The Sandline F..k up.
(under constrction) The Falkland Hero ??
Today in Iraq with a 400 Million USA contract.
Some of his friends.
and what they did, click for the movie and read the article.
The Trophy.
Story by Mr.Mujo Sefa to follow.
Story by Mr.Mujo Sefa to follow.
Mr.M.Sefa is the person (here seen to the right of Mr,Anan),who recorded the tape on which, the then Prime Minister of PNG ,Mr Bill Skate (Lately made a Sir and now deceased) ?? confessed to being a murdererer.
971201
PNG premier
urged to resign
over tapes
MELBOURNE: Papua New Guinea Prime Minister Bill Skate has been urged to stand down after news media aired what they described as a video recording of him boasting he was a "godfather" of crime.
Obtained by the Australian Broadcasting Corp (ABC) from a former aide to Skate, the secretly recorded video has poor visual and audio quality, but a man identified by the ABC as Skate can be heard admitting involvement in violence.
The man says: "...if I tell my gang members to kill, they kill...there's no other godfather. I'm the godfather."
Skate is due on Monday to attend a major annual Papua New Guinea resources investment conference in Sydney. He was staying during the weekend in Brisbane and could not be contacted for comment.
Papua New Guinea's opposition has taken political advantage of the video, the second to be released in the past week by former aide Mujo Sefa, and called for Skate to resign.
The first video recording shows a man purported to be Skate discussing payments of money to various figures in another secretly taped office conversation which the ABC said concerned bribes.
Skate dismissed the first tape as a blackmail attempt and has begun suing the ABC and Sefa for defamation in the Australian courts. He has not yet commented on the second video.
Former Papua New Guinea prime minister Sir Rabbie Namaliu on Saturday called for Skate to step aside pending an inquiry.
"What it calls for now is a full inquiry into these allegations," Namaliu told reporters on a visit to Canberra.
"And that's the only way that the prime minister can clear his name, is to set up an inquiry and step aside while it is done and then await the conclusions of it," he added.
"Some of my colleagues think it is serious enough for him to resign, but I think to be fair to him he should be given the opportunity to respond to those allegations."
Sefa helped Skate broker a ruling coalition of Papua New Guinea's major political parties after a general election in June, during which Skate campaigned against corruption.
Corruption and crime are major problems in Papua New Guinea where so-called "rascals" -- gangs of violent criminals -- are a scourge on society.
Allegations of corruption sparked a mutiny among Papua New Guinea's army in March and led to the downfall of then prime minister Sir Julius Chan, accused by an army chief of corruptly hiring mercenaries to quell a nine-year-old island rebellion.
Skate's coalition partners have so far stood by him.
Papua New Guinea ombudsman Simon Pentanu said the video recordings showed politicians must be careful not to fall under the influence of foreign "carpet-baggers, fly-by-nighters and spivs".-Reuters
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/11/27/wirq27.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/11/27/ixworld.html
Trophy' video exposes private security contractors
shooting up Iraqi drivers
By Sean Rayment, Defence Correspondent
(Filed: 27/11/2005)
A "trophy" video appearing to show security guards in
Baghdad randomly shooting Iraqi civilians has sparked
two investigations after it was posted on the
internet, the Sunday Telegraph can reveal.
The video has sparked concern that private security
companies, which are not subject to any form of
regulation either in Britain or in Iraq, could be
responsible for the deaths of hundreds of innocent
Iraqis.
Lt Col Spicer
Lt Col Tim Spicer is investigating the incident
The video, which first appeared on a website that has
been linked unofficially to Aegis Defence Services,
contained four separate clips, in which security
guards open fire with automatic rifles at civilian
cars. All of the shooting incidents apparently took
place on "route Irish", a road that links the airport
to Baghdad.
The road has acquired the dubious distinction of being
the most dangerous in the world because of the number
of suicide attacks and ambushes carried out by
insurgents against coalition troops. In one four-month
period earlier this year it was the scene of 150
attacks.
In one of the videoed attacks, a Mercedes is fired on
at a distance of several hundred yards before it
crashes in to a civilian taxi. In the last clip, a
white civilian car is raked with machine gun fire as
it approaches an unidentified security company
vehicle. Bullets can be seen hitting the vehicle
before it comes to a slow stop.
There are no clues as to the shooter but either a
Scottish or Irish accent can be heard in at least one
of the clips above Elvis Presley's Mystery Train, the
music which accompanies the video.
