Jamie Leigh Jones, now 22, says that after she was raped by multiple men at a KBR camp in the Green Zone, the company put her under guard in a shipping container with a bed and warned her that if she left Iraq for medical treatment, she'd be out of a job.
"Don't plan on working back in Iraq. There won't be a position here, and there won't be a position in Houston," Jones says she was told.
In a lawsuit filed in federal court against Halliburton and its then-subsidiary KBR, Jones says she was held in the shipping container for at least 24 hours without food or water by KBR, which posted armed security guards outside her door, who would not let her leave.
The part of me that is not surprised is the part that believes a private "war services" firm like KBR is going to attract brutal men because those are the only ones who will go into a war zone and risk their lives (whereas the actual U.S. Armed Forces attracts young people looking to better themselves or selflessly serve their country).
The part of me that is shocked wants to see legal and political vengeance against KBR, Halliburton, former Halliburton CEO Richard Bruce Cheney, the perpetrators, enablers and cover-up management.
But what's likely to happen?
Over two years later, the Justice Department has brought no criminal charges in the matter. In fact, ABC News could not confirm any federal agency was investigating the case.
Legal experts say Jones' alleged assailants will likely never face a judge and jury, due to an enormous loophole that has effectively left contractors in Iraq beyond the reach of United States law.
"It's very troubling," said Dean John Hutson of the Franklin Pierce Law Center. "The way the law presently stands, I would say that they don't have, at least in the criminal system, the opportunity for justice."
Congressman Poe says neither the departments of State nor Justice will give him answers on the status of the Jones investigation.
That leaves the civil courts, where the victim has sued. But:
Jones' former employer doesn't want this case to see the inside of a civil courtroom.KBR has moved for Jones' claim to be heard in private arbitration, instead of a public courtroom. It says her employment contract requires it.
In arbitration, there is no public record nor transcript of the proceedings, meaning that Jones' claims would not be heard before a judge and jury.
Her employment contract. Did it cover rape by fellow employees and imprisonment by management?
Lawless bastards, bottom to top. As MissLaura says on DailyKos in her appropriately incensed diary:
It takes a special something, it seems to me, to say "we don't want to be held accountable for the gang-rape of this woman we employ. Hey, let's lock her up under armed guard without food and water." What was the end game there? Was the intent to let her out once they'd broken her and she wasn't going to report it? Did they even have a plan? And this, mind you, wasn't a matter of the rapists themselves trying to cover up their actions. This was a decision made by someone high up enough in the company to assign guards to a damn storage container.
This is what the government of our country has bought and paid for.
God help this all lead to the end of the GOP practice of contracting out those duties our official armed forces have traditionally handled in order to make shareholders happy and damned be any morality that gets in the way.
As for Ms. Jones, she's acting like a true brave American, having started a foundation to help women like her abused in military or private military situations, and speaking out:
"There needs to be a voice out there that really pushed for change," she said. "I'd like to be that voice."
May she take all the bad guys down.
1 comment:
This is what we have come to. The formerly greatest country in the world using hired mercenaries w/o any conscience to fight an unjust war far away from our continent.
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