Holy crap. That’s all I can think to say right now.

According to a series in the Chicago Tribune, contractors in Iraq have been using subcontractors who bring in foreign workers against their will and often against the laws of the workers’ home countries. The Tribune reported today that the military finally ordered contractors to end abuses in Iraq.

The series of articles came out in 2005, but allegations have been floating around since at least 2004, when the Pentagon first publicly acknowledged the problem. Little has been done until now, and it’s dispicable that the Pentagon did nothing to force contractors earning billions to accurately document and validate workers’ nation of origin and the hiring practices of their subcontractors. It’s actually worse than it sounds at first, so read the article.

You may also want to read about the lawsuit by the families of the four contractors strung up on that bridge:

But then things started to get strange. Blackwater held a memorial service for the men at its compound. The families were gathered in a conference room, where they thought they would be told how the men had died. The Zovko family asked Blackwater to see the “After Action Report” detailing the incident. “We were actually told,” recalls Zovko’s mother, Danica, “that if we wanted to see the paperwork of how my son and his co-workers were killed that we’d have to sue them.”

Thus began the legal battle between Blackwater and the dead men’s families. In one of its few statements on the suit, Blackwater spokesperson Chris Bertelli said, “Blackwater hopes that the honor and dignity of our fallen comrades are not diminished by the use of the legal process.” Katy Helvenston calls that “total BS in my opinion,” and says that the families decided to sue only after being stonewalled, misled and lied to by the company. “Blackwater seems to understand money. That’s the only thing they understand,” she says. “They have no values, they have no morals. They’re whores. They’re the whores of war.”

(via Atrios and Digby’s Blog)