Paul’s isolationist message sets him apart from the rest of the Republican field, and many candidates have attacked his stances on dealing with Iran in particular. He’s in third place in the latest Iowa Poll, at 12 percent support, a level of backing that’s remained fairly steady over the last several months.

Paul said whistle blowers like Daniel Ellsberg – who released the Pentagon Papers in 1971 – and groups like WikiLeaks often aren’t considered heroic but are very important in a free society. Without Ellsberg, he said, people wouldn’t have known the Vietnam War “was all rigged.”

“In the same way we get information from groups like WikiLeaks confirming the fact that we actually went into Iraq and there was no Al Qaeda, no weapons of mass destruction, it was all a gimmick to get us into a war that we didn’t need to be in,” Paul said.

Politicians in Washington are generally in favor of protecting whistle blowers, but not on all topics, Paul said. In those cases “they come down very hard on the whistle blower.” The head of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, is under investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice for publishing diplomatic cables.

“The area where neither the Democrats or Republican leadership seems to welcome any whistle blowing is when there’s an exposure on our foreign policy, the fallacies of why we go to war and what we do,” he said.

But Paul said that information is important, and the American people should know about those things prior to going to war.

“As a matter of fact, the best way to prevent this kind of dilemma for us getting the information after the fact, is we should have the information before the fact,” he said. “That is we should never go to war without a full examination and a declaration of war.”

Paul called U.S. foreign policy “deeply flawed” and said “it’s time for us to come home and mind our own business.” He particularly questioned the use of drone missile strikes and a new policy allowing assassinations of American citizens, like Anwar al-Awlaki and his son.

“You know that when the innocent get killed, because we go after one guy and some extras get killed, don’t you think they have a right to be a little bit annoyed with us?” he asked. “But here we are dropping drones on a daily basis.”

Paul said killing an American without charges, a trial or conviction is a dangerous precedent that throws out the whole system of protecting citizens’ rights.

“How intimidated do we have to be, how insecure do we have to be that we would assassinate a 16-year-old kid that is an American citizen because what is he going to do, is he going to launch a missile against us or something?” Paul said. “I fear much more the erosion of the protection of our liberties here at home and the erosion of our economy than I do from any foreign adversary.”

Paul made the comments at the National Federation of Republican Assemblies Straw Poll, which he won handily.

“Having opposed the original Iraq war authorization in 2002, I am pleased with today’s announcement that U.S. troops will withdraw fully from Iraq by the end of the year,” Democratic Rep. Diana DeGette said in a prepared statement.

Sen. Mark Udall

Total withdrawal came as a result of a breakdown in negotiations with the Iraqi government that would have left a training force in place in exchange for immunity from prosecution for U.S. troops.

“I remain concerned about the security situation in Iraq and believe that keeping a limited number of U.S. troops in place to continue training and assistance would have helped sustain U.S. and Iraqi progress in stemming violence,” Democratic Sen. Mark Udall said in a release. “As a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, I will continue to monitor the situation closely.”

Udall, then a member of the House, also voted against funding the initial war effort, although he later voted to appropriate funds as the campaign continued for nearly a decade, costing 4,400 American lives and more than $1 trillion.

“I voted against the Iraq war, and I still believe that it ultimately harmed what should have been our military’s top priority – our mission in Afghanistan,” Udall said. “However, once our forces were committed in Iraq, abandoning that country would have risked the security of the entire region.”

Leaving troops in Iraq without immunity does not make sense, Udall added.

“It is ultimately unacceptable to expect our troops to provide that assistance without immunity from prosecution in Iraqi courts, which has become a sticking point between U.S. and Iraqi negotiators,” he said. “Our troops have fought and died to establish a functioning democratic government in Iraq, and now we must respect the wishes of Iraq’s leaders.”

Republican U.S. Rep. Mike Coffman, an Iraq War veteran and a member of United States House Armed Services Committee, expressed disappointment a deal couldn’t be reached with the Iraqi government.

“No doubt, the value of keeping military advisers in Iraq would maintain our military-to-military relationships to help provide stability and to buffer Iran’s continued efforts to have influence in the country,” Coffman said. “Although I’m disappointed that we are not having a contingent of U.S. military trainers in Iraq next year, the Iraqi demand that our troops be subject to the Iraqi justice system is inappropriate and unacceptable.”

Democratic Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet said, “Our troops have performed bravely and effectively in Iraq and accomplished everything that was asked of them, securing communities and creating the space for democratic change to begin to take root.”

