US outsources its anti-terror war

[seemslikeadream]

CHIDANAND RAJGHATTA

TIMES NEWS NETWORK< FRIDAY, APRIL 02, 2004 08:17:12 PM >




An Iraqi man looks at US soldiers near the Republican Palace, now a US Army base, in Baghdad.

WASHINGTON: While the United States is still seething at the killing of four American 'contractors' in Iraq and planning to retaliate against those in Fallujah where the crime was perpetuated, the episode has brought attention to a little-known practice – the US outsourcing of its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to its private armies.



Reports suggest that the United States is using between 10,000 to 15,000 private "contractors," more than the size of the British armed forces in Iraq, for policing and protection of its operations.



Most of these 'contractors' – who would be called mercenaries or militias or vigilantes in other situations – are former US armed forces personnel employed through private agencies. They are said to earn as much as $ 1000 a day.

more
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/cms.dll/html/uncomp/articleshow/597028.cms

[seemslikeadream]

1. Iraq's mercenaries: Riches for risks

By Clare Murphy
BBC News Online


The severe lack of security in Iraq has opened up a highly profitable market for private security contractors.


Security guards are hired from around the world
The brutal murders of four American security men in Falluja on Wednesday 31 March is unlikely to deter the many would-be mercenaries willing to accept the risks involved in providing security amid the instability of post-war Iraq, according to one security firm.

The US has so far spent $20bn on reconstruction in Iraq. The companies which have won these contracts currently expect to spend about 10% of their budgets on providing personal security planning and protection for their workers.

Hence a highly lucrative market has sprung up.

Industry insiders say the war has proven a godsend for British security firms - which have picked up much of the work. Their revenues are estimated to have risen fivefold, from around $350m before the invasion to nearly $2bn

more
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3590887.stm

[hippywife]

3. From the BBC article

"Doing this kind of work for a year means some people have enough to retire on," says Duncan Bullivant, head of the small British firm Henderson Risk, which has around 40 employees operating in the country.

"Iraq is something of a goldmine at present. The profit margin is incredibly high, way in excess of the risk factor. I wouldn't give it more than another year at this level, the bubble will burst, but there's an immense drive to cash in while it lasts."

What a sick, sick bunch.
:mad: :mad: :mad:

[DoYouEverWonder]

4. Then the cheap labor repugs

will reinstitute the draft.

They won't be able to continue occupying Iraq and paying $1000 a day for the private guys.

[Dover]

2. EXACTLY WHICH OPERATIONS are they referring to?

Protection of pipelines and other American businesses? And who pays those exorbitant salaries...the businesses or the American people? And under whose authority and within who's laws do they operate?

[seemslikeadream]

5. Corporate Mercenaries - Executive Outcomes Leads to Bush

Executive Outcomes is the most infamous mercenary company in operation today. Unlike traditional mercenary companies, it operates as the heavy partner in a web of related companies. Sandline international is such a sister company: 170 elite South African dogs of war were hired to crush the Bougainville freedom Fighters for $22m. Just another job for the likes of Sandline international? Paul Vernon investigates...

Set up in 1993 by Tony Buckingham and Simon Mannl <1>, Executive outcomes (EO) has worked in Asia, Africa and South America. Most of it's personnel are hired from South Africa.

Buckingham is the chief executive of Heritage Oil and Gas, which is now registered in the (tax-free) Bahamas. When EO was hired by the Sierra Leone government to crush people's revolt, Heritage received much of the payment in the form of mining rights. Sir David Steel MP happens to be a director of Heritage as well as a close friend of Buckingham. Recently Sierra Leone was thrown back into chaos with another military coup.

Eeben Barlow, the present CEO of Executive Outcomes, is a veteran of the Civil Co-operation Bureau, which allegedly assassinated antiapartheid activists. Barlow is the frontman for the group he told Newsweek (2) in February: "I'm a professional soldier. It's not about politics. I have a job to do. I do it." EO is thought to have a annual turnover of more that £20 million.

