August 11, 2003 - It was buried in a Chicago Tribune article by Gary Marx appearing above the fold on page three of this morning’s edition. Just a note in passing in an account of the latest twists and turns in the streets of Basra. A short paragraph, no more, describing a grenade attack that killed two Iraqis and one Nepalese security guard. That is what caught my eye – a Nepalese security guard. What was a Nepalese security guard, a rent-a-cop, doing in Baghdad? The answer was in the next sentence. The dead man was an employee of a private US firm, Global Security. The firm has the contract to furnish protection and other services for coalition bases in Iraq.

Now think about that for a minute. We are engaged in a war. The combat, though low intensity, is unremitting. It is a one-a-day war in which US service men are killed in one or twos daily. The vital military function of providing security to US and British troops has been privatized, sublet and contracted out. Who is pulling guard duty? Nepalese rent-a-cops!

You would think that we had learned in the aftermath of the September 11th tragedy that security, whether it is on the perimeter of a military base or at the check-in lines of the world’s airports is too important a military and police function to be furnished by a low bidder in the private procurement market. Yet here we are approaching the second anniversary of the World Trade Towers debacle and we are contracting with private rent-a-cops to guard coalition forces in the combat zone. There is something wrong here.

Congress has been pressing the administration to provide a reasonable cost estimate for the on-going Iraqi war and reconstruction effort. The administration is resisting the request. Congressmen and Senators on both sides of the aisle are growing impatient. They need the information to use in the budgeting process. One anonymous administration source says they are fearful that were Congress to learn the real cost of Iraqi operations they might decide that we just couldn’t afford it. It seems more likely that the administration just doesn’t know because nobody knows just how many private patronage firms have their snouts in the trough.

Who is “Global Security”? What are the connections to the Bush Administration? Why are they more qualified to provide force protection than are the armed forces of the United States and Great Britain? How much is this contract going to cost the American taxpayers? How many private hogs are feeding at this contract trough?