Last night a spokesman for defence firm Aegis Defence
Services - set up in 2002 by Lt Col Tim Spicer, a
former Scots Guards officer - confirmed that the
company was carrying out an internal investigation to
see if any of their employees were involved.
The Foreign Office has also confirmed that it is
investigating the contents of the video in conjunction
with Aegis, one of the biggest security companies
operating in Iraq. The company was recently awarded a
£220 million security contract in Iraq by the United
States government. Aegis conducts a number of security
duties and helped with the collection of ballot papers
in the country's recent referendum
Lt Col Spicer, 53, rose to public prominence in 1998
when his private military company Sandlines
International was accused of breaking United Nations
sanctions by selling arms to Sierra Leone.
The video first appeared on the website
www.aegisIraq.co.uk. The website states: "This site
does not belong to Aegis Defence Ltd, it belongs to
the men on the ground who are the heart and soul of
the company." The clips have been removed.
The website also contains a message from Lt Col
Spicer, which reads: "I am concerned about media
interest in this site and I remind everyone of their
contractual obligation not to speak to or assist the
media without clearing it with the project management
or Aegis London.
"Refrain from posting anything which is detrimental to
the company since this could result in the loss or
curtailment of our contract with resultant loss for
everybody."
Security companies awarded contracts by the US
administration in Iraq adopt the same rules for
opening fire as the American military. US military
vehicles carry a sign warning drivers to keep their
distance from the vehicle. The warning which appears
in both Arabic and English reads "Danger. Keep back.
Authorised to use lethal force." A similar warning is
also displayed on the rear of vehicles belonging to
Aegis.
Capt Adnan Tawfiq of the Iraqi Interior Ministry which
deals with compensation issues, has told the Sunday
Telegraph that he has received numerous claims from
families who allege that their relatives have been
shot by private security contractors travelling in
road convoys.
He said: "When the security companies kill people they
just drive away and nothing is done. Sometimes we ring
the companies concerned and they deny everything. The
families don't get any money or compensation. I would
say we have had about 50-60 incidents of this kind."
Iraq factfile
A spokesman for Aegis Defence Services, said: "There
is nothing to indicate that these film clips are in
any way connected to Aegis."
Last night a spokesman for the Foreign Office said:
"Aegis have assured us that there is nothing on the
video to suggest that it has anything to do with their
company. This is now a matter for the American
authorities because Aegis is under contract to the
United States."
spicer falklands - Google Search for more on the Promiseur.
The following videos are being prepared:
1. Singapore- conversations 2 tapes(re:Promises made)
2. Hadyai- Emails and faxes re: "above"
3. Kuala Lumpur- re handover.
4. Port Moresby- Islander hotel discussions.
5. Curvello-Phone conversations and Faxes.
Looks worried maybe because of broken promises.
Or the killings shown in the movie"The Trophy"below.
Matters learned whilst playing the Hero in the Falklands?.
or Ireland?
A man is a man if he sticks to his promises otherwise he is a
Nothing
Dutch saying.
Only in PNG ?
Why he is on the Falkland page will be explained later
Leader of the rascals(thieves and murderers)in Pt.Moresby and self confessed murderer* becomes Prime Minister of Papua New Guinea.For a very short period.Is Knighted ??? and dies at the age of 51.
*I am still working on the transscript of his confession.
Former PNG leader Skate dies after a stroke at 51
Greg Roberts
04 January 2006
FORMER Papua New Guinea prime minister William Skate has died, aged 51, in a Brisbane hospital after his life support system was turned off.
Sir William won plaudits for his role in bringing peace to the troubled island of Bougainville, but he was also forced to deny charges ranging from being the "Godfather" of Port Moresby's notorious Raskol gangs to corruption and murder.
His wife, Lady Rarua, and son William Jr were by his bedside when he died yesterday morning in the Wesley Hospital's intensive care unit.
Sir William, a National Capital District MP, was admitted to the Port Moresby General Hospital last week with complications from a long-standing heart condition.
He suffered a stroke in the hospital and was transferred to Brisbane.
"This was totally unexpected, we are all in shock," his personal aide Susure Laumaea said last night.
A drunken Sir William boasted of being the Raskol gangs' Godfather in a 1997 discussion secretly videotaped by former adviser Mujo Sefa.
