While many want to pin the dominance of Blackwater in Iraq on the man with the Timberlands — Paul Bremer — it appears that interagency struggles did more to shape the company’s expansion.As Karen DeYoung writes in the Washington Post, the first private contractors doing personal security in Iraq for U.S. diplomats and other personnel appeared because the Defense Department didn’t get the job.  When nominal sovereignty was turned over to the Iraqi government in 2003, the Defense Department was a candidate to provide security in the Green Zone.  However, as DeYoung notes, DoD under Donald Rumsfeld "lost a bid to retain control over the full U.S. effort, including billions of dollars in reconstruction funds" that included security operations.  Some believe that the near-disappearance of military security personnel was "Rumsfeld’s revenge" for losing the larger turf battle to State.  But the most important point is that Blackwater was already in Iraq working for the DoD.

In early 2004, when State Department managers understood the recruiting and training required to develop a personal security force, they did what was most convenient, "[taking] over the Pentagon’s personal security contract with Blackwater and [extending] it for a year."

Blackwater founder Eric Prince realized that the contract’s further extension was almost a sure thing, since, as he said "I know it would be hard for the State Department to recruit other people to come over and do reconstruction work . . . if some of them are going home in coffins." 

To paraphrase a well-known Vietnam War protester, if you’re going to ask one more man to die for a mistake, just make sure you pay him well.

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