Zia Mian, "The Three US Armies in Iraq," Antiwar.com, January 30, 2007.

The third American army in Iraq is an invisible army, driven not by duty or greed, but by need. An investigation by the Chicago Tribune revealed some of the ugly truth about the subcontractors that are paid to do the menial work for the bigger U.S. and other military contractors. An international network of such companies has apparently brought thousands of laborers to Iraq. The Tribune reporters found that "subcontractors and brokers routinely seized workers' passports, deceived them about their safety or contract terms, and, in at least one case, allegedly tried to force terrified men into Iraq under the threat of cutting off their food and water." The U.S. military has confirmed that laws banning human trafficking have been violated and has ordered contractors "to return passports that have been illegally confiscated from laborers on U.S. bases."

The Iraq War is coming up on its fourth anniversary. Increasingly embattled, even desperate, President Bush has decided to send another 21,500 American troops into the fight. They will join over 150,000 U.S. soldiers already deployed in Iraq.

[...]

U.S. troop numbers in Vietnam increased from less than 20,000 in early 1964 to more than half a million by 1969. But the difference between the force levels – and the two situations -- is a lot less than most people think. There is, after all, not just one U.S. Army in Iraq.

In December 2006, according to the Washington Post, "There are about 100,000 government contractors operating in Iraq, not counting subcontractors, a total that is approaching the size of the U.S. military force there, according to the military's first census of the growing population of civilians operating in the battlefield."

These contractors, many founded and staffed by former American soldiers, provide essential services for the U.S. military, including interpreters who go out with military patrols, intelligence analysis, security guards, interrogating prisoners (including during the torture at Abu Ghraib), maintaining and even operating military equipment, constructing military bases, and cooking and cleaning for soldiers. Soldiers would ordinarily perform these jobs. Many contractor employees live with U.S. troops on military bases. At least 650 have been killed. These numbers suggest that the effective U.S. military commitment to Iraq is already about 250,000 strong and may be significantly larger.

While private military contractors are paid for by the U.S. government, and are an increasingly important part of the U.S. occupation in Iraq (and its military activities elsewhere), they have been subject neither to local law nor U.S. military law. To take but one example, a U.S. military court tried and sentenced some of the American soldiers involved in torture at Abu Ghraib, but the civilian interrogators involved, employed by U.S. contractors, faced no punishment.

According to Peter Singer, an expert on U.S. private military contractors, "Not one contractor of the entire military industry in Iraq has been charged with any crime over the last three and a half years, let alone prosecuted or punished. Given the raw numbers of contractors, let alone the incidents we know about, it boggles the mind."

This may be about to change. A little noted clause in the 2007 Defense Bill, enacted last October, placed contractors under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, the military laws that govern the U.S. armed forces.

[...]

Another former national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski passed an even harsher verdict. Writing in the Washington Post, Brzezinski described the Bush plan for a military "surge" in Iraq as "a political gimmick of limited tactical significance and of no strategic benefit. It is insufficient to win the war militarily. It will engage U.S. forces in bloody street fighting that will not resolve with finality the ongoing turmoil and the sectarian and ethnic strife, not to mention the anti-American insurgency."

For Brzezinski, the war in Iraq was always doomed. He has argued that "America is acting like a colonial power in Iraq. But the age of colonialism is over. Waging a colonial war in the post-colonial age is self-defeating. That is the fatal flaw of Bush's policy."

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