Sir William, who had been prime minister for several months, boasted he was present when he ordered that a man be killed. "We cut him to pieces," he said. "If I tell my gang members to kill, they kill."
He was also shown authorising the payment of bribes.
Sir William - who specialised in trade store robberies as a teenage Raskol, dubbed Tiger, after being raised in a Port Moresby slum - claimed he had been set up.
He had the resourcefulness to earn an accountancy degree at university but was sacked in the mid-1980s from his public service job following allegations of financial wrongdoing.
Sir William became prime minister in 1997 when Julius Chan was forced from office for hiring the Sandline mercenaries to crush Bougainville's separatist rebellion.
He was also forced to deny claims that he offered $15million to Sandline in return for proof that Sir Julius had been corrupt.
Sir William also denied allegations that he used up to $22million in money earmarked for roadworks to try to bribe MPs to vote for him before he himself was forced from office in 1999.
His skill in negotiating an end to Bougainville's 12-year civil war, which left 10,000 dead, was recognised when he was knighted in last year's New Year honours. A spokesman for Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said Sir William's legacy would be his "great contribution towards the Bougainville peace process".
Acting PNG Prime Minister Sir Moi Avei said the country had lost "a very capable leader". "Sir William was very passionate about issues affecting the grassroots people," he said.
** PM's Graveyard **
A special graveyard is being prepared as a result of the death of Sir
William Skate. The special area set aside on Independence Hill will be
developed as graveyard once the necessary K4 million for the project
was approved by Parliament. A temporary area set aside for Sir William
will be developed further.
====================
** Sir William Skate **
Many Residents of the National Capital District (NCD) attended Sir
William Skate's funeral service at the Reverend Sioni Kami Memorial Church
at Gordons. A public holiday (only in the NCD) was declared as a mark
of respect and also to allow residents to attend the State funeral and
burial of the NCD Regional MP and former Prime Minister.
Sir William was laid to rest in a special area set aside on
Independence Hill in Port Moresby at 2.15pm (Thursday 12th January 2006) facing
Parliament House. The three-hour funeral service was
More on the Falkland Hero ??
Home » Issues » Corruption » Controversial Commando Wins Iraq ...
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Controversial Commando Wins Iraq Contract
by Pratap Chatterjee, Special to CorpWatch
June 9th, 2004
Cartoonist: Khalil Bendib
Occupation authorities in Iraq have awarded a $293 million contract effectively creating the world's largest private army to a company headed by Lieutenant Colonel Tim Spicer, a former officer with the Scots Guard, an elite regiment of the British military, who has been investigated for illegally smuggling arms and planning military offensives to support mining, oil, and gas operations around the world. On May 25, the Army Transportation command awarded Spicer's company, Aegis Defense Services, the contract to coordinate all the security for Iraqi reconstruction projects.
"I am pleased to confirm that we've been awarded a contract to assist the Project Management Office (PMO) in Iraq by the United States Department of Defense," said Spicer, who started Aegis just over a year ago on Picadilly in London, only a short walk from Buckingham Palace. "The contract involves coordination of security support for reconstruction contractors and for the protection of PMO personnel."
More on Mercenaries
Give War a Chance: the Life and Times of Tim Spicer
Ex-SAS Men Cash in on Iraq Bonanza
From Embassy Hero to Racing Disgrace
Under the "cost-plus" contract, the military will cover all of the company's expenses, plus a pre-determined percentage of whatever they spend, which critics say is a license to over-bill. The company has also been asked to provide 75 close protection teams -- comprised of eight men each -- for the high-level staff of companies that are running the oil and gas fields, electricity, and water services in Iraq.
Major Gary Tallman, a spokesperson for the U.S. Army, explained that the contract was to create an "integrator" or coordination hub for the security operation for every single reconstruction contractor and sub-contractor. "Their job is to disseminate information and provide guidance and coordination throughout the four regions of Iraq."
In Iraq, there are currently several dozen groups that provide private security to both the military and the private sector, with more than 20,000 employees altogether. The companies include Erinys, a South African business, that has more than 15,000 local employees charged with guarding the oil pipelines; Control Risks Group, a British company that provides security to Bechtel and Halliburton ; and North Carolina-based Blackwater Consulting, which provides everything from back-up helicopters to bodyguards for Paul Bremer, the American ambassador in charge of the occupation.
