The U.S. Department of State seeks to establish a funding mechanism under its auspices for a permanent "Civilian Response Corps," staffed by a core of federal employees and a reserve of civilian experts. These specialists would deploy to the world's hot spots of low-intensity armed conflicts and post-conflict situations to provide police, corrections, criminal justice, and rule of law functions. In theory, the State Department would harmonize the stabilization and reconstruction efforts of civilian and military actors across all agencies of the government. A 600-person pilot project, costing $55 million, is scheduled to be deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq by November 2009, with the hiring of police and justice experts now in progress. These civilians will be provided some training with the military, according to the coordinator of the project. He did not say whether contractors would be trained in the law of war, humanitarian law, and international human rights standards. Like the civilian contractors of private military and security companies, any nonmilitary justice and police contractors will be accountable to their contracts under U.S. law. Their accountability under U.S. criminal law, the domestic laws of the host state, and international law is far less clear. Yesterday, the U.S. Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan held its first meeting to explore and possibly to recommend legislation to expand U.S. extraterritorial criminal jurisdiction over nonmilitary security contractors. More