He added the withdrawal is yet another success for U.S. foreign policy under the current administration.

“This announcement represents another significant milestone for the country and U.S. forces, including the killing of Osama bin Laden,” Bennet said. “However, serious threats against the United States remain, and we must continue to work to ensure we have the best-trained and best-equipped military in the world.”

Clear majorities also said that any budget Congress works out should not include cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency, education programs or medical and scientific research. A plurality said the government should avoid cuts to public TV and radio, with 50 percent opposed to such cuts and 46 percent in favor.

The poll also shows that the American people continue to hold a dim understanding of federal budgeting. Nearly three out of four Americans said cutting foreign aid would result in large savings to the federal deficit, and the same number — 72 percent — supported making such cuts. This finding is in line with a November poll in which Americans guessed that foreign aid makes up about 25 percent of the federal budget and that slashing it to 10 percent would be an appropriate deficit-reducing measure. In fact, foreign aid comprises about 1 percent of the budget.

Meanwhile, 59 percent of Americans oppose the Bush tax cuts for households earning more than $250,000, and two-thirds say that the U.S. should pull all troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan. The numbers on Iraq and Afghanistan are consistent with previous findings, but earlier polls on the Bush tax cuts have seen varied results, perhaps indicating that most Americans fail to grasp the nature of the cuts in much the same way that they do foreign aid spending.

Other findings included 54-percent support for raising the retirement age for Social Security to 59, 76-percent opposition to Medicare cuts, a strong prioritizing of unemployment — 43 percent, more than for any other answer, said it is the most important issue facing the country, and 56 percent said the government’s top priority should be job creation — and overwhelming support for collective bargaining rights (63 percent) but widespread ignorance of the situation in Wisconsin. A full 50 percent of respondents didn’t know enough about Gov. Scott Walker to form an opinion on him.

The poll was conducted for Bloomberg News by J. Ann Selzer, an Iowa-based pollster whose public opinion research company has previously been hailed for its accuracy, often, for example, predicting election results better than many larger polling centers.

Karl Rove (J.D. Pooley/ZUMA Press)

In the memoir’s final chapter, humbly titled “Rove: the Myth,” the architect of a two-term Republican presidency reports how angry he was when he read a passage in then-Sen. Barack Obama’s second book lumping him in with Newt Gingrich, Grover Norquist, and Ralph Reed as “conservative operatives” with “fiery rhetoric” like “No new taxes” or “We are a Christian nation.”

“I certainly don’t believe and have never said, ‘We are a Christian nation,’” writes Rove. “I put the offending page in my pocket and went about my business.” Later that day, he encountered Obama and fell victim to “feistiness,” challenging the senator for using “my name and the word ’said’ and quote marks.” Obama, Rove reports, blanched when the torn-out page was shown to him and tried to wriggle out of the conversation: “It seemed to me he didn’t much care that he had attributed to me something I had never said and found offensive.”

Four years later, Rove offers up the encounter as proof that Obama’s image as “the truest, purest proponent of a fresh new style of politics” is a ruse, and snarls that “the last time I checked, I hadn’t bombed any government building (like, say, Obama’s great friend William Ayers); or asked that God ‘damn’ America (like, say, Obama’s former pastor and close friend Jeremiah Wright); or declared that I was proud of my country for the first time in my life only when I was in my forties (like, say, Obama’s wife, Michelle).”

It’s a revealing passage — it takes up three whole pages — that demonstrates just how Rove thinks. Accused of being a steamrolling, divisive political operative, he locates a loophole in the argument, and closes by insulting the wife of the person who criticized him. Apart from some gripping narrative sections about how the inner sanctum of the White House reacted to the September 11 attacks, “Courage and Consequence” reads less like the story of one of history’s most powerful presidential advisers and more like a quickie fightback book from some apparatchik ensnared in a petty scandal.

Rove’s quest to debunk and overpower his enemies in politics and the press begins with his account of the “broken family” that raised him. Nineteen pages in, he starts swinging at journalists — James Moore, Paul Alexander, Wayne Slater — who’ve looked into the suicide of his mother and the rumored homosexuality of his father for clues about his psychology. “The writers who are fascinated with whether my father was gay,” Rove snarls, “are really more interested in implying that all people who have gay relatives or friends must support same-sex marriage; otherwise they are bigots and hypocrites. And if one of these people happens to be Karl Rove, so much the better.”

