Prairie Voice

By Dan Kenney
No Private Armies
December 19, 2009

Recently I gave a talk to a group of democrats about the danger of outsourcing our security to private military and security companies like Blackwater, Triple Canopy, and others. Part of my talk includes looking at the profits made by pentagon contractors such as Raytheon, Boeing, KBR, etc.. During the questions and comments portion the chair of the committee said, “By your definition of military contractor I would be one, I have worked for Raytheon for over 35 years.”

He said that I should not include Raytheon in with Blackwater. “Raytheon is a good company that provides what our soldiers need, they are nothing like Blackwater.” In a sense he was saying that Raytheon was a “good” military contractor and that Blackwater was a bad one. I have given this talk many times and this is the first time someone challenged me with the possibility that there are “good” war profiteers and there are bad.
The next person to speak said that she agreed with the chair and she felt it was not a good idea to take on these companies right now with the economy the way it is, because “they provide a lot of jobs.” She implied these multi-billion dollar companies that make their money from war are “good” companies to have because of the employment they provide. .

On my drive home I puzzled over what they had said. Could it be that I should present the information about pentagon contractors like Boeing and Raytheon in a separate program? So I decided I needed to take a closer look at Raytheon.
I learned that Raytheon, which means “light from the gods,” is the fifth largest defense contractor in the world and the fourth largest in the United States, with annual revenues of over $20 billion. More than 90 percent of Raytheon’s revenues were obtained from defense contracts. Many of their contracts with the U.S. defense department are “no bid contracts.”

Raytheon is the maker of “Bunker Buster” bombs, Tomahawk and Patriot missiles. Raytheon manufactured the missile that killed 62 civilians, most of them women and children, in a Baghdad market in 2003. Hundreds of Raytheon million dollar cruise missiles have been fired on Afghanistan killing more untold hundreds of civilians. The Tomahawk missiles were used during “shock and awe” in 2003 killing hundreds in Iraq.
The missile that killed 62 in a Baghdad market on a Friday night in 2003 had been manufactured in Texas. Apparently it malfunctioned and did not hit its intended target.

The company refused to take responsibility for the malfunction.
In 2009 Raytheon came out with the “Silent Guardian” or Active Denial System (ADS). It is designed to protect military personnel against small-arms fire without the use of lethal force. Transmitted at the speed of light over a 700 yard distance, the “Pain-Ray” as it is also known, is a millimeter-wave beam that penetrates 1/64th of an inch beneath the skin, causing the water molecules to bubble, producing an intense burning sensation, compared to that of a red hot iron. It has been referred to as the “Holy Grail of crowd control.”
Like Blackwater Raytheon has also had its share of rule violations and illegal behavior. Raytheon has paid millions of dollars in fines for illegal activities. Some of the fines were paid in settlements for several cases of overpricing and inflated costs. Other fines followed guilty pleas for illegally obtaining secret Air Force budget and planning documents and for submitting false claims for work done on missiles.

Raytheon is also fighting a civil action suit that was filed by over 1,000 property owners in St. Petersburg, Fla. The resident accuse Waltham, Mass. based Raytheon of polluting the soil and groundwater around its St. Petersburg, Fla.
So it appears that there are many similarities between Blackwater and Raytheon after all.

What about the jobs? Raytheon does employ over 80,000 workers worldwide. Boeing has over 155,000 and GE over 320,000. CACI employs over 12,000, Dyncorp another 15,000.and Triple Canopy has over 2,000 in Iraq alone. Blackwater’s information about how many they employ is difficult to find, however Gary Jackson former president of Blackwater said in an interview back in 2007 that they had a list of over 25,000 contractors. There is no question that these pentagon contractor companies provide employment, after-all this is what the “military industrial complex” is all about. The issue of employment, the livelihood of millions depending upon the creation of weapons, distributing weapons, on and on; this is the heart of the problem with creating an economy based on war. However we need to face the fact that an economy that is based on weapons and war is not sustainable; in fact it may lead to our own destruction.

One must ask where is the line to be drawn separating the one who drops the bomb from the one who helps create or manufacture the bomb? Is one less responsible for the death of those innocent individuals killed? Is one who works for a company that manufactures the missiles that kill the children less responsible for their deaths? Are those who have their tax dollars pay for the missiles any less responsible for the killings by the missiles? If it were not for our tax dollars how would our government pay the war profiteers? And if my tax dollars are among those used to pay for the missile am I not also responsible in some way? Are we not all responsible in some way for what is done in our names?
It is these questions that lead to an impasse as we struggle for a world without war profiteers: a world of peace instead of one of war.

I have answered one question for myself however, and that is I will continue to talk about Raytheon and Boeing, and the other companies who profit from war in the same presentation as Blackwater and other private military security companies. I have yet to find a “good” war profiteer.