The South African government, with help from officials from the United Nations, has begun to draft proposals of legislation aimed to counter what officials called "the increasing frequency with which our soldiers-of-fortune are operating overseas".(7)

http://www.corporatewatch.org.uk/magazine/issue4/cw4f8.html

Executive Outcomes ties lead to London and Bush
Executive Intelligence Review January 31, 1997, pp. 42-43
by Roger Moore and Linda de Hoyos

Exposes appearing on both sides of the Atlantic on the mercenary group Executive Outcomes, threaten to blow the lid off the British intelligence nexus already identified as responsible for the February 1986 murder of Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme, and for the current cataclysmic destabilization of Africa on behalf of circles associated with the Queen of England's Privy Council and Sir George Bush.
The exposes appeared in the French daily {Le Figaro} on Jan. 16, the {London Observer} on Jan. 17, and the February issue of the American magazine {Harper's.}
Executive Outcomes is the mercenary arm of a vast
network of British-South African corporations dealing in gold, diamonds, and oil, primarily, but not exclusively, in Africa, that come under the umbrella of Strategic Resources Corporation, headquartered in Pretoria, South Africa. Described universally as an ``advance guard of a corporate network that includes mining, oil, and construction companies,'' Executive Outcomes is active in 13 African countries, including Uganda. For its services, it demands a lien or franchise on the exportable raw resources, particularly mineral wealth, of the client country--in the same fashion as the British East India Company of the 18th and 19th centuries, which in turn functioned as the ``advance guard'' of the British monarchy.
Executive Outcomes was incorporated offshore, on the Isle of Man, in 1993, by Anthony Buckingham, a British businessman, and Simon Mann, a former British officer, the {Observer} reported, based on a leak to it from British intelligence. Buckingham is also chief executive of Heritage Oil and Gas, which in turn is linked to the Canadian firm Ranger Oil. Other firms operating out of the same headquarters in Chelsea Plaza 107, London, include Branch International Ltd. and Branch Mining Ltd.
Preliminary investigation by {EIR} has further determined that Executive Outcomes lies at the heart of the British monarch's raw materials cartels and secret intelligence operations, in conjunction with Bush's rogue apparat:
Through Sir David Steel, a former leader of the Liberal Party, Executive Outcomes and, presumably, its deployment, is a subsumed operation of the Queen's Privy Council. Steel is a close friend of EO's Buckingham, and is on the board of directors of EO's sister firm, Heritage Oil and Gas, according to {Le Figaro.} In 1977, Steel was inducted into the Privy Council, making him the youngest member of Britain's highest-level policy-making body.
The links between Executive Outcomes and Ranger Oil point to operational ties with the Bronfman family of Canada, whose scion, Edgar Bronfman of Toronto Broncorp, sits on the board of directors of Ranger. Recently, the Bronfman family merged its mammoth real estate firm, Trizec, with Barrick Gold, whose senior advisory board includes Sir George Bush. Barrick Gold is deeply involved in northeastern Zaire, where it has purchased 83,000 square kilometers of land. Zairean sources report that the so-called Zairean rebel Laurent Kabila is no more than a mercenary for Barrick and Anglo American Corp., sponsored by the British Crown-backed Ugandan and Rwandan militaries. Executive Outcomes, {Le Figaro} and other sources further verify, is deeply entrenched in Uganda, the key British marcher-lord state in the region.

http://www.aboutsudan.com/action/geopolitical/executive_outcomes.htm

[saigon68]

15. They operate under "The Law of the Jungle"

To the Strong go the $$$$ to the Weak goes a bullet in the head.

This story once it is all fleshed out will be on the front pages. Especially when the families of the soldiers killed put 2 and 2 together.

These Thugs are going all over this country pissing off the natives, who then proceed to kill anyone, they even suspect of being a "Tormentor"

[realdeal22k]

6. This is too funny

A timesofindia news source talking about the US "outsourcing" in a negative manner. Am I the only one that sees this in its own light?

:irony:

[realdeal22k]

11. Whooooooooosh

:kick:

[cliss]

7. Interesting......

I thought the use of mercenaries in major phases of war was forbidden. Looks like that has changed.

So now we are using 10,000 to 15,000 hired killers in the war in Iraq. Each one of these lucky fellows can make $1,000 per day. That's $30,000 per month. If he survives to pick up his paycheck, that is. The US has apparently spent $20 billion so far on "contractors". They are presumably hired to protect the troops, Mr. Bremer in The Palace in Baghdad, and I'm assuming some key facilities like the Oil Ministry. I don't believe they are guarding the oil pipeline because it's too long (900 miles above ground) and there are simply not enough $billions available to guard the whole damn thing.

Take a guess at who pays for these highly-paid risk-takers? It's us. You and me who are footing the bill for the next 20 years, at least.

Everything about this war is wrong. Everything.

