When war is your business, military conflict is good for your bottom line. Such is the perverse logic behind private military companies (PMCs) like Dyncorp and MPRI, which provide support and combat services directly to the Pentagon. For them, war really does mean business. According to the Washington Post, there is one private contractor for every ten military personnel stationed in the Persian Gulf, or about 20,000 private employees. According to the Center for Public Integrity (CPI), the Defense Department has entered into 3,601 contracts worth $300 billion with 12 U.S.-based PMCs.

Since 1990, the U.S. has slashed its military personnel from 2 million to 1.4 million - part of a military privatization plan urged by then defense secretary Dick Cheney. Much of that gap has been made up by PMCs. But unlike the U.S. Armed Forces, these private companies are not accountable to Congress and are dangerously hard to control - they answer to corporate bosses, who are more concerned with the bottom line than with doing a thorough job and are unnacountable for human rights violations. The Pentagon and State Department aren¹t even required to reveal contracts of less than $50 million, as many private military contracts are. The result is that private military companies add an extra layer of secrecy to military activities.

Now Army Secretary Thomas White, a former Enron executive, is pushing even further privatization of the army. He is quietly planning to turn more than 210,000 Army jobs over to the private sector as part of a ³Third Wave² of privatization without even notifying Congress.

Two of the dominant private military companies are Dyncorp Inc. and Military Professional Resources Inc. (MPRI). Another is Kellogg, Brown and Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton.

Last Updated March 26, 2003