In other, less personal sections of the book, Rove takes the same care in dissembling what his enemies have been saying. Throughout, he settles scores with political opponents while seeing past the fault in his own. Recapping one of the coups of his early career, he admits that he “destroyed the career” of former Texas Railroad Commissioner Lena Guerroro by leaking the proof that she had embellished her academic record. “Did I pass on to a reporter the information that pointed to our opponent’s lie?” Rove writes. “Absolutely, you bet, and I have no regrets about it whatsoever. Why should I? The information, after all, was true. That should have some bearing on this issue.”

Rove doesn’t have the same attitude about information that damaged his own client, George W. Bush. Rove devotes a chapter title — “Derailed by a DUI” — and five pages to how Democrats killed the 2000 Bush-Cheney campaign’s momentum with a leak about Bush’s 1976 DUI arrest in Maine. Mournfully, Rove recounts the reaction of his campaign — “Bush called it ‘dirty politics’ and said, ‘I don’t know if my opponent’s campaign was involved, but I do know that the person who admitted doing it at the last minute was a Democratic and partisan in Maine.” Rove’s regret was that he didn’t outsmart the Democrats by leaking the information before they did: “Of the things I would redo in the 2000 election, making a timely announcement about Bush’s DUI would top the list.”

Rove’s pride and tunnel vision about his campaign tactics aren’t anything new in the Washington memoir genre. Much of Sarah Palin’s “Going Rogue” featured the same sort of finger-pointing about her brief bid for the vice presidency. If anything, Rove takes more obvious relish in attacking the people who made his campaigns difficult — it’s mostly “the kooky left-wing blogosphere” that thinks he ran a dirty campaign against John McCain in 2000, or that only an “imbecile” could have believed the 2004 exit polls that showed a Kerry-Edwards win, and so on.

But unlike Palin — unlike most people with his portfolio — Rove was in the cockpit for much of a consequential presidency that launched two wars and dramatically expanded the size of the federal government. He writes about this the same way he writes about minor tiffs and campaign tricks. He spends a page trying to debunk the idea that Bush ever told Americans to “go shopping” after the September 11 attacks. Technically, he’s right. The closest Bush ever came to using those two precise words — the moment that most people remember as the “go shopping” moment — were his September 27, 2001 remarks at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport when he urged Americans to “get down to Disney World in Florida” and “take your families and enjoy life, the way we want it to be enjoyed.” But Rove insists that the “closest he ever came” was a different speech in which Bush praised Americans for “going about their daily lives, working and shopping and playing, worshiping at churches and synagogues and mosques, going to movies and to baseball.” Even there, Rove skips past the argument made by critics — that Bush, in a unique position to demand more of Americans, gave an “all-clear” sign and moved on. In writing about Hurricane Katrina, one of his only regrets is “flying over the region in Air Force One on Wednesday, rather than landing.” In one of Rove’s few admissions, he admits that he’s “one of the people responsible for this mistake.”

“Courage and Consequence” is filled with such arguments. Pre-release excepts about Rove’s take on the Iraq War — that his biggest regret was that he should have worked harder to spin the fallout over the lack of WMD in Iraq — foreshadowed the way Rove would tackle most of the controversies of his tenure. At several points, he simply misstates facts. He impugns the character of former U.S. Attorney David Iglesias, who was removed from his position in New Mexico after declining to file politicized lawsuits, by claiming that Iglesias was incompetent and gunning for electoral office. Paragraphs later, he claims that the only qualm that Democrats have with former U.S. Attorney Tim Griffin — who resigned after negative attention on his own politicized appointment — is that they feared it would help Griffin’s career. Left unmentioned is the real Democratic argument, that Griffin helped the Bush-Cheney campaign challenge the voter registrations of voters in largely African-American, Democratic-leaning areas. But to Rove, the most important Republican political strategist of his generation, Democratic worries about election integrity are basically one big joke. In an unsurprising chapter about the 2000 presidential election recount — revelations are limited to the angry looks and sighs that various players gave to Rove — he refers to the Bush team in Florida as “freedom fighters whose homeland had been occupied as they grappled with a blitzkrieg of lawsuits filed by Gore’s attorneys and street protests led by Jesse Jackson.”

Very little of this should surprise observers of Rove in power or out of power, as a quotable White House aide and then as a Fox News pundit who has reliably attacked the Democrats. Rove’s disinterest in policy or consequences of policy isn’t surprising, either. (”I didn’t pretend to be Carl von Clausewitz or Henry Kissinger, but I knew the Iraq War wasn’t going well,” Rove writes of his thinking in December 2006.) The historical value of the book itself is minimal. It functions, instead, as a test of whether Rove’s combination of pique and pride will be helpful as Bush administration veterans argue that they spent eight years changing America for the better, over the cries of critics, only to watch their work be ruined by Barack Obama and his pack of elitist liberals.