[seemslikeadream]

8. Disappearing the DeadIraq, Afghanistan, and the Idea of a "New Warfare"

Project on Defense Alternatives Research Monograph #9
Carl Conetta
18 February 2004

Among those endeavors that a state or a people may undertake, none is more terrible than war. None has repercussions more far-reaching or profound. Thus, a grave responsibility to one's own nation and to the global community attends any decision to go to war. And part of this responsibility is to estimate and gauge the effects of war, including the collateral damage and civilian casualties that it incurs.

As the experience of both the Afghan and Iraq conflicts suggest, estimating the casualties of a war can be as controversial as the war itself -- although this should not be the case. The number of casualties incurred in a war does not by itself decide the strategic meaning or wisdom of that war. It is only one variable among others in an equation that includes, for instance, an assessment of the ends that a war is meant to secure and the threat that it is meant to address. An estimate of collateral damage is critical in one sense, however: without it, a true cost-benefit analysis of a war is impossible.

In some circumstances, attention to collateral damage is more urgent than in others. Its importance may vary inversely with the perceived necessity of a war, for instance. When war is literally forced on a nation -- as it was on the Alliance powers in the Second World War -- the prospect of suffering casualties and adding to collateral damage may not be pivotal in the decision to take up arms. A threat to national survival trumps all other considerations. But when a prospective threat does not immediately imperil national survival, or when a contest turns on the need to broadly win hearts and minds (as does the war on terrorism), then the issue of collateral damage (as well as other war costs) may loom larger in debates about how to proceed.




Project on Defense Alternatives Research Monograph #9
Carl Conetta
18 February 2004


Table Of Contents
Introduction
1. War and perception: the battle to enable American power
1.1 The evolving American calculus of war
1.2 The media, casualty intolerance, and asymmetric warfare
1.3 The public information battlespace after 9/11
1.4 Perception management in support of Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom
2. Shaping the public discourse on civilian casualties: case studies
2.1 Spinning the Iraqi market place bombings
2.2 Framing the air attack on Baghdad
Waging lawfare
Strategic bombing and the illegality of air defense
3. Framework propositions on war casualties and collateral damage
3.1 Claims about "precision attack" and the "new warfare"
3.2 Claims about damage limitation efforts
3.3 Assessing the claims
4. Precision attack and the new warfare
4.1 Have America's recent wars been "low casualty" events?
US personnel attrition
Adversary casualties
4.2 Results may vary: How measures of accuracy mislead
Errors: systematic and contingent
A 2,000 pound scalpel?
Closing the precision gap: the continuing relevance of brute force
"Precision warfare": A triumph of branding
5. Damage limitation and "military necessity"
6. Casualty agnosticism
6.1. A failed news frame: "it's not our fault and it's not a story"
6.2. A more effective frame: casualty agnosticism
What does the World Trade Center bombing teach us?
Casualty agnosticism in the Iraq war
Media impact
6.3. Assessment of casualty agnosticism
Leveraging uncertainty
The most intensively reported wars in history
The quality of media coverage
Managing uncertainty
Making policy in an uncertain world
7. "We don't do bodycounts": the irrelevance of enemy combatant casualties
8. Conclusion: The strategic significance of the casualty issue
8.1. Acceptable casualties
8.2. Effects on the ground
8.3. Impact on world opinion
8.4. Strategic consequences
8.5. Filler for the precision gap
8.6. America's damaged discourse on war

http://www.comw.org/pda/0402rm9.html

[murielm99]

13. So, when they declare martial law here, will those be the troops that

enforce it?

[Voltaire99]

9. Billions for storm troopers. Nothing for US schools.

Allow me to put it as eloquently as possible. . .

What a fucked up society.

[saigon68]

19. "Dom Perrignon for all" shouted the CEO of Bechtel

At a meeting of the Board--- unveiling the increase in first quarter profits.

[seemslikeadream]

10. Need an Army? Just Pick Up the Phone

The industry rose to prominence under President George H.W. Bush — Brown and Root, a Halliburton subsidiary, received a $9 million contract to study supplementing military efforts after the Persian Gulf war. The Clinton administration sent more work to contractors, but it is under the current president, a strong believer in government privatization, that things started booming. Gary Jackson, the president of Blackwater, envisions a day when any country faced with peacekeeping duties will simply call him and place an order. "I would like to have the largest, most professional private army in the world," he told me.

