Slate: Hired Guns - What to do about military contractors run amok

[MetaTrope]

http://slate.msn.com/id/2098571/

The ambush and gruesome killing of four U.S. contractors in Fallujah, Iraq, has sparked some of the most intense combat since the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime last spring. It has also brought the actions of private military contractors—hired by the U.S. government to provide extra manpower and firepower in Iraq—into sharp focus, with reports that they are fighting their own battles with their own weapons, helicopters, and intelligence networks.

Military contracting in wartime is nothing new. The military depends on a vast support network of civilians to feed, clothe, equip, and train the forces. Indeed, today's U.S. military couldn't function without civilian contractors to troubleshoot its high-tech equipment. What is new is the extent to which these contractors are conducting combat operations in Iraq; rather than the purely support functions they have performed during recent missions in Bosnia, Kosovo, and Afghanistan. This shift raises a number of problems for the U.S. government, with which the Pentagon is only now beginning to wrestle—principally, how to control these contractors and ensure that their actions under fire further the national interest.

The first set of problems arises from the legal status of contractors. Armed contractors—like the four men ambushed in Fallujah last week—fall into an international legal gray zone. They aren't "noncombatants" (as unarmed contractors are) under the 4th Geneva Convention, because they carry weapons and act on behalf of the U.S. government. However, they're also not "lawful combatants" under the 3rd Geneva Convention, because they don't wear uniforms or answer to a military command hierarchy. These armed contractors don't even fit the legal definition of mercenaries, because that definition requires that they work for a foreign government in a war zone, in which their own country isn't part of the fight. Legally speaking, they actually fall into the same gray area as the unlawful combatants detained at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

[easyreader]

1. Aren't regular G.I.s offended by these guys?

I was thinking about this yesterday. These guys are ex-military who are probably pretty damn good at what they do, but don't want to make what the gov is willing to pay them (legally) so they go to these private companies and make a ton of cash for themselves and the companies they work for. I'm sure the money pipes from the US govt to these contracting companies are pretty large. 1 billion a week has to be going somewhere.

If I was a regular soldier I would be pretty pissed off that these ringers were getting paid so much more than me.