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Friday’s floor debate followed a five-day social-media networking blitz that pulled in 25 different animal welfare groups who all opposed the bill’s passage.

The campaign began with a press release from the animal rights championing Dumb Friends League. The release asked animal lovers to contact their legislators and urge them to vote no on the measure. An “I oppose HB 1124 – I don’t want animals to suffer in Colorado” Facebook page started on Monday. By Friday’s hearing more than 3,500 emails had been sent to lawmakers, the League’s Michelle Ray told the Colorado Independent, and the Facebook page boasted 1,400 fans and dozens of protest wall posts.

The groups, which also included the Colorado Coalition of Animal Control Officers and multiple regional humane societies, had spoken out publicly for the first time in opposition to the bill earlier this week, saying its passage would have weakened Colorado’s strong animal protection laws and lead to an increased rate of euthanasia in county shelters, especially those located in poor or rural districts.

Animal rights proposals usually generate passionate debate at the Colorado capitol– Friday’s measure was the third pet related bill introduced or discussed this week– but HB 1124 was particularly intriguing in that both sides considered themselves virulently pro-pet.

Rep. Wes McKinely

Bill sponsor Wes McKinley, who represents Walsh, described himself to the Colorado Independent as a third-generation cowboy and animal lover. He said he’d signed on because he believed the measure strengthened animal protection laws, despite what mounting numbers of detractors were saying.

The bill had proposed to raise minimum training standards for animal control officers, limit their authority over livestock and change the way bonds in animal cruelty investigations are issued.

Joe Stafford, a 12-year-veteran with Douglas County Animal Control and president of the Colorado Association of Animal Control Officers (CAACO), a non-profit organization devoted to improving control methods, told the Colorado Independent that the groups decided to go public with their message this week after attempts to work with legislators on amendments to the bill went nowhere.

The strategy worked. Moved legislators put party politics aside and voted their hearts Friday.

Before the bill’s defeat, three different amendments were introduced, including one by House Minority Leader Mike May, who kiddingly asked the chamber to recognize Sen. Greg Brophy, R-Wray, as a “a rabid dog” who “probably should be tethered to his dog house.”

Randy Fischer, D-Fort Collins, scolded the bill’s sponsor McKinley, a fellow democrat, for casting aspersions on the humane society. Fischer, whose voice grew louder and more agitated the longer he spoke, took the time to read off every group opposed to the measure.

“Rep McKinley said the American Humane Society lied to us. The American Humane Society didn’t lie to us. That is wrong and [we] should never do that on the floor of the House. We should never disparage them on the floor of the House. And I was very offended by that… If you vote for this bill, you will be gutting our animal welfare system. You are going to put funding in the hands of one organization that doesn’t have enough money to cover all this responsibility,” Fischer said.

“Animal welfare bills always bring about the most impassioned debate in the house,” he said. “I think this bill will have a chilling effect on animal welfare laws if passed… Who is going to suffer if this bill is passed? It’s going to be the dogs, cats and horses. Animals have no voice, and if we pass this bill, we will be taking their rights away,” he said.

McKinley had told the Colorado Independent he believed the humane society opposed the bill because it would end up cutting into the organization’s profits.

But Stafford said the humane society was a genuinely non-profit agency and that McKinley’s bill would merely limit the ability of animal cruelty officers to investigate abuse cases and hold perpetrators accountable.

Stafford also told the Colorado Independent he believed parts of the bill were worthwhile.

He pointed to proposed statewide identification badges and a training program for animal welfare officers. He also said he agreed with the judicial clause that would have allowed animal owners accused of abuse and the animal control officer investigating them to state their cases before a judge, who would rule on the matters.

“I’m think that’s the best part of the bill,” Stafford said.

His main problem with the bill centered on a clause regarding indigent bonding that would have directly impacted the ability for shelters to care for homeless pets. He said shelters would be overrun and that would result in an uptick in euthanasia.

“There is no doubt that if this measure is passed without amendments more homeless pets will be euthanized in the state. There were 43,000 animals euthanized in Colorado last year and we will see an increase in that number if this bill is passed,” Stafford said. “This law would have an extremely devastating effect in jurisdictions where shelters are underfunded or outdated. In those areas I would anticipate the number of animals euthanized each year to rise by 20 percent or more, simply because there isn’t enough space or funds to house them. That’s heartbreaking. Lawmakers need to think about this.”

