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From the moment Blackwater guards opened fire in a crowded Baghdad square on Sept. 16, killing 17 civilians and injuring two dozen others, the security contractor's departure from Iraq was put into motion. Congressional oversight was swift and fierce, the media coverage relentless, and pressure from the Iraqi government surprisingly forceful.

The conviction among Democratic lawmakers and top Iraqi officials was that Blackwater had to go. The firm's Worldwide Personal Protective Services contract to protect infrastructure and diplomats in Baghdad is up for renewal in May, and many industry experts suspect that the State Department is anxious to extricate itself from Blackwater's increasingly weighty baggage. Two other American firms, DynCorp International of Falls Church, Va., and Triple Canopy of Herndon, Va., also operate under the contract.

But, if the Bush administration decides to move in a new direction with security in Iraq, the choices will be limited.

Essentially, the State Department has three options if it wants to phase out Blackwater. The protective security detail could be segued to the Marine Corps, brought in-house to the State Department's Diplomatic Security Service, or transferred to one or more contractors.

A governmental solution presents overwhelming challenges. "The solution is simple. If you don't like the private sector, take it back in-house," says David Isenberg, senior analyst with the British American Security Information Council, an advocacy group in London and Washington that examines global security issues. "But you will need a much larger military and it will be much more costly. . . . Unless you are willing to do that, you are stuck with contractors."

The Marine Corps does provide security guards at U.S. embassies and has experience protecting civilians during armed conflicts, but the service already is stretched thin and has neither the capacity nor the interest in taking on added responsibilities. And the State Department is not keen on having uniformed soldiers escort their people around Iraq for fear their efforts be viewed as more military than diplomatic.

A military solution would carry its own risks. "Once Marines start doing the personal security detail . . . what happens when the Humvee with the 50-caliber, or an individual with an M-16, opens fire for the same reasons, but mistakenly? What kind of damage is that going to cause?" asks Doug Brooks, president of the International Peace Operations Association, a trade group in Washington that represents private security contractors. "More power to the Marines. It's the greatest military assault outfit in the world. But nobody trains a Marine to be a [personal security detail] person. I think you would be wasting an enormous amount of talent to do it."

The other governmental solution, relying on State's internal security service, could not be done in the short term. The Diplomatic Security Service has only 1,450 agents stationed at more than 285 posts worldwide. Blackwater alone employs nearly 1,000 armed guards in Iraq. Hiring and training enough DSS agents to assume a lead security role would take several years and cost many millions of dollars.

In late October, an independent review panel focused on examining regulations and improving accountability with security contractors in Iraq reached the conclusion that private industry remains the only feasible option. The panel, appointed by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, did not specifically recommend removing Blackwater, stating only that once the FBI concludes its investigation of the September shooting, "the embassy should submit its recommendation" as to whether it wants to continue working with the North Carolina-based firm. The New York Times reported on Nov. 14 that federal agents had found that at least 14 of the 17 killings were not justified and violated the rules of deadly force.

Pressure seems to be mounting for the State Department to divest itself of Blackwater's services. The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee is examining the company's taxes, its justification for several sole-source contracts and its handling of the shooting of a bodyguard for the Iraqi vice president last Christmas.

But if Blackwater is booted from Iraq, can DynCorp or Triple Canopy pick up the slack? DynCorp was the lone contractor on the original March 2000 Worldwide Personal Protective Services contract, but after a disagreement regarding the amount of training that security personnel would receive, the State Department spread the work among three firms.

Of the nearly 1,400 guards operating under the WPPS II contract, Blackwater provides about 70 percent of the manpower, according to a July Congressional Research Service report (RL32419). DynCorp's 150 guards protect facilities and infrastructure in the relatively secure northern Kurdish region while Triple Canopy's 250 employees operate in southern Iraq.

Despite its relatively small contingent of security contractors, DynCorp officials say they would be ready if the State Department calls on them to take over for Blackwater. Company spokesman Gregory Lagana suspects that DynCorp would have little difficulty recruiting enough trained professionals to fill the positions, although he insists that the firm is not actively preparing for such a scenario. "It would take some time to ramp up, but we have the experience and the capacity to do it," he says.

