They called the symbol of Abu Ghraib himself, Hajj Ali al-Qaysi, who is now an Iraqi refugee in Amman. Ali al-Qaysi went on a little spiel, denouncing the occupation of Iraq by colonialist governments who have interests that totally oppose the interests of the Iraqi people (and rightly so). But that's not what caught my ears. What really caught my ears was his mentioning that there were mercenaries present at the base that worked for American corporations. He mentioned the names of 2 corporations, but one of them bore the name "Titan". He said that the mercenaries' primary goal was to "extract information" from the prisoners, all the while treating them "inhumanely". The corporations were obviously up to no good as they were doing this; furthermore, since the Coalition hired them to do their dirty work, then obviously the Coalition was up to no good (that is, it's just a confirmation).
A Google search on "mercenary corporations iraq titan" returned with promising results that would enable us to read further material regarding this war crimes issue. The first came from Indymedia's San Diego outpost, which apparently shouldn't be surprising since the Titan Corporation is based in San Diego. Proof follows:
San Diego based Titan Corporation participates in the detention and torture of Iraqis, as reported in this article from the Manchester Guardian. Graphic photographs showing the torture and sexual abuse of Iraqi prisoners in a US-run prison outside Baghdad emerged yesterday from a military inquiry which has left six soldiers facing a possible court martial and a general under investigation. The scandal has also brought to light the growing and largely unregulated role of private contractors in the interrogation of detainees.
In the report below we quote Gary Myers, a lawyer for one of the accused military policemen, as saying: "We know that CACI and Titan corporations have provided interrogators and that they have in fact conducted interrogations on behalf of the US and have interacted the military police guards at the prison." Titan Corporation, of San Diego, says it supplies only interpreters to the military, not interrogators. In the Taguba report into the scandal, one Titan Corporation translator was admonished for providing false statements to investigators and another was named as a suspect and witness. A Titan official said the company had so far not been contacted by the military about the investigation.
Why the heck, then, would the Coalition, supposedly made of two of the strongest armies (with the U.S. being the strongest) in the world, hire contractors? Contractors are civilians, and work for civilian corporations. Therefore, they have no jurisdiction under military law, as per the Guardian:
One civilian contractor was accused of raping a young male prisoner but has not been charged because military law has no jurisdiction over him. Hired guns from a wide array of private security firms are playing a central role in the US-led occupation of Iraq. The killing of four private contractors in Falluja on March 31 led to the current siege of the city.
But this is the first time the privatisation of interrogation and intelligence-gathering has come to light. The investigation names two US contractors, CACI International Inc and the Titan Corporation, for their involvement in the functioning of Abu Ghraib.
Titan, based in San Diego, describes itself as a "a leading provider of comprehensive information and communications products, solutions and services for national security". It recently won a big contract for providing translation services to the US army, and its involvement in Abu Ghraib is believed to have been to provide translators. CACI, which has headquarters in Virginia, claims on its website to "help America's intelligence community collect, analyse and share global information in the war on terrorism". Neither responded to calls for comment yesterday.
According to the military report on Abu Ghraib, both played an important role at the prison...
At one point, the investigators say: "A CACI instructor was terminated because he allowed and/or instructed MPs who were not trained in interrogation techniques to facilitate interrogations by setting conditions which were neither authorised [nor] in accordance with applicable regulations/policy."
Colonel Jill Morgenthaler, speaking for central command, told the Guardian: "One contractor was originally included with six soldiers, accused for his treatment of the prisoners, but we had no jurisdiction over him. It was left up to the contractor on how to deal with him."
She did not specify the accusation facing the contractor, but according to several sources with detailed knowledge of the case, he raped an Iraqi inmate in his mid-teens.
Col Morgenthaler said the charges against the six soldiers included "indecent acts, for ordering detainees to publicly masturbate; maltreatment, for non-physical abuse, piling inmates into nude pyramids and taking pictures of them nude; battery, for shoving and stepping on detainees; dereliction of duty; and conspiracy to maltreat detainees".
One of the soldiers, Staff Sgt Chip Frederick is accused of posing in a photograph sitting on top of a detainee, committing an indecent act and with assault for striking detainees - and ordering detainees to strike each other.
He told CBS: "We had no support, no training whatsoever. And I kept asking my chain of command for certain things ... like rules and regulations."
His lawyer, Gary Myers, told the Guardian that Sgt Frederick had not had the opportunity to read the Geneva Conventions before being put on guard duty, a task he was not trained to perform.
Mr Myers said the role of the private contractors in Abu Ghraib are central to the case.
"I think it creates a laissez faire environment that is completely inappropriate. If these individuals engaged in crimes against an Iraq national - who has jurisdiction over such a crime?", Mr Myers asked.
"It's insanity," said Robert Baer, a former CIA agent, who has examined the case, and is concerned about the private contractors' free-ranging role. "These are rank amateurs and there is no legally binding law on these guys as far as I could tell. Why did they let them in the prison?"
However, for a more recent account, we have Jose Gomez, a member of the United Nations working group on Mercenaries, a group which was accused by al-Qaysi (see above) for not doing enough in Iraq. The ZNet article he wrote apparently has some solid evidence that shows that indeed the contractors/mercenaries/"corsairs" (pirates) were making good on their contracts and deconstructing, dividing and disseminating the Iraqi people. He presents excellent arguments and remarks from the introduction to the conclusion of his findings, claiming that this is a mark of globalization, where economy has taken to a global scale, with increased privatization of commodities, among them being force (i.e. contractors like Titan, CACI, and Aegis). Gomez confirms that
The thousands of armed contractors operating in Iraq represent one of the major problems in the reconstruction of the country for they carry out their activities without any control or accountability.
US authorities... affirmed that "contract personnel of the US are under the direction of the Coalition and are subject to criminal jurisdiction in US Federal Courts", not one single civil employee allegedly implicated in the abuses perpetrated in Abu Ghraib has been investigated impartially by a US Federal Court or has been legally sanctioned.
In the presentation of the 2006 Amnesty International report in Washington, the USA Director emphasized that United States were creating the equivalent of Guantanamo "- a virtual rule free zone in which perpetrators are not likely to be held accountable for breaking the law". He said that "business outsourcing may increase efficiency, but war outsourcing may facilitate impunity". He added that "illegal behavior of contractors and of those who designed and carried out U.S. torture policies and the reluctance of the government to bring perpetrators to justice are tarnishing the reputation of the United States, hurting the image of American troops and contributing to anti-American sentiment".
In light of the mercenary contractors and the recent globalization argument, we can formulate that indeed the U.S. government is making sure that these major corporations, in the time of "need" (as made by the neocon administration), are funded to do their dirty work in Iraq: corporations from Halliburton to Titan, etc... all the while to maintain the global economic inequality gap that separates the U.S. from all other nations, and to furthermore exploit the populace of the world's poor. This issue is horrifying to the extent that even development programs in Iraq look as untrustworthy as the contracted corporations that are messing up Iraq and getting paid as they do. But I for one am against this farcical war on Iraq, and I will still oppose it, contractors or no contractors, as the Coalition and the contractors are jointly occupying Iraq and messing it up. And now, the war is coming to a sad and grim head as child mortality rises (e-Iraq). While my short-term hope is waning, I know that eventually, something will happen that will end in the delivering of justice against all those who seek to oppress, torture, and humiliate those who are defenseless, and at the same time spin the biggest and most grandiose of lies to justify these actions against a populace that has not seen a peaceful and stable existence ever since the U.S. government became involved in Iraq...
Salaam, from Saracen
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