This raises some obvious questions. Shouldn't war be a government function? Why rely on the private sector for our national defense, even if it is largely a supporting role? Part of the reason is practical: since the end of the cold war, the United States military has been shrinking, from 2.1 million in 1989 to 1.4 million today. Supporters of privatization argue that there simply aren't enough soldiers to provide a robust presence around the world, and that by drafting private contractors to fix helicopters, train recruits and cook dinner, the government frees up bona fide soldiers to fight the enemy. (Of course, in the field, the line between combatant and noncombatant roles grow fuzzier, particularly because many of the private soldiers are armed.) Private contractors are supposed to be cheaper, too, but their cost effectiveness has not been proved.

Low manpower and cost savings aren't the only reasons these companies appeal to the Pentagon. For one, substituting contactors for soldiers offers the government a way to avoid unpopular military forays. According to Myles Frechette, who was President Bill Clinton's ambassador to Colombia, private companies performed jobs in Latin America that would have been politically unpalatable for the armed forces. After all, if the government were shipping home soldiers' corpses from the coca fields, the public outcry would be tremendous. However, more than 20 private contractors have been killed in Colombia alone since 1998, and their deaths have barely registered.

This points to the biggest problem with the outsourcing of war: there is far less accountability to the American public and to international law than if real troops were performing the tasks. In the 1990's, several employees of one company, DynCorp, were implicated in a sex-trafficking scandal in Bosnia involving girls as young as 12. Had these men been soldiers, they would have faced court-martial proceedings. As private workers, they were simply put on the next plane back to America.


more
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/02/opinion/02YEOM.html?ex=1081486800&en=a76c90db4461e64c&ei=5062&partner=GOOGLE

[seemslikeadream]

12. US troops engage further in Colombia

"FAIR USE"

Military aid . . . from the private sector
When the Pentagon decided to send Colombia military
help for the war on drugs, it chose to outsource it.

By Paul De La Garza and David Adams
December 3, 2000
© St. Petersburg Times



WASHINGTON -- As U.S. assistance to war-fatigued Colombia escalates, the Clinton administration portrays American military involvement there as nothing more than basic anti-drug fighting aid.
Haunted by the shadows of Vietnam and El Salvador, administration officials vow to avoid managing another war by proxy in a foreign land.

The truth, however, isn't that clear cut.

Enlisted U.S. military personnel in Colombia, which average 250 on any given day, are under orders to stick to anti-drug efforts, including training of three anti-drug battalions.

But the Clinton administration quietly has hired a high-level group of former U.S. military personnel whose job far exceeds the narrow focus of the drug war and is intended to turn the Colombian military into a first-class war machine capable of winning a decades-old leftist insurgency.

These military consultants keep in close contact with Pentagon officials while advising Colombians on efforts to improve the Colombian army and even advise on the passage of new laws to help make the Colombian military more professional and effective. In addition, the consultants are helping to revamp the National Police, traditionally charged with fighting the drug war in Colombia.

The hiring of military experts -- in this case, Military Professional Resources Inc., an Alexandria, Va.-based company run mostly by retired U.S. military brass -- is a relatively new development in American foreign military assistance programs.

Critics say the practice, known as outsourcing, is intended to bypass congressional oversight and provide political cover to the White House if something goes wrong. MPRI has done other work for Washington around the world, including in the Balkans.

"We're outsourcing the war in a way that is not accountable," says Robin Kirk of Human Rights Watch. She argues that because the 130,000-strong Colombian military is notorious for human rights violations, it is essential for the United States to provide assistance "in accordance with international law and in a transparent manner -- not in secret."

Supporters of private military companies, however, argue that not only are they more cost-efficient than the U.S. military but that they ease the pressure on American troops, burdened by foreign assignments, including peacekeeping missions.

MPRI is working full time in Colombia under a $6-million contract. The company has dispatched 14 employees to Bogota under the direction of a retired Army major general.

Administration officials say MPRI personnel are doing precisely what uniformed American soldiers have traditionally done. They say MPRI was hired not because it has any special expertise, but because U.S. Southern Command in Miami, which oversees American military operations in Latin America, cannot spare 14 men to send to Colombia.

"What are we doing with MPRI that Southern Command or someone else can't do? In theory, nothing," Brian Sheridan, the senior Pentagon official who oversees the work of MPRI, said in congressional testimony in March.

"It's a manpower issue," he said.

Nevertheless, U.S.-Colombia policy experts say the use of firms like MPRI is intended primarily to limit the risk of American military casualties there.

