2004-07-13

Iraq Security to be headed up by private thugs

Oh, I see how it's going to work. The new democracy of Iraq will be protected by
private military thugs. Not just plain vanilla thugs, but thugs headed up by Tim Spicer. Specifically, Spicer and Co. will be paid millions to coordinate "security operations" in Iraq.

Never heard of Tim Spicer? He's a swell guy who heads up Aegis Defense Services:

Aegis is headed by Tim Spicer, a former lieutenant colonel in the Scots Guards who was hired by warring political parties in Papua New Guinea and Sierra Leone in the late 1990s. Those contracts, which were aimed at battling insurgents, sparked controversies and formal inquiries in those nations and in Britain about the role of Spicer's "private military company," as he described Sandline International, the firm he headed then.

Sandline's work in 1997 to quell rebels operating on an island with a lucrative copper mine in Papua New Guinea was followed by an army rebellion and a coup, and the elected government collapsed, according to news accounts at the time.

The company's 1998 intervention in Sierra Leone on the side of the elected government in exile included plans to supply arms at a time when a United Nations arms embargo was in place, a British parliamentary inquiry found. The inquiry determined that guns were shipped but cleared British ministers of trying to circumvent the ban. Sandline said it had British government approval for its actions. The Sierra Leone rebels also were defeated.

Just another screw-up in a series of screw-ups that is the "New Iraq".