Of course, Blackwater's security guards, many of whom have military backgrounds and operate as independent contractors, could take jobs with whatever company is assigned the work, This would be a natural development, though some equate it with rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. "If Blackwater leaves, a huge percentage of the employees will just move to whichever company gets the new contract, and the change will be minimal," says Deborah Avant, a political science professor and director of international studies at the University of California, Irvine.

A wild card is the Iraqi Cabinet's recent decision to revoke Coalition Provisional Authority Order 17, which grants security contractors immunity from prosecution for actions taken in the course of their contracts. The Iraqi parliament still must approve the legislation, but it is expected to pass. A bill that passed the House of Representatives in early October would allow those same contractors to be tried in U.S. courts under the 2000 Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act.

Opinions differ on the impact of immunity. Brooks suggests that removing it could force American companies out of the region or compel them to hire Iraqi workers, who comprise the bulk of private security staffs working in the country. Americans, he says, would not want to consign their fate to Iraqi courts. Avant, however, believes the consequences could be minimal because "Iraqis aren't so able to catch and prosecute anyone right now."

No matter the outcome, major change is on the horizon for security contractors. For the first time since the 2003 invasion, a spotlight has been placed on how the use of armed contractors is affecting the military and reconstruction operations. The answer to that question could dictate industry's next move.

"We have the most phenomenal security going on for our diplomats," Brooks says. "Nobody is getting killed, which is great. The problem is, is it undermining the larger mission? That's not something our industry has to decide."

COMMENTS

• We can win in Iraq, but we must do what has worked in situations like this: Increase the penalty we impose on our enemies and on the supporters of our enemies. We must be realists. We are in a protracted and global conflict with mortal enemies; we must fight for our lives and children's lives. We have to be more brutal than our enemy, and the Iraqi populace must be left no room for doubt as to which force is more lethal and more powerful and of which force it must be more afraid. We need a massive, withering, unrelenting firebombing of all strongholds of resistance to the emergence of a democratic government in Iraq. History will prove the Bush administration wrong for not realizing that we must engage in the required brutality to win the war. For some reason our modern intellectuals and politicians believe human nature has evolved sufficiently so that uncomfortably brutal measures are not required to win a war. But it was less than 66 years ago that we firebombed Dresden, Hamberg and other German cities where families lived; and regretfully, about 600,000 civilians died, 100,000 of whom were children. And it was only 61 years ago that we used atomic weapons in Japan; again many hundreds of thousands of civilians were dematerialized. All of these acts were total war, and had to be carried out to avoid the deaths of hundreds of thousands of US troops and probably millions of civilians. The families currently living in Germany and Japan are undoubtedly better off for what we did and we should not forget that. We won the war because we had the need to win the war. And for those who would say at present we just don’t have the will to wage a sufficiently brutal campaign to win, I would say that in the end we will do it and we will win. The important question is will we do it now when only thousands will die, or will we delay until such time when millions may die. Anonymous Posted January 23, 2008 1:16 PM
• The real problem is the government hires someone to do a job and all the crybabies come out of the woodwork the second something goes wrong. The armchair quarterbacks and ambulance chasers, and poormouthes come out in force. There should be no prosecution of marines, blackwater or anyone else. It's war stupid! Look it up in the dictionary! Too many people talk to much about nothing. Stop talking and claiming to be experts at something you know nothing about. The media needs to pack it in and go find some real employment also. It's not a soap opera, it's war, and the media is not directly involved. They just want to be the next Cronkite, Woodward, etc. So they report whatever! and the hell with the accuracy mike kelley Posted January 16, 2008 9:31 AM
• Dear misinformed, suggest that you google and look at the Newsmax article on the proceedings. NCIS had plenty of data that was withheld form the defense. NONE and I repeat non of these guys will be proscuted. As for the Iraques comment I've been in a number of conflicts and the stories are always the same blame the Americans in hopes that we'll get a lump of cash as a settlement. The Iragues need to start resolving their own issues to reduce not only our casualities but their own. Freedom was handed them on a silver platter, unfortunately they tried to sell the platter dan ketter Posted December 18, 2007 2:02 PM