What Were The Consequences Of The Iraq War Contracts

President Barack Obama gave a speech on the 1st September 2010 claiming that Operation Iraqi Freedom was over and that Operation New Dawn was in effect, an operation in which the United States was taking the role of advising and assisting the Iraqi military but only engaging in combat if necessary. Seven months later a report by the Congressional Research Service estimated that as of March that same year, there were approximately 64,253 Department of Defense contract personnel in Iraq, making up 58% of the overall workforce, meaning there were more employees of private companies on the ground than military soldiers. It also found that between 2005 and 2010, $112.1 billion was spent on contracts in Iraq by the federal government. In this work Conrad Molden carefully examines the events that led to awarding of contracts to companies such as Halliburton/KBR and Black Water, and the consequences of their use in an era defined by the War on Terror.

"President Barack Obama gave a speech on the 1st September 2010 claiming that Operation Iraqi Freedom was over and that Operation New Dawn was in effect, an operation in which the United States was taking the role of advising and assisting the Iraqi military but only engaging in combat if necessary. Seven months later a report by the Congressional Research Service estimated that as of March that same year, there were approximately 64,253 Department of Defense contract personnel in Iraq, making up 58% of the overall workforce, meaning there were more employees of private companies on the ground than military soldiers. It also found that between 2005 and 2010, $112.1 billion was spent on contracts in Iraq by the federal government." - From The Introduction

The U.S. and Iraq have signed a Security Agreement calling for the drawdown of U.S. forces from Iraq. Multi-National Force-Iraq has issued a plan for the reduction of forces to 50,000 U.S. troops by Aug. 31, 2010, and a complete withdrawal of forces by the end of 2011. The drawdown from Iraq includes the withdrawal of 128,700 U.S. troops, over 115,000 contractor personnel, the closure or transfer of 295 bases, and the retrograde of over 3.3 million pieces of equipment. This statement focuses on: (1) the extent to which the DoD has planned for the drawdown in accordance with timelines set by the Agreement and presidential directive; and (2) factors that may impact the efficient execution of the drawdown in accordance with established timelines. Illus.

This report examines Department of Defense (DOD) logistical support contracts for troop support services in Iraq and Afghanistan administered through the U.S. Army's Logistics Civil Augmentation Program (LOGCAP), as well as legislative initiatives which may impact the oversight and management of logistical support contracts. LOGCAP is an initiative designed to manage the use of civilian contractors that perform services during times of war and other military mobilization. The first LOGCAP was awarded in 1992. Four LOGCAP contracts have been awarded for combat support services in Iraq and Afghanistan. The current LOGCAP III contractor supports the drawdown in Iraq by providing logistical services, theater transportation, augmentation of maintenance services, and other combat support services.

