The controversies surrounding Blackwater and other private security forces in Iraq are hardly a secret, but how is it that we’ve reached the point in which the State Department’s private army finds itself facing this fiasco? It stems from a decision made nearly four years ago.
When the U.S. military invaded and occupied Iraq in early 2003, there was no question who would be in charge of security for the official civilians pouring in to remake the country. Under an executive order signed by Bush, the Coalition Provisional Authority and its head, L. Paul Bremer, reported directly to then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. But as U.S. troops became preoccupied with a growing insurgency, the Pentagon hired Blackwater to provide protection for Bremer and other civilians.
The next year, as the United States prepared to return sovereignty to the Iraqis and the State Department began planning an embassy in Baghdad, Rumsfeld lost a bid to retain control over the full U.S. effort, including billions of dollars in reconstruction funds. A new executive order, signed in January 2004, gave State authority over all but military operations. Rumsfeld’s revenge, at least in the view of many State officials, was to withdraw all but minimal assistance for diplomatic security.
“It was the view of Donald Rumsfeld and [then-Deputy Defense Secretary] Paul Wolfowitz that this wasn’t their problem,” said a former senior State Department official.
OK, so institutional grudges and inter-departmental backbiting aren’t that unusual, especially with all the hacks Bush has chosen to run the executive branch. But eventually State and Defense came to some kind of working arrangement, right?
Wrong. As the WaPo reported, “Meetings to negotiate an official memorandum of understanding between State and Defense during the spring of 2004 broke up in shouting matches over issues such as their respective levels of patriotism and whether the military would provide mortuary services for slain diplomats.”
As Paul Krugman concluded, “Remember, however, the important point: if you noticed back then that these were crazy, dangerous people, you were shrill.”