Veterans for Common Sense

November 14, 2008 – After more than five years of rampant violence and misconduct carried out by the massive army of private corporate contractors in Iraq–actions that have gone totally unpunished under any system of law–the US Justice Department appears to be on the verge of handing down the first indictments against armed private forces for crimes committed in Iraq. The reported targets of the “draft” indictments: six Blackwater operatives involved in the September 16, 2007, killing of seventeen Iraqi civilians in Baghdad’s Nisour Square.

The notorious mercenary firm is now a one-stop shop for security outsourcing, offering CIA-like services to Fortune 500 companies.

The Associated Press reports, “The draft is being reviewed by senior Justice Department officials but no charging decisions have been made. A decision is not expected until at least later this month.” The AP, citing sources close to the case, reports that the department has not determined if the Blackwater operatives would be charged with manslaughter or assault. Simply drafting the indictments does not mean that the Blackwater forces are certain to face charges. The department could indict as few as three of the operatives, who potentially face sentences of five to twenty years, depending on the charges.

If the Justice Department pursues a criminal prosecution, it would be the first time armed private contractors from the United States face justice.

But that is a very big “if.”

“The Justice Department has had this matter for fourteen months and has done almost everything imaginable to walk away from it–including delivering a briefing to Congress in which they suggested that they lacked legal authority to press charges,” says Scott Horton, distinguished visiting professor of law at Hofstra University and author of a recent study of legal accountability for private security contractors. “They did this notwithstanding evidence collected by the first teams on the scene that suggested an ample basis to prosecute. The ultimate proof here will be in the details, namely, what charges are brought exactly and what evidence has Justice assembled to make its case. Still, it’s hard to miss Justice’s lack of enthusiasm about this case, and that’s troubling.”

Even if some Blackwater operatives face charges, critics allege it is the company that must be held responsible. “I am encouraged that the Justice Department is finally making progress in the investigation, but I am disappointed that it took over a year and a lot of pressure for the department to take any action,” says Illinois Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky, who introduced legislation that seeks to ban using Blackwater and other armed security companies in US war zones. (She was also the national campaign co-chair of Barack Obama’s presidential campaign and is a top candidate to replace him in the US Senate.)

“While it is important to hold these individual contractors accountable for their actions, we must also hold Blackwater accountable for creating a culture that allows this type of reckless behavior,” adds Schakowsky. “The indictments do nothing to solve the underlying problem of private security contractors performing critical government functions. The indictments will likely get rid of a few bad apples, but there will be no real consequences for Blackwater. This company is going to continue to do business as usual–the solution is to get them out of this business.”

News of potential indictments over the Nisour Square shootings comes as the State Department is reportedly preparing to hit Blackwater with a multimillion-dollar fine for allegedly shipping as many as 900 automatic weapons to Iraq without the required permits. Some of the guns may have made their way to the black market.

Blackwater has served as the official bodyguard service for senior US occupation officials since August 2003, when the company was awarded a $27 million no-bid contract to guard L. Paul Bremer, the original head of the Coalition Provisional Authority. To date, the company has raked in more than $1 billion in “security” contracts under its arrangement with the State Department.

Despite widespread accusations of killings of civilians and other crimes, not a single armed contractor from Blackwater–or from any other armed war corporation–has faced charges under any legal system. Instead, they have operated in a climate where immunity and impunity have gone hand in hand. At present, private contractors–most of them unarmed–outnumber US troops in Iraq by roughly 50,000 personnel.

There is no doubt that the Bush administration will continue enthusiastically to use armed private forces until the second Bush leaves office. This means that the future of Blackwater and the hundreds of for-profit war corporations servicing the Iraq occupation will lay with President-elect Barack Obama. This includes Blackwater and at least 300 other companies, which have been hired by the US government for privatized armed services in Iraq to the tune of about $6 billion in taxpayer money.

“One of the biggest problems that Barack Obama is going to have is turning the government back into a civil service and getting rid of all the private contractors,” says Washington Democratic Representative Jim McDermott. “The private contracting thing is the most erosive thing that this administration has done…. You look at all the things that are being run by private contractors, you simply cannot be handing money to a private contractor who is not under the law of that country or the law of this country and can do anything they want. They’re really–they’re rogue outfits.”

Obama has been a passionate critic of the war industry and is the sponsor of the leading Democratic legislation in the Senate to bring more effective regulation and oversight to it. But he has stopped short of supporting Schakowsky and Senator Bernie Sanders’s legislation seeking a ban on using Blackwater and other armed contracting companies in Iraq. One of his top foreign policy advisers told The Nation earlier this year that Obama “can’t rule out [and] won’t rule out” using these companies in Iraq.

