War & Disaster Profiteering

A group of American security guards in Iraq have alleged they were beaten, stripped and threatened with a snarling dog by US marines when they were detained after an alleged shooting incident outside Falluja last month. Read More

U.S. Marines forcibly detained a team of security guards working for an American engineering firm in Iraq after reportedly witnessing the contractors fire at U.S. troops and Iraqi civilians from an armed convoy. The employees have said that the incident was a case of mistaken identity. Several have accused the Marines of verbally and physically abusing them while they were in custody. Read More

They looked so local that they risked drawing friendly fire if they attempted to move up to shelter under the American guns. So they sat in no man's land, chit-chatting by radio as they willed on the Americans to reopen the road before their cover was blown. Read More

Around 60 Filipino workers, who had earlier engaged in a labor strike inside a United States military camp in Iraq, have come home, the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) said yesterday. Read More

After years of failing to control cost overruns, the most powerful officials at the Pentagon are becoming increasingly alarmed that the machinery for building weapons is breaking down under its own weight. Read More

The company, Point Blank, sold the U.S. Marine Corps 19,000 bulletproof vests that failed the military's own quality tests, heightening safety concerns among GIs deployed in combat situations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Read More

Hart Security Ltd., a Cyprus-based British security firm, announced that a convoy of trucks its employees were escorting had been "ambushed by insurgents" near Habaniyah. Read More

Global military spending in 2004 broke the $1 trillion barrier for the first time since the Cold War, boosted by the U.S. war against terror and the growing defense budgets of India and China, a European think tank said Tuesday. Read More

The U.S. Defense Department's weapons buying chief and senior Air Force officials sidestepped regulations in a $23 billion proposal to lease and buy as many as 100 Boeing Co. tankers, the Pentagon's inspector general said. The acquisition process takes on added importance as the Pentagon plans to boost annual spending on new weapons by 52 percent during the next six years, as at least 13 programs move into production, to $118 billion in fiscal 2011 from $78 billion this year. Read More

' believe that critical gaps in this report have placed a cloud over it and indeed over the Inspector General's office. In my view, the report fails to discuss critical issues, omits critical material, and redacts key portions of the report in a manner that raises serious questions about whether this report meets applicable requirements for the independence of Inspectors General.' Read More