tried in a U.S. federal court for the offense, but it would be very difficult to get around Order 17, and the Justice Department has made it very clear it has no interest in Jones’s case. This means those bastards won’t get so much as a smack on the bottom.
Surprisingly, this isn’t Halliburton’s first sexual assault case. Former Halliburton/KBR employees have described it as an “atmosphere of rampant sexual harassment.” Many other women have also complained of being sexually assaulted while working for the company. Clearly, the company needs a major management overhaul or simply needs to be shut down. “Rampant” sexual assault? Good God. How has this been tolerated for so long?
If we are allowing this to be done to American women in Iraq the Iraqi women there don't have a chance.
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