Road Kill
By Oliver North
March 30, 2007
Page 2 of 2
Today's globe-spanning war on terror -- and a much smaller U.S. military to fight it -- place even greater burdens on civilian contractors. In Afghanistan, Iraq and Kuwait, more than 350 U.S. companies and nearly 100,000 American civilians are directly engaged in supporting U.S. and coalition efforts. In Iraq, civilian contractors man and protect more than 900 convoys a month delivering food, water, clothing, fuel, weapons, ammunition and equipment to the new Iraqi police and army. Nearly all major maintenance is performed by civilian contractors, including that for U.S. forces.
On each of my eight trips to Iraq reporting on U.S. combat units for FOX News, I have eaten food prepared by these civilian contractors, bathed in and drank the water they supplied, ridden in vehicles they had armored and communicated with equipment they had installed. In northern Iraq, I documented American contractors destroying millions of tons of Saddam's ordnance so that it wouldn't fall into the wrong hands. In Fallujah I saw the bridge where the mutilated bodies of four civilian contractors were hung by Al Qaeda in March 2004. And on every trip I've seen well-armed civilians from private security companies -- called PSCs -- protecting diplomats, sensitive installations, oil pipelines, news bureaus, Iraqi government officials and even senior U.S. military officers.
Though Gen. David Petraeus testified at his confirmation hearing on Jan. 23 that he was "secured by contract security in my last tour there," and described the PSCs as essential to his strategy for victory, he appears to have changed his mind. Last week the Maliki government issued regulations -- enforced by the U.S. military -- stripping weapons from all civilian contractors unless they have a new permit issued by the Ministry of the Interior (MOI). The Catch-22 in all of this is that the MOI has yet to issue any new permits.
Lawrence T. Peter, director of the Private Security Association of Iraq, says that the new regulation "disarms virtually all PSC personnel not working directly for the U.S. government and prevents any coalition civilian traveling through Baghdad from legally carrying a weapon." He added, "we now have American troops disarming American civilians. It just got a whole lot more dangerous to be a reporter, a reconstruction worker or a coalition diplomat in Iraq. The terrorists must love this."
Road kill, anyone?
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Oliver North is the host of "War Stories" on the FOX News Channel.
COPYRIGHT 2007 CREATORS SYNDICATE INC
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Note -- The opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions, views, and/or philosophy of GOPUSA. >> Back -- Page 1 2
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