MountainRunner discusses the implications of rescinding Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) Order 17 and identifies the critical issues associated with integrating Private Military Companies (PMCs) into the military's mission and providing PMCs with the protection required to successfully conduct assigned tasks.
Iraq's Parliament is considering rescinding CPA Order 17 that protects PMCs from Iraqi law. (BBC and AP stories here). Nice story but bad for the PMCs and incompatible with their mission. If the private military companies, especially the private security companies, are augmenting, or at times replacing US military forces, they must not only be fully integrated into the mission at the strategic, operational, and tactical levels, but also protected accordingly. The risk of not doing so is political. By definition, these firms operate in less than secure geographies (no, I'm not using the word state) with weak or absent legal, judicial, and police systems and any action against them such as rescinding CPA Order 17 may be suspect.
The noble but meaningless modification to the UCMJ was a step in the right direction. The companies must be held accountable to the overall mission and not just their profit margin nor beholding exclusively to their principal. The latter is the toughest nut to crack. Also by definition, PSCs are hired for two reasons: military or other security forces are unavailable or they are not flexible enough for the mission...
Read the entire post at MountainRunner.