In a brief interview with Democracy Now! in February, Obama explained his position when asked about the report in The Nation.

“Here’s the problem: we have 140,000 private contractors right there, so unless we want to replace all of or a big chunk of those with US troops, we can’t draw down the contractors faster than we can draw down our troops,” Obama said. “So what I want to do is draw–I want them out in the same way that we make sure that we draw out our own combat troops.”

As Obama’s inauguration day draws near, he is facing increased calls from Democrats who have spent years investigating Blackwater to ban the company. Most prominent among these is Henry Waxman, chair of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. He called on Obama to cancel Blackwater’s security contracts. “I don’t see any reason to have a contract with Blackwater,” says Waxman. “They haven’t lived up to their contract, and we shouldn’t be having these private military contracts. We should use our own military.”

As of now, Blackwater’s Iraq contract expires in April (it was extended for a year by the State Department despite numerous investigations). “I think there should be very strong handcuffs put on this whole outsourcing question, but particularly with these private security contractors like DynCorp and Blackwater,” says Vermont Democrat Peter Welch, who serves on the Oversight Committee with Waxman and supports the calls for Obama to cancel Blackwater’s security contracts. “It’s just an incredible waste of taxpayer money. It dishonors the Code of Military Conduct. Our soldiers are over there. They abide by rules. Blackwater doesn’t.”

But not all Democrats agree. Senator John Kerry, who is reportedly among the people being considered for Secretary of State in the Obama administration, shares the president-elect’s view. “I don’t think they should be banned,” says Kerry. “I think they need to operate under rules that apply to the military and everybody else.”

As of January 20, 2009, if Obama decides to keep Blackwater and other armed war corporations on the US payroll, these private forces would go from being Bush’s mercenaries in Iraq to Obama’s. As commander in chief, he would be responsible for their crimes. As for the accountability issue, many critics allege that the most serious problems in holding contractors responsible for their crimes stem from the Bush administration’s covering-up of their misconduct and immunizing them from prosecution, and the total lack of political will to bring them to justice. When Obama appoints a new attorney general, there will be more than five years’ worth of crimes to investigate–and prosecute.

November 22, 2008, San Antonio, TX – Mary Dague hears the catty whispers sometimes. “So ugly,” the strangers say when they think she can’t hear.

The 24-year-old has bright green eyes, a quick smile, and on the days she gets her husband’s help, perfectly applied mascara and blush.

But all the gawkers really see are her arms, each amputated above the elbow.

What they don’t suppose – with no fatigues or standard-issue Army T-shirt to clue them in – is that this chatty young woman, who likes to wear a little black dress to fancy parties as much as the next girl, is an Army sergeant whose arms were blown off as she dismantled a bomb in Iraq. She was awarded a Purple Heart.

In uniform, she’s often recognized as a wounded veteran and thanked for her service. Out of uniform, she pretends not to hear the careless whispers.

“At first, it kind of hurts, and then, it makes you sad,” she says.

Sad not for herself, but for those she sees wasting their youth and opportunities. “I’m 24, and I feel like I’ve lived a full, happy life already.”

It’s a life forever marred by an accident that has made even the simplest task a struggle, and rehabilitation is slow. But she’s eagerly looking beyond it, to the day she gets a sophisticated prosthetic arm and beyond that, to a time when she’s self-sufficient.

For all the talk of women on the warfront, soldiers like Dague remain extremely rare. Of the roughly 840 service members who have lost limbs since the start of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, only about 20 are women. The vast majority of those 21st century war amputees lost their legs or feet, often in roadside bombings. Only about one in five has lost upper extremities.

The job of a bomb technician, part of a team called in to detonate or dismantle explosive devices, is open to women because it’s considered a noncombat role, though few women enter the dangerous line of work. Armywide, 6 percent of bomb techs are women.

Dague didn’t plan on being a bomb tech when she enlisted. She was weary of waiting tables and working as a maid and just itching to get out of her tiny hometown of Superior in western Montana. She thought she might want to be a military policeman, since her dad is the undersheriff in Mineral County, but there were no slots for MPs.

She rolled her eyes when the recruiter suggested she become a “petroleum distribution engineer.” “I’m not going to pump gas for the Army, I’m sorry,” Dague said.

Explosive ordnance disposal. EOD. That was more like it.

“If I’m gonna do it, I’m gonna go all out,” she said.

Dague was talking about the Army, but she could have been talking about her life.

She married Jared Tillery in 2006 about 12 hours after they decided to date – including the time it took to find a skirt and blouse at Sears and to mobilize a friend ordained over the Internet.

