Backtalk: Hold contractors accountable

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Hold contractors accountable
By Glenn Schmitt

Recent news stories have reported that employees of private security companies under contract to the U.S. government routinely injure or even kill innocent Iraqis.

When I served as a judge advocate in Iraq in 2005, I witnessed the “Rambo” attitude of these contractors on numerous occasions. It was clear to me that their view of the use of force and the rules of engagement that applied to me as a soldier were very different.

Some commentators have suggested that it’s time to allow the Iraqi government to investigate, arrest and try contractors for alleged crimes against Iraqi civilians. These suggestions are problematic, at best.

No one believes that the current state of the Iraqi court system would afford a trial to an American with all the due-process guarantees that we have come to expect from a court of law. Proposals by some members of Congress to amend the military’s criminal code, the Uniform Code of Military Justice, to apply it to contractors, while understandable, are equally misguided.

The trial of civilians by a military jury would stand the notion of civilian control of the military on its head. And prior versions of the UCMJ under which the military did court-martial civilians were held unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in a series of cases beginning in the 1950s. There is little reason to expect that the current court would break with those precedents today.

What also seems to be lost in the current debate is that American law already covers the illegal acts of most contractors in Iraq, even acts of murder. Congress passed the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act of 2000 precisely to address the problems in the news today.


Rest of artiocle at: http://www.armytimes.com/community/opinion/army_backtalk_contractors_071126/