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Al Jazeera (English)
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Iraqi Civilian Deaths ... caused by Bush's unprovoked war

 

Apartheid Enforcers Guard Iraq For the U.S.
(Marc Perelman, Information Clearing House, 02/21/04)
In its effort to relieve overstretched U.S. troops in Iraq, the Bush administration has hired a private security company staffed with former henchmen of South Africa’s apartheid regime. . . . The reliance on apartheid enforcers was highlighted by an attack in Iraq last month that killed one South African security officer and wounded another who worked for the subsidiary of a firm called Erinys International. Both men once served in South African paramilitary units dedicated to the violent repression of apartheid opponents. . . . “It is just a horrible thought that such people are working for the Americans in Iraq,” said Richard Goldstone, a recently retired justice of the Constitutional Court of South Africa and former chief prosecutor of the United Nations International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. . . . In Iraq, the U.S. government has tapped into the ever-growing pool of private security companies to provide a variety of defense services, including protecting oil sites and training Iraqi forces. Observers worry that a reliance on these companies and the resulting lack of accountability is a recipe for further problems in a volatile region. . . . Erinys Iraq, the subsidiary of the largely unknown security company called Erinys International, was awarded a two-year contract worth $80 million last August to protect 140 Iraqi oil installations and train some 6,500 Iraqi guards. It then subcontracted some of its security duties to a U.S. private security firm called SAS International. . . . Iyad Allawi told the Financial Times last December that Ahmed Chalabi, the leader of the Pentagon-backed Iraqi National Congress, had engineered the Erinys contract in order to set up a private militia that would end up undermining central authority over the vital oil sector. . . . Private security companies, including Erinys International, have served as a magnet for poorly paid and highly skilled South African security officers, according to a recent United Nations report and articles in the South African press.

posted by LoZo 4:18 PM