Dague and Tillery had been friends in EOD school, where she was one of the few women.

Some people resented that, but Tillery, a lanky 23-year-old who grew up in Wisconsin, says he never thought much about it. The pair hung out together while in training and stayed friends even after she was stationed at Fort Lewis in Washington state and Tillery was assigned to a supply unit at Fort Hood in Texas.

During Tillery’s visit to Fort Lewis, their relationship moved from one that was platonic to romantic to, within hours, marriage. Both were deployed to Iraq with their units a few months after they married. They began life as a married couple in Iraq in early 2007.

Just weeks after Tillery had arrived in Iraq, his younger brother, 19-year-old Marine Lance Cpl. Jesse Tillery, was killed by an explosive device in Anbar province. After that, he was kept close to the base. “They wouldn’t let him go outside the wire,” Dague says.

Dague, on the other hand, was frequently out in dangerous territory with her teammate. They routinely blew up or dismantled explosive devices found by military patrols, trying to outsmart insurgents targeting American forces.

Nothing about Nov. 4, 2007, made her think the call they got that morning would be any different.

It shouldn’t have blown. It was just blasting cap, rubber and some wires sticking out, with a bit of explosive gunk stuck to it, not enough to do serious damage.

Dague and another EOD tech had already placed the plaster from the top of the device, most of the explosive material and the components in separate containers on the truck. All that was left was the 1 1/2-foot-wide cap.

Dague heaved it over to the truck by herself while the other guys made fun of her burly EOD teammate.

“You’re gonna let that little girl carry that big heavy thing?” they cackled.

“She can handle it,” he retorted, Dague remembers with a smile.

The cap teetered when she set it down, and instinctively, she put her hands out to steady it. “Boom! and I went flying,” she says.

Blood was everywhere. Other soldiers were frantically checking her wounds and applying tourniquets, shielding her eyes so she couldn’t see her arms, “but I already knew,” Dague says. A piece of shrapnel was wedged in her sunglasses.

She remembers someone saying he couldn’t tell where all the blood was coming from and needed to cut off her pants and boots. “Fine, do it,” she said, all the while asking whether everyone else was OK.

“I was trying to keep everyone from freaking out, and I wanted to keep myself from going into shock or falling asleep. I didn’t want to die,” she says.

A helicopter took her to a field hospital.

“Dude,” she said to the soldier standing next to her, “this sucks.”

Tillery had decided to skip lunch that day, so his office was nearly abandoned when about a dozen officers from his battalion walked in. “We’ve got some bad news,” they said.

A convoy took him to the hospital, where he waited as surgeons carefully removed shrapnel and treated the flash burns on his wife’s face to minimize scarring.

“I was just a complete wreck because you don’t know what you’re going to see,” Tillery says.

What was left of her arms was covered in bandages, a tube held her airway open, and “her face was so swollen, you could hardly recognize her,” he recalls.

They were taken to Germany, where Dague remembers the sedatives wearing thin enough for her to recognize something was wrong with her arms. Bandaged, they somehow seemed heavier than they ever had before.

“I just wanted to see home again,” she says.

They arrived a day later at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio’s Fort Sam Houston, one of the Army’s primary medical treatment complexes for war amputees. Dague recalls her first few days there, staring out the window of her room, seeing people going about their lives.

“They have no idea what you lose in here, do they?” she mused to a nurse.

To understand what Dague has lost, consider what it would be like to eat, dress, bathe and use a computer without the aid of your lower arms – to have to pick up a cup or open the refrigerator door with your elbows.

Most everything becomes a mammoth task or requires assistance.

“You don’t realize how much you need your fingers,” says Tillery, now a reservist. “If I see her trying something, the best thing is to walk away and let her try it.”

Otherwise, the urge to step in and help her becomes overpowering.

Dague uses her toes to work the TV remote control and the computer mouse, and a pair of hooks on the bedroom wall help pull clothes up and down. She clutches a glass between her upper arms to take a drink. She’s practiced holding a pen the same way.

“I have horrible hand writing,” she jokes, gesturing to the notebook paper on the fridge that reads “I (heart) Jared” in shaky red marker lines.

At the home she and Jared share in suburban San Antonio, she can feed herself, but in public it simply draws too much unwanted attention. So her husband helps her in restaurants.

Many cuts after her first try, Dague can now shave her legs by holding a razor with her toes – not a skill rehab workers have to teach most other amputee veterans.

She still needs practice with a hook arm before she can be fitted for a prosthetic arm and hand. That gives her hope of “a semi-normal life,” she says.

