Michael Moore’s latest film (Fahrenheit 911) is refused distribution by Miramax as it deals with the Bush family connections with, among others, the bin Laden family. Shrub the Lesser appears twice on Arabic TV and the war goes on. So much to say, so little time to expose it.
Question, who is the second largest armed force in Iraq? The Poms? The Australians? Beep!! None of the above. The real answer is the private armies contracted by the US government or the CIA to provide "logistical" support. In the past these private armies would be called "militias" or their soldiers "soldiers of fortune". Companies such as Bechtell, Haliburton, Black Water and CACI International hold some of the most lucrative multi million dollar contracts to "protect" US "investments" in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Question, who guards Paul Bremmer and Hamid Khazi? Not US soldiers. Not CIA operatives but private "security" firms. Why is this situation being allowed to happen? If we forget for a moment the already well documented connections between the various members of the Bush cabal and the private companies that have won the major "reconstruction" projects in the Middle East, we find a much more politically pragmatic reason.
For those of us who have endured the privatisation of services and tried to find out how much the real cost of the contracts are, we found out about this marvelous legal construction called "commercial in confidence". This legalese is deployed to alert us to the fact that our government representatives have entered into contracts that the contractor doesn’t want made public and that the government doesn’t want to expose because it will reveal the real cost to our communities and thus become politically damaging for them.
In regards to the latest atrocities being committed behind closed doors in the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, we find the US government apologists making lots of noise about how their "soldiers" would never do something like that and how that if they did they would face "disciplinary measures". The media then dutifully focuses on the role of the legitimate armed forces (who arguably are illegally occupying Iraq – but that’s another story) and the role they may have played in these recent events. We have Shrub stating that those who commit these "atrocities" are "not the Americans I know" (and lets not forget that during his term as Governor of Texas more prisoners were executed than during the terms of any other Governor before him).
So who are the Americans that would do these things? Well for a start many of them are not Americans. Many of them are, for instance, ex South African mercenaries who literally escaped during the period just preceding Mandela’s ascension or the CIA trained ‘mercs’ who fought in South America or Russian ex-soldiers who "retired" during the period we know as Glasnost. All these varieties of "skilled" labour looking for a market to be "created" for their services. What better market than that of perpetual war on a global scale.
Some of these ex-soldiers have been entrepreneurial enough to set up their own private firms offering such services as "intelligence solutions", "tactical and military services" and "human source intelligence". One of the most profitable (and publicly listed) companies is CACI International who, guess what … run the Abu Ghraib prison.
With an income of over US$1billion in 2001-2002, CACI is rated as number 19 in the US government contractor list per value of contracts awarded and ranks 71 in the 2003 VarBusiness top 500 US companies. It has 9000 employees scattered across the globe and its Founder, CEO and President, "Dr." Jack London, is an ex US Navy man who held on to that great US tradition of going his own way and making a buck or two.
The wonderful arrangement "Dr." Jack and his ilk have with the US government (and lets not pretend that similar arrangements don’t exist within the British context) is that their contracts are protected by "commercial in confidence" arrangements that prevent even the US Senate from finding out exactly how much they are paid, what exactly they do and exactly how many they have doing it. A perfect arrangement for the formation of secret government operations that can be kept at arm’s length and an arrangement under which the politicians and bureaucrats can honestly say "we didn’t know". The perfect cover.
The second largest contingent of warriors in Iraq and Afghanistan are the private contractors – mercenaries - whose actions are protected from full and public scrutiny by legal constructions that serve the purposes of the oppressors. In previous times their activities would have been associated with the SS, the Russian Secret Police or the death squads of Argentina and Chile. The CEO of CACI made this worrisome statement in relation to the "alleged" events his company was involved in. In a press release put out after these events came to light, he said "for security reasons, we do not disclose or discus the assignments or locations of our employees around the world". The press release had the sub title "No information on improper behaviour reported to company by US government: Company does not tolerate illegal behaviour by employees". How could the US government complain, the company doesn’t tell them what it is, exactly, that they do and even if the government was to do so CACI would claim … "commercial in confidence". The perfect privatisation of war!
So while we know exactly where the US, British and Australian armies are and what it is they are doing and how many are doing it, private companies such as CACI are under no compulsion to disclose their activities. No wonder it is easy to blame the soldiers who may have become caught up in the war crimes committed during the illegal occupation of Iraq. Rummy, Shrub, Colon and Condy along with their Australian and British counterparts can spit chips all day long about how upset they are over these acts and how disturbed they are to think they may have been committed by their troops. But while we continue to allow these types of people and their sycophantic hangers on to rule us, we are in no position to complain.
The wonderful thing about Fascism is that it welds together the best of capitalism and brute force and provides the most effective vehicle for the accumulation of wealth for those willing to sell their souls. As a political arrangement Fascism is quite adept at silencing its critics by cutting off the means to disseminate information (control, directly or indirectly of the media), opening up new markets (privatising infrastructure and services), while providing "legitimate" government control over the means of sanction (developing overwhelming police and armed forces) and by passing laws designed to keep the population in fear (detention without recourse, surveillance techniques and laws to curb public dissent). While it is fair to say we haven’t yet become a fascist state it is equally fair to say that we are experiencing the pre-cursors to that time. While previous fascist regimes were less ‘civilised’ in their approach, their modern day counterparts come dressed in suits and velvet gloves while they "network" with their colleagues in the specialist areas they need to maintain control over.
The apparent disparity between the refusal of a multinational movie conglomerate to distribute a film and the "commercial in confidence" smokescreen deployed to conceal the most atrocious acts of the Imperialists are indicators of the real state of politics and the intentions of those who would rule us. There is no time left. Unless we speak out, take to the streets, ring, write, fax and e-mail our so-called political leaders with the disgust we feel over these matters, nothing will change.
The question for me is, how will I respond when my grandchildren ask "what did you do to prevent this?" Ask yourself the same question and answer it honestly because it is the most important question facing us at this time. Your grandchildren and the grandchildren of the prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison deserve the only moral response possible.