"It's very handy to have an outfit not part of the U.S. armed forces, obviously," said former U.S. ambassador to Colombia Myles Frechette. "If somebody gets killed or whatever, you can say it's not a member of the armed forces. Nobody wants to see American military men killed."

Although the hiring of MPRI was approved by Congress, it raises serious questions about the propriety of U.S. intervention in the affairs of a sovereign state, of American civilians participating in a foreign war, and whether the United States can guarantee the Colombian military will not misuse the assistance it receives from MPRI.

It also raises the question of the privatization of American foreign policy.

Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., ranking member of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Foreign Operations, is the author of human rights requirements in the $1.3-billion aid package Congress approved in June under Plan Colombia, a $7.5-billion internationally funded program with a strong U.S. military component designed to brace Colombia against collapse.

He, too, is critical of using companies like MPRI.

"(It) is fraught with dangers, especially when human rights are at stake," Leahy said.

"The Congress has little choice but to rely on the Pentagon to supervise the contractors, but the Pentagon too often does not pay close attention.

"We have no way of knowing if the contractors are training these Colombian soldiers in ways that are fully consistent with U.S. policy, laws and procedures."

MPRI and the Pentagon both denied requests by the Times to review the MPRI contract, which is renewable each year. MPRI spokesman Ed Soyster, a retired Army lieutenant general and former director of the Defense Department's Defense Intelligence Agency, compared the need for secrecy in Colombia with the need for secrecy in Vietnam.

"When I was in Vietnam, I wouldn't want to tell you about my operation," he said. "If the enemy knows about it, he can counter it."

Analytical problem solvers

In congressional testimony and in interviews, Pentagon and Colombian officials -- including Sheridan; the retired Southcom commander, Gen. Charles Wilhelm; and the Colombian ambassador to the United States, Luis Alberto Moreno -- have characterized MPRI staff as "men in business suits" who assess problems within the Colombian Ministry of Defense and provide solutions through detailed analysis that Colombia can either accept or reject.

In this view, they aren't any different than the other 50 or so private U.S. contractors providing equipment or services paid for by U.S. foreign aid in Colombia.

MPRI employees can "from time-to-time go out on a field trip to see something," the Pentagon says, including Colombian military operations, but they don't participate in battles against the rebel forces.

Its mission, according to MPRI internal documents, is to provide advice to the Ministry of Defense "with continued development and implementation of military reform measures."

Specifically, MPRI is working with the armed forces and the National Police in the areas of planning; operations, including psychological operations; training; logistics; intelligence; and personnel management.

Soyster, the MPRI spokesman, compares his company with other U.S. companies operating overseas -- "Like Coca-Cola," he said.

But, for the most part, MPRI officials operate out of public view, and neither Pentagon nor MPRI officials will talk in great detail about the company's activities.

MPRI's stated mission in Colombia is strikingly similar to its stated mission in the Balkans.

In January 1996, according to European-based Jane's Intelligence Review, Croatia and MPRI signed the Long Range Management Program designed to assist the Croats "in establishing the architecture, structure, organization and system for planning, programming and budgeting functions for the Croatian Ministry of Defense."

MPRI insisted that its work in Croatia was limited to classroom teachings and never involved any training in tactics or use of weaponry.

But suspicions were aroused after two successful military operations launched by Croatia in 1995, just months after MPRI's contracts began.

The operations "demonstrated that the Croatian army was now able to coordinate armor and infantry attacks supported by large artillery forces and master new communications techniques," Jane's reported. "Most importantly, the Croatian performance did not resemble the usual outmoded Warsaw Pact military tactics."

Officially, U.S. aid to Colombia is directed at the drug war, not the rebel war that has plagued the country for nearly 40 years.

But even senior administration officials, including drug czar Barry McCaffrey, acknowledge that the line between the drug war and the guerrilla war has become increasingly blurred because of rebel involvement in the drug trade.

Indeed, U.S. military officials familiar with the 18-week training program of anti-drug battalions in Colombia say that skills being taught by the Special Forces, including sniper training, are transferable to the fight against the Marxist rebels.

Farther-reaching influence

Among the most provocative parts of the MPRI mission are plans for MPRI to recommend legislation, statutes and decrees to Colombia regarding a military draft, a professional soldier statute, officer entitlements and health law reforms.

"They are using us to carry out American foreign policy," Soyster, the MPRI spokesman, said. "We certainly don't determine foreign policy, but we can be part of the U.S. government executing its foreign policy."