Private security companies have been asking the military for help in coordinating work for several months. In April, following the killing of several private security contractors in Baghdad, Falluja, and Kut, the companies started to pool information on an ad-hoc basis. At the time, Nick Edmunds, Iraq coordinator for the Hart Group, which provides security to media and engineering groups in Iraq, told the Washington Post, "There is absolutely a growing cooperation along unofficial lines. We try to give each other warnings about things we hear are about to happen."
But this newest military contract in Iraq is different. Aegis has no history in this business, Spicer has a debatable track record with his previous company called Sandline, and there's speculation that the contract was given for political reasons.
Wanted: A Few Good Men for Very Good Salaries
Rumors of lucrative new jobs with Spicer have been circulating for a couple of months. In late March, Britain's Lieutenant Colonel Alan Browne, who is in charge of finding jobs for members of the Royal Signals regiment in Blandford Camp, Dorset, posted ads offering Aegis positions in Iraq for qualified radio technicians at the salary of $110,000 a year, three times higher than most other jobs offered at the regimental resettlement office. The contract also provides a generous 100 days vacation per year.
"Our men can repair anything from a radio to a satellite phone, but the pay here in the UK is just 25,000 pounds ($46,000)," said Browne. "I posted the job to the guys and now it's up to them to go get the jobs."
Also in late March jobs were posted at the Adjutant General's Corps in Worthy Down, Winchester, for clerks to maintain "clerical and administrative support for a headquarters-type environment similar to a military brigade/divisional headquarters with many of the same divisions of responsibility." Salaries offered for candidates with senior non-commissioned officer qualifications were $129,000, and salaries for junior non-commissioned officer were $110,000.
Tallman says that seven companies bid for the coordination contract. According to other CorpWatch sources, three of the bidders were Dyncorp, a Virginia based company that is in charge of training the Iraqi police; Military Professionals Resources Incorporated (MPRI), which was working on training the Iraqi army; and a joint venture between Control Risks Group, Erinys, and Olive Security, three of the largest providers of private security in Iraq.
Industry insiders speculate that Aegis won the contract because of growing anger in Britain that UK-based companies have not been awarded large contracts in the reconstruction of Iraq, despite the leading role that the Tony Blair's government has played in the "coalition of the willing." The only other British bid for the contract, the Control Risks joint venture, was disqualified because one of the partners was under investigation for undisclosed reasons at the time the bids were evaluated.
Because of the politics in the decision, some groups are questioning the contracting process. "It's not evident why they they would run a rent-a-cop contract through an Army transportation division in Virginia except that maybe the staff there are more experienced and can write a professional contract that can withstand a bid protest better than the Heritage foundation interns that run contracting in Baghdad," said John Pike, a spokesman for the military watchdog group Globalsecurity.org. For the first 12 months, all payments in Iraq were evaluated by a group of six men and women in their 20s who were hired on the basis of job resumes they posted at the right-wing foundation's website.
Tallman defended the Army system. "It is inherently decentralized for efficiency and to make sure the process is impartial," he said. "The Defense Contract Audit Agency still retains oversight but this way no one office can control all the contracts. Also, we can issue contracts in fairly short order by taking advantage of the best placed office to do the job."
Questionable Track Record
Analysts like Peter Singer, author of Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry and a fellow at the Brookings Institution, a liberal think tank in Washington, D.C., say that the news took them by surprise. " It's like a blast from the past, like I took a leap back into the time-machine to the late '90s," said Singer. "To be honest, though, I am doubtful that the folks awarding the contract had any sense of Spicer's spicier history."
But not everyone agrees with this assessment of Spicer's work. In Sierra Leone, Spicer's efforts have been heralded by the private military industry as the "work of angels." In 1998, Sandline was contracted to sell 30 tons of arms to the forces of Ahmad Tejan Kabbah, the former leader of Sierra Leone, in contravention of a UN arms embargo but in apparent cooperation with Craig Murray, a junior staffer at the British Foreign Office.
Doug Brooks, the president of International Peace Operations Association (IPOA), a non-profit advocacy group for private military companies including Sandline, says the company's assistance in Sierra Leone saved the lives of thousands of civilians. "Sandline was remarkably effective," Brooks said. "Their goal of restoring the democratically elected government was achieved. They maintained a low profile but played a critical role in the success."
