Contractors behaving badly mean headaches for US

RICHARD LARDNER
AP, 12/19/2010

WASHINGTON (AP) - At two in the morning on Sept. 9, 2005, five DynCorp International security guards assigned to Afghan President Hamid Karzai's protective detail returned to their compound drunk, with a prostitute in tow. Less than a week later, three of these same guards got drunk again, this time in the VIP lounge of the Kabul airport while awaiting a flight to Thailand.

"They had been intoxicated, loud and obnoxious," according to an internal company report of the incident, which noted that Afghanistan's deputy director for elections and a foreign diplomat were also in the lounge. "Complaints were made regarding the situation." DynCorp fired the three guards.
Such episodes represent the headaches that U.S. contractors can cause in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere. They are indispensable to the State Department's mission overseas, handling security, transportation, construction, food service and more. But when hired hands behave badly - or break the law - they cast a cloud over the American presence.

Documents obtained by The Associated Press under the Freedom of Information Act describe previously undisclosed offenses committed by more than 200 contract employees in Afghanistan, Iraq and other countries between 2004 and 2008. They were working under a broad State Department security services contract shared by DynCorp of Falls Church, Va., Triple Canopy of Reston, Va., and the company formerly known as Blackwater Worldwide - Xe Services of Moyock, N.C.

Most of the infractions, which include excessive drinking, drug use, sexual misconduct, and mishandling weapons, were violations of corporate and U.S. policies that probably went unnoticed by ordinary Afghans and Iraqis. But other offenses played out in public, undermining U.S. efforts in both countries and raising questions about how carefully job candidates are screened...

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Abu Ghraib abuse photos 'show rape' of women and boys

Photographs of alleged prisoner abuse which Barack Obama is attempting to censor include images of apparent rape and sexual abuse, it has emerged.

By Duncan Gardham, Security Correspondent and Paul Cruickshank
28 May 2009
The Guardian Newspaper

A previous image of Iraq prison abuse

At least one picture shows an American soldier apparently raping a female prisoner while another is said to show a male translator raping a male detainee.

Further photographs are said to depict sexual assaults on prisoners with objects including a truncheon, wire and a phosphorescent tube.

Another apparently shows a female prisoner having her clothing forcibly removed to expose her breasts.

Detail of the content emerged from Major General Antonio Taguba, the former army officer who conducted an inquiry into the Abu Ghraib jail in Iraq.

Allegations of rape and abuse were included in his 2004 report but the fact there were photographs was never revealed. He has now confirmed their existence in an interview with the Daily Telegraph.

The graphic nature of some of the images may explain the US President’s attempts to block the release of an estimated 2,000 photographs from prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan despite an earlier promise to allow them to be published...

Among the graphic statements, which were later released under US freedom of information laws, is that of Kasim Mehaddi Hilas in which he says: “I saw [name of a translator] ******* a kid, his age would be about 15 to 18 years. The kid was hurting very bad and they covered all the doors with sheets. Then when I heard screaming I climbed the door because on top it wasn’t covered and I saw [name] who was wearing the military uniform, putting his **** in the little kid’s ***…. and the female soldier was taking pictures.”

The translator was an American Egyptian who is now the subject of a civil court case in the US.

Three detainees, including the alleged victim, refer to the use of a phosphorescent tube in the sexual abuse and another to the use of wire, while the victim also refers to part of a policeman’s “stick” all of which were apparently photographed.

Israeli soldiers admit killing Palestinian civilians

Not that any one of us should be surprised by this news.

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IDF in Gaza: Killing civilians, vandalism, and lax rules of engagement

_{By Amos Harel, Haaretz Correspondent
3/19/2009}

During Operation Cast Lead, Israeli forces killed Palestinian civilians under permissive rules of engagement and intentionally destroyed their property, say soldiers who fought in the offensive.

The soldiers are graduates of the Yitzhak Rabin pre-military preparatory course at Oranim Academic College in Tivon. Some of their statements made on Feb. 13 will appear Thursday and Friday in Haaretz. Dozens of graduates of the course who took part in the discussion fought in the Gaza operation.

The speakers included combat pilots and infantry soldiers. Their testimony runs counter to the Israel Defense Forces' claims that Israeli troops observed a high level of moral behavior during the operation. The session's transcript was published this week in the newsletter for the course's graduates.

