Team reviews oversight of contractors working in Iraq

WASHINGTON — The Defense Department announced Wednesday that it's sent a team to Iraq to look into how the U.S. military monitors private security contractors in the wake of a Sept. 16 incident in which security guards working for the State Department killed at least 11 Iraqi civilians.

Pentagon officials also said they've sent a memo to commanders in Iraq and Afghanistan reminding them that they can court-martial private security guards working under military contracts who violate U.S. military law.

The Iraqi Interior Ministry has referred its investigation of the Sept. 16 incident to a magistrate for possible criminal charges, saying that security guards from Blackwater USA opened fire without provocation at a busy Baghdad intersection, killing 11 and wounding 12. At the time, the guards were escorting a State Department convoy. Blackwater has said its guards were responding to hostile fire.

In all, there are 137,000 contractors working for the Department of Defense in Iraq, compared with nearly 170,000 members of the U.S. military.