Nonetheless, Sandline's Sierra Leone project provoked a furor and multiple government investigations in Britain when it was discovered that the contract violated the United Nations embargo on providing arms to either side in the military conflict. Spicer maintains that he was unaware that the scheme was illegal and the government eventually agreed to draw up new rules on arms trafficking and the conduct of private military companies in Britain.
Spicer's work in Papua New Guinea, another public relations fiasco, was not even a military success. The eastern half of the South Pacific island of New Guinea, Papua New Guinea (PNG), was a British and German colony and then an Australian protectorate until 1975. That year, both PNG and the outlying island of Bougainville, some 500 miles northeast of the capital, Port Moresby, declared independence. PNG quickly took over Bougainville, where an Australian company, CRA (now part of Rio Tinto, the world's largest mining company), had begun to mine copper in 1972.
In 1989, local landowners shut down the Bougainville copper mine to protest the environmental destruction it caused and to demand independence. In February 1997, the PNG government, which had received about 44 percent of its revenue from the mine, paid Sandline International $36 million to rout the Bougainvilleans.
The very next month, PNG Prime Minister Julius Chan sacked the military commander, Brigadier General Jerry Singarok, for denouncing the contract with Sandline and arguing that the money would be better spent on his own troops, who were desperately underpaid and ill-equipped. Riots ensued after soldiers loyal to Singarok led protests that included at least 2,000 civilians. The soldiers arrested and deported a number of the Sandline contractors.
Less than a month later, dressed in crumpled jeans, Spicer was led into a Papua New Guinea court. His suitcase, bulging with $400,000 in cash, was produced as evidence of his contract with the disgraced government. At the hearings, Spicer revealed that one aspect of the project (code-named "Operation Oyster") was to wage a psychological campaign against the Bougainvilleans with the help of Russian style attack helicopters (see Give War a Chance: the Life and Times of Tim Spicer for more on Sandline).
Spicer's lawyers worked overtime to get the charges reduced and eventually dismissed but Chan was forced to resign from his job.
Building Aegis
In 2000, Spicer left Sandline's offices in Chelsea to set up another company, Strategic Consulting International (SCI) in Knightsbridge, where he offered advice to governments and shipping companies on the threat from international terrorism. He eventually changed the name of this company to Trident Maritime and moved offices once again, to his current location in Picadilly.
At first things didn't go too well. Spicer had Sara Pearson, his publicist, register SCI at her office, which got them into hot water when the media discovered that the shareholdings and directorships were incorrectly registered and that no accounts had been filed. "It was a shock to discover we hadn't properly organized [our company records]," Pearson later told Duncan Campbell, a British investigative journalist.
Likewise, Trident's original business plan was drawn up for Spicer by a group of students at the University of Maryland, who were named as vice-presidents of the company, in exchange for an agreement to allow them to submit the plan for a college competition, which they subsequently lost.
After these initial management problems, Spicer slowly created a more respectable image. He won a contract from insurers Lloyds of London to engage in a security audit of the Sri Lankan defence system, after the Tamil Tiger rebel group practically destroyed the international airport in July 2001. After giving the government a clean bill of health, Spicer started to get more work in the shipping industry.
In 2002, Spicer was approached by Per Christiansen, a Norwegian shipping expert who was director of Hudson Maritime, a 16-year-old company that did emergency response to crises like the Exxon Valdez oil spill. New Jersey-based Hudson had just won a contract from the Department of Homeland Security to review security at ports around the country.
"Some people in the insurance business in London gave me Spicer's name," recalled Christiansen. "I knew he had a rather colorful reputation but he knows the sharp end of security, so we set up a joint venture together."
Spicer brought with him an old friend who had fought beside him in the Falklands War, Mark Bullough, who had spent the past decade in India, Hong Kong, Malaysia, and Singapore, working for Jardine Fleming, a Hong Kong-based investment bank.
"I can recall Mark and me liberating a bottle of champagne and drinking it by the sea wall and then getting into a slight confrontation with a staff officer," Spicer wrote in his autobiography, recalling the day after the British routed the Argentine army in the Falklands in 1982.
After the Falklands War, Bullough had left the British Army to work in banking. He ran an office for Jardine Fleming in Bombay for five years, where the government had just opened up the financial markets on Dalal Street (the Indian equivalent of Wall Street) to foreign banks. Even in the financial business, Bullough maintained his reputation for being unorthodox. Traders in Bombay were astonished to see the head of this distinguished international bank arrive for work on a motorbike.
