From The Nation:
Houston
It was an early January morning in 2008 when 42-year-old Dawn Leamon, a paramedic for a defense contractor in southern Iraq, woke up to find her entire room shaking. The shipping container that served as her living quarters was reverberating from nearby rocket attacks, and she was jolted awake to discover an awful reality. "Right then my whole life was turned upside down," she says.
What follows is the story she told me on Monday in a lengthy, painful on-the-record interview, conducted in a lawyer's office in Houston, Texas, while she was back from Iraq on a brief leave this week.
The story is ugly and it's graphic. You need a strong stomach to read it.
Over the next few weeks Leamon would be told to keep quiet about the incident by a KBR supervisor. The camp's military liaison officer also told her not to speak about what had happened, she says. And she would follow these instructions. "Because then, all of a sudden, if you've done exactly what you've been instructed not to do--tell somebody--then you're in danger," Leamon says
This is sickening. What's worse is that Dawn's story is not unique.
Leamon felt very alone. But she was not.
In fact, a growing number of women employees working for US defense contractors in the Middle East are coming forward with complaints of violence directed at them. As the Iraq War drags on, and as stories of US security contractors who seem to operate with impunity continue to emerge (like Blackwater and its deadly attack against Iraqi civilians on September 16, 2007), a rash of new sexual assault and sexual harassment complaints are being lodged against overseas contractors--by their own employees. Todd Kelly, a lawyer in Houston, says his firm alone has fifteen clients with sexual assault, sexual harassment and retaliation complaints (for reporting assault and/or harassment) against Halliburton and its former subsidiary Kellogg, Brown & Root LLC (KBR), as well as Cayman Island-based Service Employees International Inc., a KBR shell company. (While Leamon is technically an SEII employee, she is supervised by KBR staff as a KBR employee.)
The contractors seem to operate outside the law, any law. But then, why not? Certain members of the Bush maladministration operate outside the constraints of the law, and our Attorney General Mukasey explains it for us at TPM via Adventus.
Another case:
Many victims of sexual assault find themselves without meaningful recourse when they work for US defense contractors that are powerful companies on foreign soil. "It's one big battle over where to fight the battle," said Leamon's attorney Ross, who is considering if and how and against whom to file charges on behalf of his client.
Take Jamie Leigh Jones's case, for example.
Since Jones alleged she was gang raped in 2005, while KBR was still a Halliburton subsidiary, her case is covered by an extralegal Halliburton dispute-resolution program implemented under then-CEO Dick Cheney in 1997. The program has all the hallmarks of the Cheney White House's penchant for secrecy. While Halliburton declared the program's aim was to reduce costly and lengthy litigation (and limit possible damage awards in the process), in practice it meant that employees like Jones signed away their constitutional right to a jury trial--and agreed to have any disputes heard in a private arbitration hearing without hope of appeal. (While two lower courts declared the tactic illegal, in 2001, the Texas Supreme Court overturned those rulings.)
What have we become? That victims of sexual assault have no recourse within the law is despicable. I have no more words.
This business really is appalling
ReplyDeleteDear Godde in heaven.
ReplyDeleteAnyone who's surprised hasn't been paying attention. I'm sorry if that sounds callous, but that's precisely who they are.
ReplyDeleteI sometimes wondered if others thought analogies between this administration and the Third Reich were unhelpful hyperbole. I, for one, would be pressed to make a meaningful distinction between Cheney and, say, Goering. Perhaps the Germans could be helpful to us, if we were willing.
Why I don't like to face politics in the U.S., part umpteeth.
It's not surprising to me, but the personal and detailed stories make the impact much more powerful.
ReplyDelete"... the Texas Supreme Court overturned those rulings." This would be that Texas Supreme Court on which the still unemployed Alberto Gonzales (small mercies - but don't for a moment doubt that were he a WASP he'd have been in lucrative employment from the day he left Justice) served from 1999 to 2001?
