Word: contractor
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Blackwater isn't the only company getting paid to protect American personnel in Iraq. The security guards who shot two women to death in Baghdad on Oct. 9 were working for an Australian-owned firm that was hired by U.S.-based contractor RTI International. Talk about outsourcing: a significant percentage of U.S. security guards in Iraq are neither Americans nor Iraqis. Here's a look at how many of these guns for hire can be labeled as mercenaries for fighting under a foreign flag. [This article contains a complex diagram. Please see hardcopy of magazine...
...security contractor accused of shooting two Iraqis in Baghdad on Tuesday was working indirectly for a branch of the U.S. government. According to the State Department, the company, Unity Resources Group - which is headquartered in the United Arab Emirates - was providing protection to RTI, a U.S. nonprofit organization under contract to work in Iraq for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). The shooting occurred at 1:40 p.m. in the Baghdad neighborhood of Karrada. According to the Iraq interior ministry, two Iraqi Christian women were killed. The convoy had just finished dropping off an employee...
...latest casualty of the Iraq war is Erik Prince, the brash young CEO of the military contractor Blackwater USA. His firm guards dignitaries in Iraq, and on Oct. 2 he got to explain to some of those dignitaries why Blackwater security forces have been known to flee the scene after shooting Iraqis. "Our job is to get them off the X--the preplanned ambush site," Prince said...
...related development, the FBI will send agents to Iraq to probe the Sept. 16 shootings. A company spokesman said in response: "Blackwater USA welcomes today's announcement regarding the Federal Bureau of Investigation's review of the September 16 incident in western Baghdad. Blackwater USA has always supported strong contractor accountability, and this latest step is a positive move in that direction. We look forward to cooperating fully with the Bureau's inquiry...
Last year, a group of Harvard undergraduates took part in a Student Labor Action Movement (SLAM) hunger strike to protest the low wages Harvard independent contractor Allied Barton was paying campus security guards. There were some flaws with the movement—most notably, it seems a bit hard to justify forgoing food over objection to a slight difference in wages. But at least SLAM’s cause was concrete. In the case of this latest cause, the T-shirts are just about talking. If those sporting tees are interested in real change, they ought to find more effective...