McKinley defended the measure, telling the Colorado Independent its passage was important, because it would create accountability in an industry that had gotten out of control.

“Fake cops with artificial badges shouldn’t be trampling on our personal private property,” McKinley said. “I think this will actually help animals because we will be training those officers. Right now animal welfare officials have too much discretionary authority without any discretionary training. This bill is protecting the constitutional rights of animals,” he said.

Not every animal lover was happy with Friday’s bill kill.

The Colorado Federation of Dog Clubs told the Colorado Independent that Friday’s defeat was a loss for pets.

Glen Belcher was likewise disappointed. He had placed a lot of hope in the bill.

A Gulf War veteran, Belcher’s testimony at an earlier Agriculture Committee hearing resulted in the addition of an amendment that would have made it illegal for Colorado cities with breed bands to enforce these bans on service dogs. Belcher returned to the Capitol Friday, with his service dog, Sky, in tow. Sky is a bull dog, a breed banned in Denver.

In 2007, Belcher was diagnosed with Post Tramatic Stress Disorder and a doctor prescribed a therapy dog to assist him with day-to-day life. Belcher moved to Denver in 2008 and he said living with Sky has changed his life.

“If you read the Americans with Disabilities Act, it’s clear city breed-bans don’t apply to service animals. I’ve done everything in my power to let animal control officers know they’re going against the law. I have met with nothing but stubbornness about this issue. So when the amendment didn’t pass, it was kind of my last hope,” he said.

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Last spring, the U.S. diplomatic mission in Iraq got a makeover,replacing the scandal-plagued Blackwater private security company with a firm named Triple Canopy.

The new $1 billion contract cemented Triple Canopy’s status as the pre-eminent provider of private security services in Iraq, with its heavily armed employees appearing side by side with senior State Department diplomats.

Previously undisclosed documents and interviews with current and former Triple Canopy officials raise new questions about private security contractors, give a glimpse into the messy business of creating a private army on the fly in the middle of a war zone. (Click on image to view documents/ProPublica.org)

But the company’s rise to prominence followed a long, often chaotic route, marked by questionable weapons deals, government bungling and a criminal investigation that was ultimately closed without charges being filed, according to newly released investigative files.

Company employees told federal investigators that Triple Canopy swapped booze for weapons and supplies from the U.S. military. They said the company bought guns and other arms on the black market in Iraq. Some worried that the money was flowing into the hands of insurgents, records show.

The previously undisclosed documents and interviews with current and former Triple Canopy officials raise new questions about the U.S. government’s ability to oversee private security contractors in a fluid and uncertain legal environment. And they give a glimpse into the messy business of creating a private army on the fly in the middle of a war zone.

“We’re spending a lot of money on these rifles, millions of dollars — where do you think that money is going to?” Ronald Boline, a former Triple Canopy manager, said in a lawsuit deposition videotaped in June 2007. “Who are we supporting in doing that? We’re supporting people who are trying to kill Americans is the logical conclusion.”

That lawsuit against the company, filed in a Virginia circuit court by other former employees who sued Triple Canopy for wrongful termination, was settled this week, records show, but no terms were disclosed.

The criminal investigation began in 2007 after federal investigators received a tip that Triple Canopy was using stolen cars and captured Iraqi weapons to boost profits to over 40 percent on some contracts. Andrew T. Baxter, the interim U.S. attorney for the Northern District of New York, declined to comment on why his office decided not to file charges. (His office handled the case because Triple Canopy’s invoices were paid out of a nearby federal contract processing center.)

Stuart Bowen, the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, who oversaw the investigation, refused to talk about details. But he said the difficulty in building the case were indicative of the haphazard atmosphere in which billions of dollars of U.S. money was spent in Iraq without oversight.

“It’s unclear if anything that Triple Canopy did was criminal, but it was symptomatic of the chaos that prevailed at the time,” Bowen said. “It’s another example of contracting gone wrong.”

Triple Canopy officials said the firm had done nothing wrong. They acknowledged buying weapons in Iraq when they were unable to import U.S. guns. But Lee Van Arsdale, a retired Delta Force colonel who was the company’s CEO until recently, said in an interview before retiring that the firm had taken every precaution to ensure that no money wound up in insurgents’ hands.

“Not only are we former military, but our former colleagues are still serving in uniform, living, eating and breathing right beside us in some cases. In some cases, we’ve got family members out there,” Van Arsdale said. “To say that we’re going to fund the insurgency either directly or indirectly, that’s insulting.”

