Oil Security in Iraq!

Well, I didn't find the story myself (no mention of it on C-SPAN or near the front page of whatever news sources I tried at that time) but here it is, from Counter Punch. this year's biggest Christmas present...

We refer, of course, to the $40 million contract awarded by occupation authorities to a private security company called Erinys Iraq. ... Now little Erinys will guard the Holy Grail of the entire invasion project: Iraq's oil industry. Erinys is a joint venture between a large South African freebooting firm and a few choice Iraqi investors. How choice? They are intimates of Ahmad Chalabi: leader of the Iraqi National Congress exile group, member of the Bush-appointed Governing Council

Now this story has been out one week, and I am going to google for Erinys, and here is a larger section of the story. From the Indian newspaper Sify

Coming to grips with the number of security firms operating throughout Iraq and the exact nature of their missions is next to impossible. The biggest players in Iraq's security bonanza are US firms ArmorGroup and Haart and the British Control Risks Group (CR), and Erinys and Olive. That is without mentioning the private armies employed by the likes of oil firm Halliburton and its unit Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR), Bechtel and power giant General Electric, who are the biggest beneficiaries of Iraq's multi-billion dollar rebuilding contracts.

And a little more from them to get just a taste of their "progress"

Erinys was awarded a contract this summer to deploy 6,500 mostly Iraqi security force to guard the country's oil pipelines and facilities, which have come under frequent attacks and sabotage by insurgents since Saddam's fall, prompting the closing of the vital northern export pipeline... ...The British advisor says..."They are not disciplined, you train them then the following week they go to 'Inshallah' because they have no white eye looking over at them,"

Hasn't whetted your appetite yet for oil security in Iraq?