clipped from http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/59571/?page=3"These private contractors are really an arm of the administration and its policies," argues Kucinich, who has called for a withdrawal of all U.S. contractors from Iraq. "They charge whatever they want with impunity. There's no accountability as to how many people they have, as to what their activities are."
That raises the crucial question: what exactly are they doing in Iraq in the name of the U.S. and U.K. governments? Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), a leading member of the House Select Committee on Intelligence, which is responsible for reviewing sensitive national security issues, explained the difficulty of monitoring private military companies on the U.S. payroll: "If I want to see a contract, I have to go up to a secret room and look at it, can't take any notes, can't take any notes out with me, you know -- essentially, I don't have access to those contracts and even if I did, I couldn't tell anybody about it."
 |
|