Middle East OnlineMay 27, 2008. In a stunning accountability failure, out of $8.2 billion in U.S. taxpayer funded defense contracts for Iraq, $7.7 billion seems to be missing.
Sarah Stillman, Truthdig. May 2, 2008. With American fast food readily available to U.S. troops, their expanding waistlines make a good metaphor for the general engorgement of the war.
Lucinda Marshall, Feminist Peace Network AlterNet: PEEK. April 30, 2008. Whistleblowers report on the outrageous misuse of resources by contractors in Iraq.
Jeremy Scahill, The Nation. April 10, 2008. As a translator who fled Saddam becomes the face of a "crackdown" on contractors, Blackwater is rewarded with another year in Iraq.
Tim Shorrock, CorpWatch. December 6, 2007. The Bush administration is launching a new government agency that will rely heavily on private security contractors to conduct surveillance in the U.S.
Max Blumenthal, AlterNet. December 1, 2007. Anti-immigration zealot and GOP presidential candidate Tom Tancredo hired what he often refers to as "criminal aliens" to renovate his Colorado house.
Norman Solomon, AlterNet. October 16, 2007. A real hazard of preoccupations with Blackwater is that it will become a scapegoat for what is profoundly and fundamentally wrong with the U.S. effort and mission.
Jeremy Scahill, The Nation. September 28, 2007. So far Blackwater has only received a slap on the wrist after killing innocent civilians. Are the U.S. and Iraqi governments finally ready to send them packing?
Robert Scheer, Truthdig. September 19, 2007. Why doesn't the Iraqi government have the explicit legal power to expel or adjudicate the U.S.-contracted troops that are killing its citizens?
Jeremy Scahill, Indypendent. August 13, 2007. Since launching the "global war on terror," the administration has funneled billions of public dollars to "private contractors" and more than doubled the size of the occupation with these hired guns.
R.J. Hillhouse, The Nation. July 31, 2007. Private corporations are now a major staple of national intelligence and are heavily involved in producing the most important and most sensitive national security document -- the President's Daily Brief.
Jeremy Scahill, Tomdispatch.com. May 1, 2007. The Democrats' plan does almost nothing to address the second largest force in Iraq -- the estimated 126,000 private military "contractors" who will stay put there as long as Congress continues funding the war.
