Dogs of War: Lions and contractors and robots. Oh my!
Apr 10, 2009 David Isenberg, Dogs of War
By DAVID ISENBERG
WASHINGTON, April 10 (UPI) — This is my final Dogs of War column. Since starting in January 2008, I have covered many different aspects of private military and security contracting, but they have been only a small portion of the total number of issues worth examining.
Like any other issue, there is good and bad news when it comes to contractors doing work that once upon a time people could only conceive of the government doing.
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Dogs of War: Let loose the legal beagles of war
Apr 3, 2009 Commentary, David Isenberg, Dogs of War
WASHINGTON, April 3 (UPI) — Don’t look now but it is raining lawyers; or to be more precise, lawsuits. Just consider what has happened in the past two weeks.
There was a ruling on March 18 by the U.S. District Court in Virginia denying CACI’s motion to dismiss a case by four Iraqi plaintiffs alleging abuse at Abu Ghraib prison. This dates back to the original 2004 revelations made famous by the report of Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba.
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Dogs of War: Have Ph.D., will travel
Mar 27, 2009 David Isenberg, Dogs of War
By David Isenberg
WASHINGTON, March 27 (UPI) — For more than six years, Iraq has served as a test case of the strengths and weaknesses of private military and security contractors. They most often operate well. At times, they are primarily bad. But most of the time, they have elements of both — meaning that even if a contractor does exactly what it is supposed to do, the end result may still be negative.
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Dogs of War: Theory is fine, action is better
Mar 20, 2009 David Isenberg, Dogs of War, Frequent Contributors
By DAVID ISENBERG
WASHINGTON, March 20 (UPI) — The International Criminal Court issued a warrant on March 4 for the arrest of Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Among other things, he is suspected of “intentionally directing attacks against an important part of the civilian population of Darfur, Sudan, murdering, exterminating, raping, torturing and forcibly transferring large numbers of civilians and pillaging their property.”
As a result, Bashir halted the work of relief organizations operating primarily in Darfur, leaving more than 1 million people without food, medical care or drinking water.
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Dogs of War: Can’t we all just get along?
Mar 14, 2009 David Isenberg, Dogs of War, Frequent Contributors
By DAVID ISENBERG
WASHINGTON, March 13 (UPI) — If, as most people expect, private military and security contractors are increasingly part of America’s military establishment and future battlefields, they will need to improve the coordination of their operations with regular military forces.
In the past, there has been undeniable friction between soldiers and contractors on numerous occasions in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. Read the rest of this entry »
Dogs of War: Contractors doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past
Mar 7, 2009 Commentary, David Isenberg, Dogs of War, Frequent Contributors
By DAVID ISENBERG
WASHINGTON, March 6 (UPI) — An army may travel on its stomach, but it lives to fight another day by studying its history. For the U.S. military, the study of history is not an academic pursuit but a deadly serious business. That is why there are offices like the Air Force Historical Research Agency, the Army Center for Military History, the Naval Historical Center, and the Historical Office of the Office of the Secretary of Defense, to name a few.
Military professionals understand that the unpredictability and chaos of war make the study of the past mandatory in an effort to try to avoid repeating its disasters. Keeping and preserving detailed records is not just a bureaucratic chore but a vital mission. Militaries have always understood, long before Spanish philosopher George Santayana famously said it, that “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
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Dogs of War: Blue helmets and bottom lines
Mar 1, 2009 David Isenberg, Dogs of War
By DAVID ISENBERG
WASHINGTON, Feb. 27 (UPI) — Is the world ready to let private military and security contractors participate in U.N. peace operations? When I ask this, I’m not talking about Hollywood celebrities calling for the firm formerly known as Blackwater to work in Darfur.
In one respect, this is a trick question as contractors have been and are involved in such operations.
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Dogs of War: That is the question
Jan 31, 2009 David Isenberg, Dogs of War
By DAVID ISENBERG
WASHINGTON, Jan. 30 (UPI) — Is it possible that a private security contractor can actually do a good job — do what it contracted to do without waste, fraud or abuse? Of course, the answer is yes. And the vast majority of security contractors do just that. Yet to read and watch much of the media coverage of their work, it would be easy to get a different impression.
As an example, consider Aegis Defense, a British private security firm. In March 2004, in a move to make the U.S. military presence less visible after the handover of sovereignty back to Iraq, the Coalition Provisional Authority awarded Aegis a $100 million contract to protect the Green Zone.
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