But ask her whether she has any regrets about volunteering to be a bomb tech, and there is no hesitation.

“I love that job,” she says, swaying her damaged arms. “I miss it. I miss it terribly.”

For now, with months of physical therapy ahead of her, she relies on her husband for many basic tasks. He brushes her teeth, and she has taught him to apply her makeup.

“She’s trying to describe to me the strokes. She says, ‘Just grab that mascara.’ What’s that? This?” he says, with mock exasperation. “I just keep telling her she owes me so many breakfasts in bed.”

All of it has sorely tested their young marriage.

“He’s become everything she can’t be right now, and that’s a big job,” says Mike Johnson, Dague’s father. “I love him dearly.”

The couple plans a formal wedding in June. She’s already found a dress.

“She’s got like eight of them picked out,” Tillery teases. “You have no idea.”

November 22, 2008 – On Christmas Day two years ago, Sgt. Carlos Renteria, recently back from his first tour in Iraq, got drunk and, during an argument, began to choke his wife, Adriana. He body-slammed her. He threw her onto the couch, grabbed a cushion and smothered her, again and again – until, finally, he stopped, she told the police in San Angelo, Tex.

He was arrested and charged with assault, and she went to the hospital for her injuries, which included bruises and a severely swollen knee. It was his second domestic violence arrest. Assured by an Army officer that the military would pursue the case, the Texas prosecutor bowed out.

Yet Sergeant Renteria has faced no consequences. Instead, since his arrest, he has been redeployed to Iraq and promoted to staff sergeant.

“I was told it would be taken care of, in more than one instance, by the Army,” said Ms. Renteria, 30, referring to the assault charges. “That they would help me. And I believed them.”

For nearly two years, she has prodded Sergeant Renteria’s chain of command, the inspector general at Fort Riley in Kansas (where he was transferred), the base’s military lawyers and its domestic violence office, e-mail messages and letters show. But Sergeant Renteria has not received any counseling, and the military justice system has said it will not prosecute him. The couple divorced last month.

Ms. Renteria’s story illustrates the serious gaps in the way the Army handles domestic violence cases and the way it treats victims, despite promises to take such crimes more seriously.

More than five years ago, after a series of wife-killings by soldiers, a Pentagon task force investigation concluded that the military was doing a better job of shielding service members from punishment than protecting their wives from harm. The Department of Defense began to make noticeable improvements, including expanding protections and services for victims. But problems clearly remain.

The prosecutor in the Renteria case, Allen Wright, was so concerned by the Army’s inaction that in May, he moved to take back the case, issuing an arrest warrant for Sergeant Renteria.

The warrant remains outstanding. The Army acknowledged that Ms. Renteria’s case had been mishandled.

“I’m angry,” said Maj. Nathan Bond, public affairs officer at Fort Riley, after The New York Times brought the case to the Army’s attention. “This is not my Army. This is not how we handle domestic violence cases.”

The Army’s handling of such cases is especially important in a time of war, when the number of soldiers suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder escalates. Studies show a link between the disorder and increased violence in the home.

The Army says that the measures it has taken have been effective in curbing domestic violence. But advocates of victims of domestic violence say that among combat troops the violence has spiked in the past two years and that women are often disinclined to report violence for fear of angering their partners and hurting their careers.

These advocates point to the gruesome murders of three female soldiers based at Fort Bragg in North Carolina within the last four months. One woman’s body was dismembered and dumped in the woods. Another woman, seven months pregnant, was found dead in a motel bathtub. The third was stabbed to death.

In each case, the victim’s boyfriend or husband, a soldier or marine, has been charged in the killing. All three suspects were deployed in Iraq at some point.

The recent killings, which echo a series of wife-killings by soldiers at the fort in 2002, have captured the attention of the Pentagon again. During a visit last month to Fort Bragg, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said he was “very concerned” about the stress on combat troops. “We obviously want to stop all kinds of violence among our soldiers and families,” he said.

Yet an examination of Ms. Renteria’s case shows she had sought help from an array of people for behavior by her husband that the Army could trace to 2004.

“She has really tried to pursue this to make sure he gets the appropriate intervention,” said Jacquelyn Campbell, a professor at Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing and a member of the Pentagon’s task force on domestic violence, who was told about the case by The Times. “We had hoped with the military’s new awareness of the issues of domestic violence in the military, and with its new policies and procedures around addressing it, that this kind of thing wouldn’t be happening still.”

Carlos and Adriana Renteria fell in love listening to Cuban music in Miami Beach in May 2002. They were still newlyweds when the relationship began to sour, she said, marred by his sudden absences and verbal abuse.

