WHEN PRATAP CHATTERJEE , who cowrote our exposé of Bechtel Corp.'s attempt to privatize San Francisco's water system (see "The Water Pirates," 5/31/00), called to tell us he had a hot new story – the privatization of the military – my first response was, that's new? After all, much of the money the Pentagon spends every year goes directly to private companies. And as far back as the Eisenhower era, people have worried that defense contractors are effectively setting military policy by lobbying for weapons systems they can make money building.

But what Chatterjee outlines in this week's cover story is entirely different. Under a new set of open-ended Pentagon contracts, companies like Kellogg Brown and Root (a subsidiary of Halliburton, Dick Cheney's old firm) have begun taking on actual military operations. As Chatterjee points out, Brown and Root employees – civilians, with no military training, who are not operating under any military chain of command and are not accountable to anyone except their private corporate bosses – are wearing U.S. military uniforms, carrying guns, and running military and humanitarian missions all around the world, for a profit.

There are all sorts of problems with this scenario. For starters, you've got people who aren't trained or prepared to handle combat in situations where it's entirely possible, if not likely, that someone will be shooting at them. You have people with guns wandering around the world acting like U.S. soldiers when they aren't. You have, in one case, the Pentagon hiring a private company to train the Croatian military – and some reports that private companies may be training the Afghan military and police.

You have, in general, the prospect that private companies may be taking over more and more of the work U.S. soldiers used to do. And for all the problems with the military, privatizing the armed forces is a scary prospect.

(In the movie RoboCop, which I've always said was really about the perils of privatization, Detroit privatizes its police force, and our hero, Officer Murphy, is almost killed because backup can't arrive in time, since the size of the force has been cut in the name of company profits. It's not such a wild scenario anymore.)

Tim Redmond tredmond@sfbg.com