The "contractors" were protecting food convoys? Read this

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http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101040412-607775,00.html

TIME - When Private Armies Take to the Front Lines

The security contractors killed in Fallujah represented a little known reality of the war in Iraq


A nation that goes to war on principle may not realize it will then have to hire private soldiers to keep the peace. The work of the four American civilians slaughtered in Fallujah last week was so shadowy that their families struggled to explain what exactly the men had been hired to do in Iraq. Marija Zovko says her nephew Jerry said little about the perils of the missions he carried out every day. "He wouldn't talk about it," she says. Even representatives for the private security company that employed the men, Blackwater USA, could not say what exactly they were up to on that fateful morning. "All the details of the attack at this point are haphazard at best," says Chris Bertelli, a spokesman for Blackwater. "We don't know what they were doing on the road at the time."

What the murder of the four security specialists did reveal is a little known reality about how business is done in war-torn settings all over the globe. With U.S. troops still having to battle insurgents and defend themselves, the job of protecting everyone else in Iraq—from journalists to government contractors to the U.S. administrator in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer—is largely being done by private security companies stocked with former soldiers looking for good money and the taste of danger. Pentagon officials count roughly 20 private companies around the world that contract for security work, mainly in combat areas. They are finding plenty of it in Iraq. Scott Custer, a co-director of Custer Battles, based in Fairfax, Va., says as many as 30,000 Iraqis and "several thousand expats" are working for private outfits in Iraq. Security contractors make a lot more than the average soldier, but last week's events suggest that they may also be turning into more attractive targets for insurgents. "If they can chase us out," says Custer co-director Mike Battles, "then in a void, they become more powerful." snip

The current business boom is in Iraq. Blackwater charges its clients $1,500 to $2,000 a day for each hired gun. Most security contractors, like Blackwater's teams, live a comfortable if exhausting existence in Baghdad, staying at the Sheraton or Palestine hotels, which are not plush but at least have running water. Locals often mistake the guards for special forces or CIA personnel, which makes active-duty military troops a bit edgy. "Those Blackwater guys," says an intelligence officer in Iraq, "they drive around wearing Oakley sunglasses and pointing their guns out of car windows. They have pointed their guns at me, and it pissed me off. Imagine what a guy in Fallujah thinks." Adds an Army officer who just returned from Baghdad, "They are a subculture."

Indeed, the relationship between the private soldiers and the real ones isn't always collaborative. "We've responded to the military at least half a dozen times, but not once have they responded to our emergencies," says Custer. "We have our own quick-reaction force now." But the private firms are usually cut off from the U.S. military's intelligence network and from information that could minimize risk to their employees. Noel Koch, who oversaw terrorism policy for the Pentagon in the 1980s and now runs TranSecur, a global information-security firm, says private companies "aren't required to have an intelligence collection or analytical capability in house. It's always assumed that the government is going to provide intelligence about threats." That, says Koch, means "they are flying blind, often guessing about places that they shouldn't go."

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