Triple Canopy began in September 2003, when two former Special Forces soldiers formed the company to take advantage of the burgeoning market for private security. Iraq was exploding in violence, and the U.S. lacked enough soldiers to protect U.S. and Iraqi officials, infrastructure and diplomatic outposts.

Within three months, the company got its first break: The U.S. awarded Triple Canopy a contract to protect more than a dozen sites across Iraq. At the time, the company had only a handful of employees. More serious, it didn’t have licenses to import the hundreds of weapons needed to guard sites across Iraq.

The company immediately applied for licenses after winning the contract, according to documents provided by Triple Canopy. Yet the government took months to approve the deal, not authorizing the company to collect the weapons until June 2004. In essence, the U.S. had awarded the company a lucrative contract, but then provided it little ability to arm for the job.

To get the firepower it needed in the meantime, the company turned to the unregulated and unlicensed Iraqi market, purchasing AK-47s and other weapons from local dealers, according to company officials and court records.

The transactions concerned some company officials, according to previously undisclosed records. One midlevel manager told federal investigators that Triple Canopy had purchased weapons “off the street.” He “wondered if the proceeds of those sales was funding the insurgency,” an investigator wrote.

Former managers also told investigators that the company obtained U.S. military equipment from troops at little or no cost. One man told investigators in an October 2008 interview that the company sometimes obtained Army supplies “for liquor,” and that Triple Canopy employees routinely made “deals with Army units that were rotating in and out of Iraq, to obtain medical supplies, water, MRE’s and vehicle tires, to name a few.”

Boline, the former manager, said the company bought Cuban cigars and liquor to trade for U.S. military equipment. He spoke to investigators in 2007, according to records and officials, and his testimony became public later that year, when he provided a sworn statement as part of the employees’ lawsuit.

“The whole mind-set at the time was, whatever it takes to get the job done we’re going to do it,” said Boline, who had been fired from the company after disagreements with supervisors. He provided the deposition several months after his termination.

Van Arsdale acknowledged that importing U.S. weapons was “problematic” as the company began operations in Iraq. But he said the company took steps to make sure that it purchased weapons legally.

“There were a few months in there that, ‘all right, now what do we do?,’” Van Arsdale said. “The answer to that was that we establish … a procedure to procure weapons on the local market to mitigate the possibility of that fungible money getting into the wrong hands.”

Van Arsdale said Triple Canopy turned to a trusted local buyer recommended by the U.S. government. Triple Canopy produced documents showing that the man it said purchased the weapons, an Iraqi businessman, had been vetted by Defense Department officials.

The company also produced several letters of recommendation from military officials praising the man, who also acted as a translator for U.S. military units.

Van Arsdale said the company had not swapped goods with soldiers for equipment. He said Triple Canopy fully investigated Boline’s charges and found no evidence to support them.

He questioned Boline’s motives, noting that Boline waited until 2007 to make his accusations. In his deposition, Boline acknowledged threatening to go public with his charges if Triple Canopy officials blocked his attempts to receive a security clearance in order to obtain a new job.

Reached by e-mail, Boline declined to comment, citing a nondisclosure agreement that he signed when he took his job with Triple Canopy.

Van Arsdale acknowledged the hectic pace of fulfilling contracts. But he said that even under tight deadlines the company didn’t break the rules.

“We defined the gold standard for training and equipping people at great expense to ourselves as well as great time to ourselves,” he said. “At a period of hurry up, hurry up, hurry up, we took over two weeks to train guys to make sure they were prepared to go in country. To say that we’re cutting corners and we’re opportunistic and we’re war profiteers, all of the facts argue against that.

“In terms of weapons procurement, the rules were clear and we followed them,” Van Arsdale said.

But former senior officials with the Coalition Provisional Authority, the U.S. occupation government that controlled Iraq until June 2004, questioned whether there were any established procedures for buying weapons from Iraqis.

They noted that any Iraqis with large quantities of weapons to sell were most likely businessmen or military officials associated with the former regime of Saddam Hussein.

Some former U.S. officials in Iraq said that buying guns locally was by definition illicit. Steve Casteel, the U.S. senior adviser to the Iraqi Ministry of the Interior at the time, said there was a “disconnect” between Washington and what was happening on the ground in Iraq.

“There was no legal market for the sale of weapons, so if they bought them it had to be black market,” said Casteel, who now works for another private security company. “It wouldn’t have been legal under U.S. guidance. It wouldn’t have been legal under any Iraq law that I’m aware of.”

