US contractors sold 12 yr-old girls in Bosnia. So this stuff is not new...

[ithacan]

The whole issue with contractors that we're seeing in Iraq should come as absolutely no surprise.

The private security firm that the US relied on in Bosnia -- DynCorp -- set up brothels and imprisoned and sold Bosnian and other girls and women to serve US soldiers and others...

Not quite the same, but the very problematic nature of privatizing military functions is very clear, and it did not begin under W.

- - - - - - - - - - - -
Outside the law
By Robert Capps

June 26, 2002 | Ben Johnston recoiled in horror when he heard one
of his fellow helicopter mechanics at a U.S. Army base near Tuzla,
Bosnia, brag one day in early 2000: "My girl's not a day over 12."

The man who uttered the statement -- a man in his 60s, by Johnston's
estimate -- was not talking fondly about his granddaughter or
daughter or another relative. He was bragging about the preteen he
had purchased from a local brothel. Johnston, who'd gone to work as a
civilian contractor mechanic for DynCorp Inc. after a six-year stint
in the Army, had worked on helicopters for years, and he'd heard a
lot of hangar talk. But never anything like this.

More and more often in those months, the talk among his co-workers
had turned to boasts about owning prostitutes -- how young they were,
how good they were in bed, how much they cost. And it wasn't just
boasting: Johnston often saw co-workers out on the streets of
Dubrave, the closest town to the base, with the young female consorts
that inspired their braggadocio. They'd bring them to company
functions, and on one occasion, Johnston says, over to his house for
dinner. Occasionally he'd see the young girls riding bikes and
playing with other children, with their "owners" standing by,
watching.

<snip>

So Johnston says he complained to managers at DynCorp, the Reston,
Va.-based company that had hired him to be a mechanic at the U.S.
Army's Camp Comanche in Bosnia, and to the Army Criminal
Investigation Command (known by the acronym CID). In the end, two
DynCorp employees would be fired for the activities Johnston
complained about -- including site supervisor John Hirtz -- but not
before Johnston himself lost his job. And nobody would face criminal charges of any kind for their involvement with the young prostitutes.
<more>
http://archive.salon.com/news/feature/2002/06/26/bosnia / *****

*****
Crime without punishment

Investigators knew employees for U.S. military contractors in Bosnia
bought women as sex slaves. But because of legal loopholes and
bureaucratic confusion, no one was prosecuted.

- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Robert Capps

June 27, 2002 | In early 2000, the U.S. Army received information
that private contractors working at a base near Tuzla, Bosnia, were
purchasing women from local brothels. Some of the women may have been
as young as 12, and some were being held as sex slaves, the sources
alleged.

Investigations by the Bosnian police and the U.S. Army confirmed the
gist of those reports, turning up significant evidence of wrongdoing
by at least seven men -- including at least one supervisor --
employed by Reston, Va.-based DynCorp. Despite those findings,no one ever faced criminal charges or prosecution in either Bosnia or the United States.

The investigation at Camp Comanche in Bosnia is at the heart of a
lawsuit filed by former DynCorp mechanic Ben Johnston, who says
DynCorp wrongfully fired him for assisting the Army Criminal
Investigation Command in its probe of the camp. The investigation and
its results, along with allegations made in a similar whistleblower
lawsuit against DynCorp in the U.K., have brought to light a critical loophole in efforts to police the shadowy world of private military firms, a booming industry that's now worth almost $100 billion a year.

Thanks to a combination of factors -- the jurisdictional conflicts of
American law, the immunity provided to these contractors by international treaties, and the underdeveloped police agencies in
host countries -- many crimes committed by private military personnel
while based overseas will likely go unpunished, just as they did in
Bosnia.
<more>
http://archive.salon.com/news/feature/2002/06/27/military/

[boobooday]

1. Oh the moral high ground again

This is the reason for the privitization of our military. To get rid of accountability.

http://www.wgoeshome.com

[bobbieinok]

2. majority of people in Bosnia and Kosovo = Muslim

[Arbustosux]

3. Yeah, but that was Clinton's fault

this isn't....can you see the difference? :)

[blm]

4. The fault is the privatization of the Army as pursued by Cheney

when he was Sec of Defense for their DynCorp and Halliburton buddies. Pure fascism.