ReplyDeleteWhen the Bush-Cheney maladministration took us into war, they apparently did not count ANY of the predictable costs. This kind of degradation is an inevitable consequence of war. A lot of servicewomen have been raped and sexually harassed as well, and have had great difficulty in getting justice and help. The massive use of contractors in this war to do jobs that normally would be done by the uniformed services introduces special opportunities for abuse. It enables the government to keep a big proportion of the damage quiet, because dead and wounded contractors don't count as military casualties, and the government and the military can try to disassociate themselves from wrongdoing committed by contractors.
ReplyDeleteI don't know whether to put Cheney and Goering in the same category, JohnieB, but I will say that watching the way our citizens, the Congress, the press, civil liberties and the political process are being systematically broken down makes it easier and easier to understand how the Nazis were able to take control in Germany. There is no doubt in my mind that it could happen to us. It may be that the only thing standing between us and a complete collapse into fascism is that we're not suffering enough economically.
Yet. These people will ensure that we do through their misguided policies.
ReplyDeleteLet's not forget that The Nation published the article, and I am quoting them on my blog, and we're not likely to be hauled off to a concentration camp. That's not to defend the present leadership, which is the worst we've had in a long time and is in the running for a place on the short list of the worst in our history.
ReplyDeleteMary Clara you are exactly right that the extensive use of contractors to do what was formerly the work of the military opens the door to wider abuse and less accountability. The state of the nation at this time presents a very scary picture.
Caminante, I agree that we are facing bad economic times ahead. I've been saying that for quite some time, and I've been called a Cassandra by most of those around me. Bush is going to dump the whole stinking mess into the lap of the next president, and no matter who is elected, I wonder if they will have the capability or the will to do what will be necessary to bring us out of the deep hole.
I'm told by those who were there that in the Vietnam War, KBR was known as Kellogg Burn and Loot.
ReplyDeleteThe whole point of using mercenaries in this war is to augment troop numbers without resort to a draft, and most importantly, to do an end run around the law.
It seems that this president, and everyone around him, sees the rule of law as an impediment and a hurtle to be overcome.
I'm surprised the Scripture did not leap from Bush's hand when he took the oath of office.
Counterlight, you're right. The protesters shouted it during the Vietnam War. I believe it was simply "Burn and Loot" for Brown and Root, because Kellogg wasn't in the mix yet.
ReplyDeleteThe timing seems right to me, Mimi, though I don't remember when it become KBR.
ReplyDeleteI actually worked for Halliburton--part of the W R Grace Mining and Chemicals industry which it absorbed later--in the early Eighties, I think, though I was sales and service for oilfield supply tools in Oklahoma.
My earlier analogical hyperbole is meant to convey my disgust more than a sober historical comparison, which, as a Historian, I take lightly, in brain-storming mode.
But it also may help to understand why a Canadian extradited to Syria for a year of torture for the U S may not appreciate the distinction most of us have the luxury of making.
The boss of our Altar Guild, and therefore of us all, is a Cradle Episcopalian with a Middle Eastern name and features. She and her husband, as middle-class American as anybody gets, always get extra hassle in airports since 2001.
Johnieb, it's a thing with me to be very precise in my use of the terms "Nazi" and "fascist" in order not to diminish or water down the evil implications of the meaning of the words "a fascist state" or a "Nazi-like state". Then too, there have been many different types of governments that did evil on a grand scale that were not fascist states. What I meant was that, although I may see tendencies in the direction, in my humble opinion, we are not yet a fascist state. That's not to say that the Bush maladministration is not guilty of doing evil on a pretty grand scale.
ReplyDeleteYou know that I have written often and vehemently about their dirty deeds. What they've done in the name of the citizens of the US haunts me every single day.
My understanding is, under US law no contract can sign away ANY right under the Constitution. NO contract is more binding than civil rights.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous, I hope that you're right. I'm not a lawyer, so I don't know. I pray that somehow justice will prevail.
ReplyDeleteI have no words for this either. But great anger whenever I think on it.
ReplyDeletePaul, that's not right either. The funeral costs payment seems close to an insult.
ReplyDelete