Today, the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security will hold hearings on the alleged gang rape of former KBR employee Jamie Leigh Jones by her fellow KBR employees in Iraq. If true, this young woman's rape case is twice the tragedy: first the rape and then the lack of legal jurisdiction to criminally prosecute the rapists.
This is another unintended consequence of contracting out the logistics and security of this war to private companies. This has placed US citizens and foreign national civilians in peril in a war zone with little protection. The on-going lack of accountability of KBR and other contractors has set up this "anything goes" atmosphere which has resulted in greatly inflated bills, denying of vital supplies to soldiers who are not near bases, and, in the case of KBR, a brazen willingness to threaten work stoppages in the middle of a war zone. Once this case broke, another woman who worked for KBR claimed that women could not advance in the company unless they slept their way to promotions. The sad reality is that the Army and the DOD have been willing, up to this point, to tolerate this behavior.
In researching my book, Betraying Our Troops: The Destructive Results of Privatizing War, I had troops coming back from Iraq telling me stories that set the stage for this type of attitude and behavior. Consider the observations of one officer in the book at the very beginning of the war:
In addition to the logistics problems, Lamberth also discovered that some KBR managers who had been in Kosovo with the contractor had brought their Balkan girlfriends with them to Kuwait. Lamberth saw the influx of women at the Khalifa resort and managed to talk to some of them. They told him they were on KBR's payroll as "logistics coordinators" and "administrative assistants." Some of the women also bragged to Lamberth they took two-hour lunches and were able to go shopping using contractor-leased vehicles. Occasionally, Lamberth observed, they would track down a part, but mostly they would be at the Khalifa pool or shopping downtown. Lamberth complained to KBR managers about the issue, but was told to keep it to himself.
This kind of attitude on the part of KBR and their employees set the stage for the case that the subcommittee will hear today. Ms. Jones' only current recourse is to sue KBR in civil court. Scott Horton, an attorney who has been following the gaps in the law concerning contractors, will testify to the committee about the legal hole that the DOD has allowed itself to fall into concerning the contractors. Because the Army has contracted out so many of its vital logistics and services, it has become a monetary and legal hostage to KBR and other contractors. Meanwhile, KBR is billing the government approximately a half a billion a month for services in Iraq.
KBR will be able to afford their legal defense. According to the Associated Press, "Last month, KBR said its third-quarter profit surged from a year ago in part from its military contracts in Iraq, but its energy and chemicals arm posted flat results." This is the war that feeds them and they will spend whatever is necessary on attorneys and lobbyists to keep the money flowing. It is estimated that their contract, called LOGCAP III, has accrued $26 billion dollars.
Meanwhile, as the scandals against contractors continue to grow, the DOD is shackled to KBR and these other contractors because they can't relieve KBR and others of their logistics work. Furthermore, the commands of the Army that used to do these tasks have atrophied. According to the Center for Public Integrity, "U.S. government contracts for work in Iraq and Afghanistan have grown more than 50 percent annually, from $11 billion in 2004 to almost $17 billion in 2005 and more than $25 billion in 2006."
In the face of that amount of contract growth, even when troop levels have barely changed, who cares about disposable employees and a case of rape? Especially since if they lose, KBR will only have to pay a civil fine....that is just the cost of doing very good business. If any managers or officers in the company faced criminal neglect charges, you might have gotten their attention, but right now they are in the driver's seat. Let's hope that the DOD and the Congress will be outraged enough about the possibility of this gang rape of a young woman not being prosecuted to do something to interject accountability in the current situation. After that, maybe they will also get serious about the flood of unaccountable money.