I've been thinking for some time that I want to turn more of TPM's energy and resources (by which I mean mainly, TPMmuckraker, but mine too) to the vast, complex and corrupt issue of private contractors in Iraq. Both those on the security (i.e., privatized army) front and also on the reconstruction side more generally. And along those lines my attention is now fixed on the second and third day developments in the Blackwater firefight story out of Iraq.

As Spencer has been reporting and David further explains below, the Department of State is telling Blackwater the company may not answer Congress's question without the specific approval of the State Department. What's more, Condi Rice has told Chairman Waxman (who plans an investigation of the incident) that she will not testify about Blackwater or contracting corruption cases in general.

Now, there are two issues here. One is Rice's refusal to testify, which, unless there's some unasserted privilege I'm not aware of, is simply contempt of Congress. She's a senate-confirmed department secretary. So in the absence of some specific privilege, it's not up to her about whether she testifies before Congress. That's called oversight.

More pressing is the argument about Blackwater -- which seems to be that the Department of State has entered into a business contract for war services and because of that contract, the activities are beyond congressional scrutiny. Let's set aside for the moment the issue of what they might be trying to hide. And let's focus on argument being set up -- services rendered on behalf of the State Department, pursuant to State Department policy goals, are not subject to congressional oversight because the State Department wrote the contract with what amounts to a non-disclosure agreement.

I can't imagine that this argument flies far. But it gets us into the deeper issue of what's up and what's wrong with the explosion of use of private contracting by the Bush administration in Iraq. You'll remember that one of the many arguments the Bush administration put forward when they were trying to evade court scrutiny of the Guantanamo prison camp was to argue that it was not in the United States and thus wasn't subject to US laws or judicial scrutiny. In addition to making a ton of money for private firms, a lot of what the growth of the private contracting sector in US foreign policy is to create islands of unaccountability, areas of work by private contractors who don't have to follow the various regulations US military and civilian personnel have to follow and who aren't answerable to our democratic institutions like actual soldiers and government employees are. The case here with Blackwater, however, as evidenced by State's clampdown, seems to be an extreme example of that pattern. What is it they don't want Blackwater to say?