Under customary international law, conquest does not extinguish pre-existing private property and contract rights. However, the applicability of this classical rule has been restricted in scope and at best it has been applied inconsistently over the last century. This article examines the rationales underlying the rule and the reasons accounting for the uneven and inconsistent application of its prohibition of extinction of private property and contract rights upon conquest. I argue that the primary reason accounting for its uneven and inconsistent application has been to facilitate the political expediency and hegemony of conquering states over weaker and vulnerable states. Hence, courts have held treaties embodying this rule that private property rights shall be inextinguishable upon conquest, are subject to the overriding constraint of their compatibility with national policy during times of war. In the United States, such views have been fortified by judicial attitudes reluctant to use international law to restrain the Executive Branch especially with regard to war time decisions. It follows that the prohibition against extinguishing private property and contract rights upon conquest is more likely honored by conquering states when it is most compatible with their interests. For example, the prohibition is often enforced to secure the private property rights of nationals from a powerful belligerent state who are domiciled in a weaker state vulnerable to conquest. Yet, the private property rights of weaker enemy states are often subject to sequestration or confiscation. It is therefore not surprising that following the U.S.-led conquest of Iraq in the early 2003, most scholarly and press coverage has focused on the status of the foreign corporations' property in Iraq before the war. By contrast, there has been little attention given to the impact of the conquest on the private property and contracts of Iraqi citizens entered into before the war. In addition, the human rights of the Iraqi people for the most part took a back-seat during the conquest and only emerged in significance in the planning of returning sovereign control of the country back to Iraqis. This difference in the application of the rule against extinction of private property rights and contracts upon conquest is not a post-second World War phenomenon but rather a reflection of a more systemic disregard of rights of non-European peoples going back decades in the history of international law. Thus, as Native American ownership of land in early America history was held to have been extinguished upon conquest, and the various peace treaties between the United States and Spain treated Native American ownership of land as mere possession. Similar possession of land by White colonial settlers was held to constitute unimpeachable private property interests upon conquest. While under the classical international law rule, conquest does not extinguish pre-existing private property and contract rights, as a general matter, the municipal law of conquering states often requires the suspension of all contracts, except those of necessity at the beginning of hostilities between states. Thus the national security interests and the political exigencies in preventing free commerce between belligerent states over time modified and relaxed the rule against extinction of private property and contract rights upon conquest. For example, trading with enemy laws in the U.S. and the U.K. authorize the confiscation, and sequestration of the property and contracts of enemy nationals. The rationale for these actions has been to prevent enemy nationals from helping their home state in the war effort. By contrast to the rule prohibiting extinction of private property rights by conquest, the protection of private property and contract rights under military occupation has a much lower threshold. Though the occupying power is required to respect pre-existing private property rights, interferences are permissible where they accord with the requirements laid down under Articles 48, 49, 51, 52, 53, 54, and 56 of the Hague Regulations of the 1907 Hague Convention. However, these provisions do not anticipate all possible scenarios where the private property of enemy state nationals may be interfered with by an occupying power. This arguably gives occupying powers wiggle room to interfere with private property rights in occupied territory much more broadly than conquest does. In addition, expansive readings of the duties of an occupying power under Article 43 of the Hague Regulations have in practice justified broad authority. It is also credible to claim that there are differences in some aspects of the treatment of the private property of the Fascists and Nazis, whom the Allied powers authorized to continue receiving certain payments such as pensions, as opposed to Japanese ultranationalists or Iraqi Baathists. Thus, while the Fascists and Nazis were defeated by conquest and their territory occupied, their private property rights were relatively better protected than those of the defeated Japanese after World War II and more recently those of the Baathists in Iraq after the U.S.-led conquest. In Part Two of the paper, I examine the rule against extinction of private property and contract rights, its rationales and why it has changed over time. In Part 3, I examine how the rule against extinction of private property rights and contracts upon conquest has been most attenuated in situations of non-western states conquered by western states, compared to the conquests among European states. This difference in the extinction of private property rights and contracts upon conquest is, I argue, a systemic expression of the hegemonic power of conquering states that goes back decades in the history of international law. To show that this hegemonic impulse to override private property rights of non-Europeans upon conquest in the history of international law, I discuss a 1905 House of Lords decision that explicitly found the rule against extinction was preempted by the overriding prerogatives of the Crown. I also discuss Indian ownership of territory in colonial America which upon conquest was treated as constituting mere possession, while similar possession of land by White colonial settlers was held to constitute unimpeachable private property interests. Part 4 is the most ambitious part of the paper. I explore whether the conquest of Iraq is exhibiting a parallel process of privileging and protecting foreign economic interests while under-protecting the property rights of Iraqis under the U.S.-led occupation as demonstrated in Part 3. To do so, first I outline the law governing treatment of private property under occupied territory before discussing the variety of claims that Iraqis in general and Iraqi women in particular may bring under the international legal regime to secure their private property rights adversely affected by conquest and occupation. I also discuss the international law governing treatment of Iraqi public assets under occupation and how the "De-Baathification" of Iraq compares and contrasts with similar occupation reconstruction programs in Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and Japan. In Part 4, I also examine the process of transforming the Iraqi economy into an open market economy and illustrate how the doctrine of military necessity, and the political and hegemonic objectives of transforming Iraq have justified expansive powers of the United States as an occupying power beyond those contemplated by Article 43 of the Hague Regulations. These powers include the authority to expropriate private property rights, and the privatization of formerly publicly owned wealth in an unprecedented transformation of the Iraq economy into a market economy. This Section ends with an examination of whether a future Iraqi government would be bound by the decisions of the U.S.-led occupation, and the alternative forums that Iraqis may turn to for remedies as a result of adverse consequences to their economic interests and their limitations that these alternatives pose.

The drawdown from Iraq is a complex operation of significant magnitude. Established drawdown timelines dictate a reduction in forces to 50,000 troops by August 31, 2010, and a complete withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq by December 31, 2011. While the Dept. of Defense (DoD) has made progress toward meeting these goals, a large amount of equipment, personnel, and bases remain to be drawn down. Moreover, escalating U.S. involvement in Afghanistan may increase the pressure on DoD to efficiently execute the drawdown. This report examined: (1) the extent to which DoD has planned for the drawdown from Iraq in accordance with set timelines; and (2) factors that may impact the efficient execution of the drawdown. Includes recomm. Illus.

