mpri

Perhaps someone can clarify things for us.

Remember Jay Garner--Iraq's first viceroy? He worked for L3 subsidiary Sy Coleman. Well, L3 has another branch or subsidiary, MPRI, Military Professional Resources Inc.

MPRI is a private military contractor operating in Iraq right now. And no, turns out they are not quite doing now what Center for Public Integrity has them reported as being contracted to do then. Surprised?

In April 2003, MPRI was awarded two contracts valued at a total of $2.5 million by the Defense Department to provide a plan for putting ex-soldiers to work on public works programs and to provide 20 interpreters.

The first contract calls for MPRI to provide "a planning framework that will address the integration of the Iraqi Armed Forces into the overall reconstruction effort and the determination of possible reconstruction requirements." [...] The second contract calls for MPRI to provide interpreters and linguists for the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance in order to "facilitate the development of effective governmental structures at the local, provincial and national levels in a post-conflict environment" in Iraq.

An article in the News Tribune Getting ready to supply Iraq by Michael Gilbert sheds some light on the subject.

The Stryker brigade's support troops from Fort Lewis are going through training now to make sure they're ready for what's to come.

Troops from the brigade's 296th Brigade Support Battalion have spent the last several days in classroom and field training on Camp Udairi's barren ranges just south of the Iraqi border.

Instructors from a private military contractor, Military Professional Resources Inc., talk to soldiers about the most recent tactics employed by insurgents in Iraq. They suggest ways to respond. And the soldiers get live-fire training, in which they shoot on the move at targets that come at them from nearly all directions.

And yes, those are US troops undergoing the training, not Iraqi's. This raises a bunch of questions for us.

A. Why is a private military contractor teaching classes it sounds like troops should have gotten back in the US by their armed forces?

B. Has the US military simply become a low cost training program to supply private military contractors with knowledgable professionals from whom they then can generate profit?

C. Why not just pay our military personnel more to stick around and pass their knowledge and experience on to troops new to conflict?