Triple Canopy’s frustrations with the U.S. government were hardly unique. In numerous interviews, former U.S. and industry officials described a crazed atmosphere in which U.S. contracting officers demanded guns on the ground and asked few questions.

One private security company official said Iraqi vendors sold weapons at open-air markets, the tables stacked high with AK-47s and other armaments, in full view of U.S. officials.

“It was wide open. It was like a swap meet,” said the official, who works for a Triple Canopy competitor and did not want to be identified. “I’m not aware of any company that didn’t use it.”

Companies that wanted to conduct business in normal channels were stymied by short deadlines, constantly changing requirements and bureaucratic clashes between U.S. officials on the ground in Iraq and in offices back in Washington.

“People needed to have weapons,” said one former official with the Coalition Provisional Authority. “So of course you went out and bought them on the black market because you couldn’t get them from anywhere else. If you have a demand, you are going to have a supply.”

CPA officials were aware that there were few controls over the weapons used by their private security contractors. But ideas to exert greater control were ignored.

“We recognized there was a problem, the CPA official said. “We had inconsistent quality. There was not as much control and accountability of those weapons as we wanted.”

Other companies also found means. Blackwater, now known as Xe, said in a statement that it had obtained valid U.S. import and export licenses for its employees’ weapons. The company has been investigated for weapons smuggling, though no charges were filed and it denies the allegations.

An official with DynCorp, the second-largest security contractor in Iraq, said weapons were obtained from a variety of sources. In some contracts, requests for licenses were granted, allowing the import of U.S. weapons. For other contracts, requests were denied and the firm turned to the local weapons market.

“We were forced to turn to the local market even for U.S. government contracts and subcontracts because there weren’t mechanisms in place to allow export of weapons in Iraq, yet we had the responsibility to provide services under those government contracts,” said one DynCorp official, who declined to be named because of the sensitivity of the topic.

A State Dept. official acknowledged that the department had been slow to respond to the need to arm the private companies it was hiring to carry guns. Until late 2004, the department’s Directorate of Defense Trade Controls blocked most requests for the export of automatic weapons to private firms — the result of a decades-old policy to cut down on international arms trafficking.

When private security companies began requesting weapons to fulfill U.S.-issued contracts, the department was caught off guard, the official said. It wasn’t until November 2004 that the policy was changed to grant private security companies export licenses — more than a year and a half after the first such firms were hired in Iraq.

“This was something that the State Department hadn’t considered as a possibility” until the requests for licenses started coming in, said the official, who spoke on background per department policy. “What they did was go through a relatively long discussion and decision process to figure out how to deal with the problem.”

While the system for importing weapons has improved in Iraq, industry and State Department officials acknowledged that problems remain in Afghanistan.

Partly, this reflects the fact that more groups are at work there. Unlike Iraq, there is a substantial presence of nonprofits and international aid organizations in need of security. Companies buying weapons from local sources continue to run the risk of money flowing to insurgents, one official said.

Afghanistan is similar in one way, however. Just as in the early days in Iraq, there are comparatively few investigators on the ground to watch the billions of dollars now flowing into the country.

“It’s an even worse Catch-22 over there,” one industry official said.

This report produced by ProPublica.

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In a statement issued after the hearing, Udall pointed to an Army study and an investigative series published this week by the Colorado Springs Gazette examining why some soldiers at Fort Carson have turned violent back home after serving tours in Iraq. One unit’s soldiers have been arrested for murder and manslaughter at 114 times the rate of the surrounding community of Colorado Springs, Gazette reporter Dave Philipps found.

“This is a matter of life and death, for our service members – and civilians,” Udall said earlier this month after the Army released its Epidemiological Consultation, or EPICON, study, initiated by Fort Carson commander Major General Mark Graham. “We must do everything in our power to ensure that the military is providing all necessary treatment and support to protect our service members, their families, and our communities.”

Last week, Udall and fellow Colorado Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet wrote the Army surgeon general asking him to extend to Fort Carson a pilot program aimed at encouraging soldiers to seek treatment for substance abuse. During Thursday’s hearing, McHugh praised the program and suggested it might help soldiers experiencing problems like those at Fort Carson.

Here’s the full statement Udall issued after the McHugh hearings:

“The Colorado Springs Gazette, the EPICON study, and other reports have shined a light on the violence committed by our own soldiers as well as the contributing effects of severe substance abuse, a military culture that has stigmatized mental health care, and the horrors of war. Serious questions have been raised about the military’s screening of recruits and the mental health treatment available to them when they return. We must do better – it’s a matter of life and death – in theater and here at home.