The testimonies include a description by an infantry squad leader of an incident where an IDF sharpshooter mistakenly shot a Palestinian mother and her two children. "There was a house with a family inside .... We put them in a room. Later we left the house and another platoon entered it, and a few days after that there was an order to release the family. They had set up positions upstairs. There was a sniper position on the roof," the soldier said.

"The platoon commander let the family go and told them to go to the right. One mother and her two children didn't understand and went to the left, but they forgot to tell the sharpshooter on the roof they had let them go and it was okay, and he should hold his fire and he ... he did what he was supposed to, like he was following his orders."

According to the squad leader: "The sharpshooter saw a woman and children approaching him, closer than the lines he was told no one should pass. He shot them straight away. In any case, what happened is that in the end he killed them.

"I don't think he felt too bad about it, because after all, as far as he was concerned, he did his job according to the orders he was given. And the atmosphere in general, from what I understood from most of my men who I talked to ... I don't know how to describe it .... The lives of Palestinians, let's say, is something very, very less important than the lives of our soldiers. So as far as they are concerned they can justify it that way," he said.

Another squad leader from the same brigade told of an incident where the company commander ordered that an elderly Palestinian woman be shot and killed; she was walking on a road about 100 meters from a house the company had commandeered.

The squad leader said he argued with his commander over the permissive rules of engagement that allowed the clearing out of houses by shooting without warning the residents beforehand. After the orders were changed, the squad leader's soldiers complained that "we should kill everyone there [in the center of Gaza]. Everyone there is a terrorist."

The squad leader said: "You do not get the impression from the officers that there is any logic to it, but they won't say anything. To write 'death to the Arabs' on the walls, to take family pictures and spit on them, just because you can. I think this is the main thing: To understand how much the IDF has fallen in the realm of ethics, really. It's what I'll remember the most."

More soldiers' testimonies will be published in Haaretz over the coming days.

How Bush's war in Iraq Victimized Iraqis and Americans - A story about war, romance, and total loss

The Impact of War
From The Iraq War, A Troubled Romance In America

by Ivan Watson and Paxton Winters
NPR. Morning Edition, October 17, 2008

Munira Shahamorad was 20 years old and dressed head to toe in all-concealing black robes when she showed up at the gates of the U.S. Marine base in Fallujah, Iraq, looking for a job. She was desperate to escape her brother, who she says beat her and dragged her around by the hair...

The Americans gave the slender young woman from Fallujah a job as an interpreter and a room to live in. She earned $1,050 a month, more money than she had ever seen before. But she would never go home to see her family again. Signing on with the U.S. military could have meant a death sentence — probably in the form of an "honor killing" carried out by a male relative. To protect Shahamorad's identity, a U.S. officer gave her a nickname: Venus...

Shahamorad spent most of her salary on perfume, clothes and electronics sold at the base PX. She also started drinking alcohol, which was provided by other civilian contractors. It was on the base that Shahamorad first met the man who would one day become her husband, Sgt. Steve Campbell...

From Lovers To Husband-And-Wife

That was more then 3 years ago. After an unplanned pregnancy, Campbell's honorable discharge from the military and an arduous journey that left Shahamorad stranded in Turkey for nine months, the former Marine finally married his Iraqi Venus in Ozark, Mo...

Unemployed and with his wife pregnant with their second baby, the Iraq veteran began pawning off personal belongings and even selling blood to make ends meet...

Eventually, the young Iraqi mother found a bar where the manager didn't ask too many questions.

"The woman there, she said she don't need a waitress, she need a dancer," Shahamorad said. "I was like, 'Wow, dancer!' I used to do belly-dancing, you mean belly-dancing? I'll put my clothes on me, but she's like, 'No, it's different kind of dance.' "

It was a strip bar. That night, Shahamorad drummed up the courage to go on stage. She came home with $350 in her pocket.

The woman who couldn't even step outside her house in Fallujah without wearing a veil began pole-dancing — topless — under the strobe lights. None of the customers who buy her drinks and throw dollars onto the stage know that the performing Venus is Iraqi...

The work brought the young family much-needed money, but it strained what was already an often tempestuous relationship. The couple fought on almost a nightly basis...

One day, Campbell came home from his new job welding cars for $10 an hour and found his wife distressed and agitated, and his 1-year-old son, Bradley, covered with bruises...

On Thursday night, officials from the Department of Family Services took custody of both children from Campbell.

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