Bullough brought with him another well-respected researcher from the banking business, Dominic Armstrong, who had worked for him at Jardine. "It's fantastic energy working with Spicer--he's a tremendous doer," Armstrong said. "Of course, he does have his reputation, but frankly I find all that irritating. We are a very commercial and diverse enterprise today working in many different sectors from the food business to marine security."
With the Hudson Trident venture off to a flying start, Spicer and Bullough established Aegis, a more secretive business, based in the same building with the same phone numbers, to provide private military support services. A fourth man, Jeffrey Day, who bankrolled the operation, joined them as chief financial officer.
To beef up the security side of matters, the four Aegis partners hired Major General Jeremy Phipps, another ex-SAS man who was once well known for leading a daring rescue of hostages at the Iranian embassy in London in 1980. He was later disgraced for his failure to stamp out corruption at London's prestigious Jockey Club, to which many members of the Royal family belong and by which Phipps was employed (for more on Phipps, see From Embassy Hero to Racing Disgrace).
To counter any negative publicity, they brought in a high-level public relations consultant Sara Pearson, who had helped Spicer on both the Papua New Guinea and Sierra Leone scandals. Pearson has her own press outfit called the SPA Way, which works for up-market British retail and food stores. Her other clients include dental clinics, fresh breath companies and hair stylists.
Previously, Pearson had hired a ghost writer to help remake Spicer's image for the new millennium after the two disastrous Sandline events. Spicer's 1999 autobiography, An Unorthodox Soldier, presented him as the "modern, legitimate version of the new mercenaries." (for more on Spicer, see Give War a Chance: the Life and Times of Tim Spicer)
Today, Singer says that the new contract raises many questions about what kind of background check and vetting of firms and contracted employees are occurring at the Pentagon. "It's not only good policy, but a basic rule of good business, but not clear that it is always happening with Iraq contracting," he said.
Home » Issues » War Profiteers » From Mercenaries to Peacemakers?
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From Mercenaries to Peacemakers?
Scandals Confront Military Security Industry
by David Phinney, Special to CorpWatch
November 29th, 2005
Wherever Tim Spicer turns up, he carries the kind of baggage that gives the private military business a bad name. An internet video showing private contractors shooting at civilian cars in Iraq, loosely linked to his company, has ignited a firestorm about unregulated gun-wielding security convoys, escorting reconstruction or government advisors, roaming the country. [See Box]
This latest scandal comes at a time when the military security industry is reaping huge profits from the gun-carrying business in conflict zones around the world once dominated by rogue soldiers of fortune. As thousands of armed guards, working largely under U.S. contracts, travel the roads of Iraq, the industry is seeking respectability though a Washington trade group -- the International Peace Operations Association (IPOA).
The group calls itself “the most ethical and effective voice of the Peace and Stability Industry,” pledged to ensure that “their capabilities are not misused or abused.” Its members include industry heavy hitters like ArmorGroup, Blackwater, Hart, MPRI, the Olive Group and Triple Canopy.
Shooting Gallery
The grainy video (click to download) shows the view of an Iraqi street from the back of a moving vehicle. The long barrel of a gun, held by someone inside the vehicle, swings across the frame and viewers see the effect of bullets, apparently fired from the vehicle, spraying civilian cars coming up behind. Bloggers claim that the man with the gun is Danny Heydenreycher, a South African employee of Aegis at Camp Victory.
In one of the four separate incidents, after shots are fired, viewers see a Mercedes car crash into a taxi; passengers flee from the taxi, but no movement is seen in the Mercedes, suggesting that the passengers were injured or killed.
According to Robert Young Pelton, author of an upcoming book, “Licensed to Kill: The Privatization of the War on Terror,” the people driving the vehicle are part of a convoy of private military contractors. The video was originally posted on an unofficial Web site run by a disgruntled contractor working for Aegis Defence Services. (The website claims to be a voice for to "the men on the ground who are the heart and soul of the company.” The video has been deleted from the site but has taken on a life of its own in the blogosphere.)
Aegis holds several sweeping Pentagon contracts in Iraq worth over $430 million. In published news reports, Tim Spicer, the head of Aegis, insists that an internal investigation of the matter is ongoing and notes that there is no evidence that the video involved Aegis. Authorities in Baghdad are also apparently looking into the video, which has torched a firestorm of criticism as bloggers ponder