[ithacan]

5. yes, this all began under the republicans

in the 1980s. Unfortunately Clinton did not or could not halt this move.

And now it's full blown. And we're reaping the consequences.

As are the people in all of the places where the US is sending these contractors: Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq, etc...

[SarahB]

6. Sick f*cks

I really hate this damned world sometimes. :(

[bigtree]

7. My two pennies on DynCorp

"If something is needed, and we have it, they call us." says CEO Paul Lombardi of DynCorp, which has donated approximately $70,000 to the Republican party. http://www.dyncorp.com/

As Dave Baum from Wired Magazines reported, "The DynCorp outfit contracted to train the new Iraqi police force. Government contracts account for 98% of DynCorp's business. DynCorp contracts with more than 30 U.S. government agencies, including the Department of Defense, State Department, FBI, Drug Enforcement Agency, Bureau of Prisons, and the Office of National Drug Policy. http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.02/gunhire.html

About half of DynCorp's revenue comes from the Pentagon and many of its employees are retired military men. The rest of the contracts are mostly with civilian government agencies; more than 20,000 employees in more than 550 locations.

Baum notes that DynCorp troops bodyguard Afghan president Hamid Karzai. DynCorp manages the border posts between the US and Mexico, many of the Pentagon's weapons-testing ranges, and the entire Air Force One fleet of presidential planes and helicopters.

During the Persian Gulf War, DynCorp employees serviced and rearmed American combat choppers, and DynCorp shipped and deployed equipment and ammunition to the Middle East in preparation for war with Iraq.

DynCorp inventories everything seized by the Justice Department's Asset Forfeiture Program, runs the Naval Air Warfare Center at Patuxent River, Maryland, and is producing the smallpox and anthrax vaccines the government may use to inoculate everyone in the United States.

The de-mining of Bosnia has been contracted out to DynCorp. The International Police Task Force that is training the native police in Bosnia & Haiti are DynCorp employees. Many of the U. N. peacekeepers in Kosovo are civilian DynCorp employees. DynCorp also operates in Bolivia, Peru, Guatemala, and Columbia, managing the United States government's counter narcotics aviation program, contracted to DynCorp Aerospace Technology for approximately $99 million.

DynCorp has been criticized in the past for its involvement with Plan Colombia, which entailed spraying herbicide on cocaine plants in Colombia. A class action suit was filed against DynCorp by a group of Ecuadorean peasants claiming that the chemicals have drifted across the border, killing children, and destroying legitimate crops.

"U.S. taxpayers are unwittingly funding private wars with private soldiers.", said Rep. Janice Schakowsky, D-Ill.

One concern is that the employees of DynCorp operate without any government oversight. The overriding risk is that the corp’s bottom line may take precedence over military priorities.

DynCorp was compelled to drop its planned appeal of an employment tribunal's ruling that the corporation unfairly dismissed a woman who outed the corporation-supplied U.N. peacekeepers in Bosnia for participating in child prostitution and associating with Balkan prostitution rings, in order to gain the $50 million U.S. State Department contract to provide the police officers to Iraq.

In a separate lawsuit Dyncorp settled out of court with another former employee, Ben Johnston, a mechanic, who alleged the firm's staff engaged in inhumane behavior and bought women, forged passports and traded illegal weapons. U.S. personnel recruited by the firm to work in Iraq will reportedly have to pledge not to get involved in human trafficking. http://www.fwweekly.com/issues/2001-12-06/feature.html/page1.html


Me Book

[KoKo]

8. Macho Men turned loose with "unlimited availabilty" will turn to sex

slaves to feed their power. Look at today's breed of CEO's of Corporations. The younger the better, and it feeds their ego to be "Big Sugar Daddy" to helpless "little ones."

The tenderness of their expression in acquiring these "daughter substitutes" shouldn't be overlooked. It's a psychological phenomenon, but has existed throughout history. Sugar Daddies and their Sugars. Where ever this is allowed. :shrug:

How do we deal with it? Do we need "international laws to stop it?" Who will inforce those laws when even America won't sign up for an International Court or abide by the Geneva Convention?