Bout Flies on for the U.S., and Tim Spicer Gets a New Contract

Life is a fine thing. Thanks to the Yorkshire Ranter, we now know that Viktor Bout's planes, including the banned IRBIS Air Co., placed on the Treasury Department's OFAC list of banned companies, continues to fly regularly to the U.S.-operated Bagram air base in Afghanistan. For his details, you can visit here, and for a comprehensive list of Bout companies still operating in the region, which the Ranter has identified, go here. It is now beyond belief that a man who sold and maintained aircraft for the Taliban, flew for Muslim extremists in Bosnia, few hundreds of tons of weapons to the most brutal and illegal armies of Africa, can still pull this off. Did the OFAC action mean nothing? (Apparently not)! What are people thinking? And shouldn't it be illegal to hire banned air craft companies, which then entails paying money to a person whose assets are supposedly frozen and is unable to receive money from ANY U.S. source? It is, as Alice said in Wonderland, getting curiouser and couriouser. The more Bout companies are identified and outed, the less enforcement action is taken. Can he be that valuable an asset to the intelligence community that he simply cannot be closed down, under any circumstances?

On another truely bizzare note the Ranter mentioned, and I had gotten from aviation authorities, all the Iraqi Airways aircraft are registered in Sierra Leone. How did THAT happen?

Finally, to round out the holiday weekend, the Sunday Times of London brings the cheery news that Tim Spicer, a mercenary with a checkered past, at best and a history of illegal armed actions, got his Pentagon contract extended for at least another year. His company, Aegis Defense Services, was initially awared the contract under controversial circumstances, and the 3-year job was worth nearly $300 million. The first year is complete, and the second-year option has been picked up, with an additional $145 million thrown into the pot. Very sweet, indeed. And the third year option will likely go ahead. Nice to know our tax payer dollars are going to a Brit whose contract is questionable and whose main claim to fame is illegal, and very expensive, armed ventures in Papua New Guinea, Sierra Leone, Angola and elsewhere. The company coordinates communicatins between coalition forces, civilian contractors and their private security firms, while providing body guards to senior U.S. and Iraqi officials. Lovely.