“I commend the steps that have been taken by General Graham at Fort Carson. I will be following up with the new Commander at Fort Carson, General Perkins, to make it clear that we must continue to make progress. And if Congressman McHugh is confirmed as Secretary of the Army, I will be following up with him as well. I will hold him to his commitment to help our soldiers get the best mental health care we can provide.

“As a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, I will continue to fight for the resources our soldiers need to ensure that they are safe. But I also believe that we must think outside the box. We need programs that work – we can’t just throw money at the issue and hope it goes away.

“We also need to dig deep to find the root of the problem. We must continue to work to change the military’s culture, which has stigmatized mental health treatment and care. We have made some progress, but the Gazette story and other reports prove there is much work to be done.

“We owe our men and women in uniform nothing less than to dedicate every available resource to taking care of the people who have sacrificed so much in the defense of our country.”

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“A welcome-back party for Big Oil” is how the Wall Street Journal today sums up the Iraqi government plan to open up its oil fields to the highest bidders after three decades of tight control under Saddam Hussein. Starting next week, the Iraqi government will begin auctioning off contracts to foreign countries, opening up a market with 115 billion barrels in “proven reserves.” “If all goes according to plan in the first round, foreign oil companies will move in to help Iraq revive production at six developed fields that have suffered from years of war and neglect,” the newspaper writes.

According to Reuters, Iraq has the third-largest oil reserves in the world and pumps out of the ground about 2.4 million barrels per day, well below the volumes seen before the 2003 U.S.-led invasion. “Oil Minister Hussain al-Shahristani is betting the contracts awarded on June 29-30, and a second round of tenders at year’s end, will provide the cash and expertise needed to reverse the damage done to Iraq’s oil infrastructure by decades of isolation, underinvestment and war,” Reuters writes.

There are 32 companies angling for the contracts. They include Exxon Mobil (XOM), Royal Dutch Shell, Total, and BP, Reuters and the WSJ write.

“Nothing has changed,” said a Polis spokeswoman, who pointed to a statement Polis released last month.

“Unfortunately, the positive aspects of this bill cannot hide its underlying premise — funding a misguided war in Iraq and Afghanistan — a policy that I believe must be changed,” Polis said when he first voted against the war funding bill. “At its heart, this bill is about increasing and prolonging U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan, which I do not support.”

The supplemental appropriation bill includes roughly $80 billion for continued war efforts, bringing total war spending to nearly $1 trillion since the Sept. 11 attacks, with 70 percent devoted to the Iraq war, according to the Congressional Research Service.

The bill, which backers said was necessary to prevent the military from running out of money next month for war operations, also included billions in other spending, including $7.7 billion to fight swine flu and $10 billion in aid to Iraq, Pakistan and other countries.

But a $5 billion appropriation to the International Monetary Fund for increased loans to poor countries drew strong — and virtually united — Republican opposition to the measure. Only five GOP representatives voted in favor of the bill.

Coffman said in a statement his vote against the measure was really a vote for a “clean” supplemental funding bill, one without the money for the IMF.

“My hope is that my ‘no’ vote will help strip the IMF provision from the bill so that we have a War Supplemental that is limited to giving the required support for our troops,” Coffman said after the vote Tuesday.

An unidentified Democratic strategist pounced on the GOP opposition to the war funding measure, TPMDC reports: “George Bush and the Republican Party led us into this War and now [House Republican Leader John] Boehner and Co. vote to leave the troops high and dry for political reasons. This is a real game changer, one Republicans will be hearing about for a long time.”

The Senate could consider the bill as early as next week.

Rice released a written statement via the Colorado House Majority Communications Office:

“While being away from home for six months will not be easy on me or my family, I am able to stay in touch with constituents and work on policy issues during my off-duty hours. Although I will be gone for a few months from my district, I will still stay in touch with my home community. I have an amazing group of volunteers that will be helping me stay informed and to prepare for the next legislative session that begins in January 2010.

“I’ll spend next week at Fort Benning, Georgia, for overseas processing and I will then head to Baghdad where I will be working with the Iraqi Army and Police units to aid in the transition to the Iraqi Security Forces. I was there at the beginning, a couple times since, and I feel that somehow this is my “farewell” tour.

“There is a saying in the Reserve and Guard that goes like this… ‘When we were needed, we were there. It wasn’t always easy, it wasn’t always fair. But when the call went out, we answered; we were there.’”