On Dec. 12, 2004, drunk and angry, he grabbed a baseball bat and swung it at her as she held their infant son, according to the military police report. The bat stopped just short of her head, brushing her cheek.

Twenty minutes later, he threatened to kill her. She called the military police at Goodfellow Air Force Base in San Angelo, Tex., where the couple was stationed.

Sergeant Renteria was ordered to take anger management classes on base. He attended one class. ” ‘I can’t be touched, can’t you see?’ ” Ms. Renteria said her husband told her. ” ‘They aren’t going to do anything to me.’ “

The couple separated and then reunited on a promise that Sergeant Renteria would change. But his behavior grew more erratic after his return from Iraq in October 2006. He cut himself one day to test his pain threshold. He asked to choke her, as an experiment. She said no.

Two months later, she said, he did not bother to ask.

When the police showed up at her door, they asked whether her husband had just returned from an “overseas assignment.”

She said yes.

“Ever since he has returned there have been problems with Carlos’s behavior and mood swings,” she told them, according to the police report. She said, “Carlos was also having nightmares while sleeping and has also been drinking to the point of intoxication on a regular basis.”

Mr. Wright, the prosecutor in Tom Green County, Tex., received a phone call from an officer at Fort Riley in January 2007 asking if he would be willing to hand over the case. (The military can request jurisdiction when a service member is arrested.) Sergeant Renteria was due to be transferred to the base, so Mr. Wright agreed. “The Army assured me they would take care of it – counseling, monitoring,” Mr. Wright said. “We all want to help our military.”

At a meeting in July 2007, First Sgt. Robert L. Simmons, the highest-ranking noncommissioned officer in her husband’s unit, also promised Ms. Renteria that the Army would go beyond sending her husband to classes for anger and alcohol, which had not worked the first time. He said the Army would prosecute, Ms. Renteria said.

Sergeant Simmons said he, too, had seen her husband lose his cool at work and was sufficiently concerned to request a three-week “no contact” order for Sergeant Renteria to keep away from his wife. Sergeant Simmons added that he would move to get her husband prosecuted on the assault charge to prevent him from redeploying to Iraq. Under federal law, offenders convicted of domestic violence are banned from using weapons. That would have prevented Sergeant Renteria from going to Iraq.

A few weeks later, Sergeant Simmons was deployed to Iraq, and Ms. Renteria said she never heard from him again.

Fort Riley quickly closed ranks around Sergeant Renteria. That became clear to Ms. Renteria after a brief conversation in August 2007 with an assistant at the inspector general’s office. ” ‘Honey, we are not going to bring a soldier back who beat on his wife a couple of times or because you feel things weren’t done correctly,’ ” Ms. Renteria said, recalling the conversation. ” ‘He is over there fighting for his life.’ “

Seven months later, with no word from the Army, Ms. Renteria called Mr. Wright in Texas, in tears. He eventually reached a lawyer at Fort Riley, an Army captain, who, to Mr. Wright’s astonishment, said he was under the impression that Mr. Wright had closed the case because it was “deficient.” Mr. Wright corrected him. He gave Fort Riley 90 days to tell him exactly what the Army had done.

When the Army did not respond, “I issued a warrant before any more time lapsed,” Mr. Wright said.

Sergeant Renteria returned home from Iraq on leave in May, but went back before the warrant could be processed. After The Times provided the Army with details of the case last month, it looked into the matter.

“The accusation of domestic violence is taken very seriously,” Major Bond said, adding that such cases could be a “mess.” In this case, “there were some communication issues,” he said.

Major Bond said the case review committee at Fort Riley concluded in the summer of 2007 that Sergeant Renteria should attend an anger management and alcohol abuse program. Instead he was redeployed to Iraq.

He will attend classes upon his return, Major Bond said. Sergeant Renteria, who is in the process of transitioning home from Iraq, could not be reached for comment.

In the end, his command opted not to prosecute. Major Bond would not explain why, citing privacy reasons.

“Whether it has moved along at the speed we would have liked is questionable,” Major Bond said of the case. Nonetheless, he added, “The outcome is consistent with other cases.”

But not deploying Sergeant Renteria was never an option, Major Bond said. “We are in the business of fighting a war, and we let very little interfere with that,” he said.

Ms. Renteria’s divorce became official in October, but the couple has two young sons, and she worries that his behavior, left unchecked after his second tour, will worsen. She has secured a restraining order.

“I feel that nobody is in my corner,” Ms. Renteria said. “Because he wears a uniform, he is protected by everybody.”