The dramatic contrast between expectations and reality in the Iraq war has sparked a wide-ranging debate over "what went wrong." According to many critics, civilian planners made a series of critical mistakes that have turned what might have been a successful war and occupation into a fiasco. The most common critique takes roughly the following form: * Though the war plan to topple Saddam was brilliant, planning for the peace was woefully insufficient. * The United States did not have a sufficient number of troops to restore order in Iraq after the U.S. invasion and also failed to develop a plan to stop the widespread looting that occurred in the immediate aftermath of the fall of Baghdad. * The administration erred in disbanding the Iraq army, which might have played a valuable role in restoring security to the country. * The United States erred further in its harsh decrees proscribing members of the Ba'ath party from participation in Iraq's public life-a decision, like that which disbanded the army, needlessly antagonizing the Sunnis and pushing many of them into the insurgency. * The Bush administration needlessly antagonized the international community-including both the United Nations and our European allies-and made it much more difficult to obtain help for the occupation and reconstruction of the country. * The Bush administration was too slow in making funds available for reconstruction and created a labyrinth bureaucracy for the awarding of contracts. These revisions, the authors argue, are themselves in need of revising. Though the critics have made a number of telling points against the conduct of the war and the occupation, the basic problems faced by the United States flowed from the enterprise itself, and not primarily from mistakes in execution along the way. The most serious problems facing Iraq and its American occupiers- "endemic violence, a shattered state, a nonfunctioning economy, and a decimated society"-were virtually inevitable consequences that flowed from the breakage of the Iraqi state. The critique stressing the insufficient number of forces employed in the invasion, though valid abstractly, exaggerates the number and type of forces actually available for the conduct of the war. Once account is taken of the exigencies of a multi-year campaign, the stresses on active and reserve forces created by maintaining troops in the 108,000 to 150,000 range, and the unrealism of assuming significant allied contributions (given the opposition of public opinion to the war in most allied states), it would have been impossible to generate force levels in the 300,000 to 400,000 range called for by many critics. Plans for "Phase 4" operations, which were given little attention before the war, failed to anticipate the most serious problems facing U.S. forces after the fall of Baghdad-persistent anarchy and the emergence of a raging insurgency. This was a mistake, as critics point out, but it is very doubtful that U.S. forces could have gotten a handle on the problem even had these contingencies received the planning they deserved.

The Iraq War and its Consequences is the first and only book that brings together more than 30 Nobel Peace laureates and eminent scholars to offer opinions, analyses and insights on the war that has drawn both widespread opposition and strong support. In conclusion, there are two sermons related to the war by Gunnar Stalsett, the Bishop of Oslo.

In 2003, just before the start of the US invasion of Iraq, military planners predicted that the mission’s success would depend on using diverse sources for their workforce. While thousands of US troops were needed to secure victory in the field, large numbers of civilian contractors – many from poor countries in Africa and Asia – were recruited to provide a range of services for the occupying forces. In Contract Workers, Risk, and the War in Iraq Kevin Thomas provides a compelling account of the recruitment of Sierra Leonean workers and their reasons for embracing the risks of migration. In recent years US military bases have outsourced contracts for services to private military corporations who recruit and capitalize on cheaper low-skilled workers. Thomas argues that for people from post-conflict countries such as Sierra Leone, where there are high levels of poverty and acute unemployment, the opportunity to improve their situation outweighs the risk of migration to war-torn Iraq. Examining migrants’ experiences in their native country, at US bases, and after their return to Sierra Leone, Thomas deftly explores the intricate dynamics of risk, sets up a theoretical framework for future researchers, and offers policy recommendations for decision-makers and practitioners in the field. Incorporating the voices of Sierra Leonean contractors who were manipulated and exploited, Contract Workers, Risk, and the War in Iraq turns the spotlight on a subject that has remained on the periphery of history and reveals an unexpected consequence of the War on Terror.

Mercenaries are more powerful than experts realize, a grave oversight. Those who assume they are cheap imitations of national armed forces invite disaster because for-profit warriors are a wholly different genus and species of fighter. Private military companies such as the Wagner Group are more like heavily armed multinational corporations than the Marine Corps. Their employees are recruited from different countries, and profitability is everything. Patriotism is unimportant, and sometimes a liability. Unsurprisingly, mercenaries do not fight conventionally, and traditional war strategies used against them may backfire.