Blackwater Down = asking the ancient question of “Who guards the guardians?”

[L. Coyote]

Blackwater Down
BY Scott Horton - Sep 28, 2007
http://www.harpers.org/archive/2007/09/hbc-90001305


Yesterday I sat in a conference room overlooking the Hudson River Valley in the United States Military Academy at West Point listening to an impressive array of military lawyers discuss the issues associated with the war on terror. One question kept asserting itself, even though it was missing from the formal agenda: “What are we going to do about the contractors?” As one retired JAG put it, “their conduct is dangerously undercutting the military’s performance of its counter-insurgency mission.” Another young Marine major referred to Blackwater’s conduct on September 16 as another demonstration of their practice of “spray and pray.”

“Lighting up an entire city block because a car engine backfires,” he said, “doesn’t protect lives; it endangers the lives of American soldiers performing a mission in Iraq.” Contractors, it was acknowledged, help the military perform its mission in many important ways. But contractors were also introducing terrible new problems that were not being effectively addressed.

It struck me as a repeat performance, because a day earlier I met with a group of Congressmen in the grand hearing room of the Agriculture Committee in the Longworth Building in Washington, and heard the same concerns. Underlying these concerns is a sense that the contractors themselves control the contract relationship. That concern is fueled by the really extraordinary steps taken by some government agencies to provide cover for the contractors when they screw up, as well as by the extraordinary terms the contractors have obtained.

Indeed, those asking the ancient question of “Who guards the guardians?” are going to have a field day with the State Department’s interim report, which is described in today’s Washington Post (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/27/AR2007092702498.html). It observes ......