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: Mercenaries are in the eye of the beholder
Feb 20, 2009 Commentary, David Isenberg
Published: Feb. 20, 2009
By DAVID ISENBERG
WASHINGTON, Feb. 20 (UPI) — Last Sunday The New York Times reported the American military will begin recruiting skilled immigrants who are living in the United States with temporary visas, offering them the chance to become U.S. citizens in as little as six months.
While immigrants who are permanent residents with green cards have long been eligible to enlist, this move, for the first time since the Vietnam War, will open the armed forces to temporary immigrants if they have lived in the United States for a minimum of two years.
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David Isenberg’s Speaker Notes
Feb 16, 2009 David Isenberg
The following are David Isenberg’s speakers notes from a presentation he gave to some of his colleagues at the Peace Research Institute in Oslo.
It covers a lot of the highlights of his book Shadow Force: Private Security Contractors in Iraq but it also gives some excellent insight to some other aspects of the wider PSC market.
Thanks David sharing this with the TCO community.
Jake
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Let’s start with why I wrote this book. My rationale was simple. I wrote it to fill a void. It is a sad fact that much of the debate over private military and security contractors is, to borrow from Shakespeare, a tale told by idiots, full of sound and fury; signifying nothing. The tale is made worse by the fact that much of those doing the telling have highly partisan axes to grind.
I have been following the industry since the early 1990s, long before most contemporary writers even realized there was a PMC sector. As time passed, it became clear that an interesting, indeed, fairly important subject-the role and impact of outsourcing traditional military and other national security functions-was degenerating into a politicized debate.
This book is simply a modest attempt to bring some facts into view and let the chips fall wher
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Dogs of War: Media to contractors: Who are you guys?
Feb 14, 2009 David Isenberg, Frequent Contributors
By DAVID ISENBERG
Published: Feb. 13, 2009 at UPI
WASHINGTON, Feb. 13 (UPI) — Last week I wrote that obtaining information about private military and security contractors has never been easier than it is now. But if that is so, then why do so many private military and security contractors think news coverage of their activities ranges from poor to abysmal?
Some, echoing the old right-wing canard, think the media is hopelessly liberal and therefore has an ingrained bias toward anyone dealing with military or security issues, let alone someone who might actually carry a gun for a living.
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