Military Contractor Awareness Week Begins Today

Moved by the lack of Congressional oversight for military contractors, the National Lawyers Guild is sponsoring Military Contractor Awareness Week Nov. 12-16. Organizers say law schools across the county will host discussions on the history of mercenary soldiers and the implications of private armies for democracy.

Military contracting is big business. In the wake of 9/11 and the beginning of the War on Terror big no-bid contracts were awarded in a move that some claimed allowed the armed forces to be lean and efficient. “Blackwater, DynCorp and Triple Canopy provide over 30,000 gun-toting soldiers in Iraq, making mercenaries the second-largest army in Iraq,” says Christian Williams, vice president of the Cornell University NLG.

Following the Blackwater USA deployment during the hurricane Katrina disaster in New Orleans, military contractors are looking to expand their roles domestically — and there is a growing call for oversight and evaluation. Some worry that provisions in the 2007 defense authorization bill indicate that groups like Blackwater USA could be used by the federal government to counter domestic dissent.

States are responding variously to the stateside growth of military contractors. In May Michigan revised is industrial tax abatement code to offer tax breaks to private security firms that do business with government or private groups. This move was aimed at benefiting Sovereign Deed,  a company that aims to privatize national disaster response services. In California a bill to limit paramilitary training  to government regulated facilities was introduced in September in response to Blackwater plans to build a base outside San Diego.