So delicate is MPRI's work in Colombia that State Department officials say there is an ongoing internal debate within the Clinton administration about for whom MPRI works -- the United States or Colombia?

Moreno, the Colombian ambassador, said he saw no problem in the contract. The United States was paying MPRI, but Colombia was the recipient of its military expertise, he said. "Colombia tells MPRI that we need help or we need advice in this area."

Moreno said he has met with MPRI personnel and that his country welcomed its help.

A country of 41-million people, Colombia has been at war with the rebels, a powerful force of 20,000 men, women and children, since 1964. Once fueled by Marxist ideology, the insurgency is now fueled by the drug trade, critics say.

Complicating peace efforts even further for the government are roving bands of right-wing paramilitary death squads, funded by wealthy landowners as well as the drug trade. Totaling between 5,000 and 10,000 strong, the paramilitaries often have been linked to the Colombian military.

"The military in Colombia has to be very professional and very modern if you are going to have peace," Moreno said. "Any time you spend on modernizing the Colombian military is time well-spent."

Washington has pumped more money into Colombia because it has grown increasingly concerned about the rebel war spilling over into its neighbors. Fighting already threatens stability on the border with Venezuela, a main U.S. supplier of oil, as well as Ecuador and Panama. Only Egypt and Israel get more U.S. foreign aid than Colombia.

U.S. and Colombian officials say one of the strategies in the drug war is to cut off funding to the rebels, who earn hundreds of millions of dollars by selling protection to the drug traffickers. Colombia provides as much as 85 percent of the cocaine sold on U.S. streets and an increasing amount of heroin.

In explaining the impetus for the use of MPRI, Pentagon officials say they have become frustrated over the past 40 years with trying to help reform the Colombian military piecemeal, doing exchange programs, for instance, that yielded poor results.

State Department officials say Washington is not using MPRI to ram military reform down the throats of the Colombians. Colombia can reject MPRI suggestions.

Moreno agreed.

When MPRI began operations in Colombia, the Pentagon said the ministry of defense already had begun a reform program.

It was Sheridan, the assistant secretary of defense for the Special Operations Low-Intensity Conflict, or SOLIC, section of the Pentagon, who recommended MPRI to Minister of Defense Luis Fernando Ramirez.

The Pentagon said that every quarter MPRI reports directly to a senior steering committee in Washington, including Sheridan, representatives of Southcom and Randy Beers, the assistant secretary of state for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs.

Congress, meanwhile, gets no updates about the MPRI mission.

And that makes critics, even within the military, queasy.

In 1998, Col. Bruce D. Grant wrote a strategy research project at the U.S. Army War College questioning companies like MPRI.

Not only did he conclude that what they do is illegal, because they circumvent congressional oversight, but he also wondered how military men and women could sell their expertise to the highest foreign bidder.

"This dangerous trend removes military expertise from public accountability and corrupts our military," Grant wrote.

"The unintended consequences of profit-motivated military assistance could detract from U.S. foreign policy objectives, result in tragedy when misused by recipients and leave a dispirited military."

http://www.ratical.org/ratville/Columbia/PentagonWM.html

[JCMach1]

14. Why a group like this? They stand OUTSIDE of the law

No chain of command= deniability when the shite hits the fan...

Torture, warcrimes??? No problem!

[bvar22]

16. Media was questioning why our REAL military did not....

...rush into them fray to rescue these guys.

Would you risk the lives and limbs of your legitimate troops ($122.50/month) to rescue private corporate contract killers who knock back $1000/day and who do not answer to a chain of command? I would not. If my officers ordered me to do it, I would refuse.

[saigon68]

18. The regular, "Sworn to uphold the Constitution Military"

Loathes these Thuggish Mercenary Rambo Wannabees

Any other vets want to comment?

[seemslikeadream]

17. Come to Blackwater, where the professionals train

The use of private military forces raises tricky questions for the U.S. government. The most important one is why is the Bush administration is recruiting civilians to work there when our government can't possibly guarantee the security of the area. Another question: Why aren't these jobs in combat zones being carried out by American military forces, instead of mercenaries?

Building up a surrogate military force, along the lines of the French Foreign Legion or the Gurkhas, has been the ambition of conservatives for many years. The thinking is that future wars will be characterized by "low-intensity," or guerrilla, warfare. If the fighting is done by a force of irregular surrogates, people won't question their casualties as they would those of regular military personnel. The contras in Nicaragua were an example of what a surrogate fighting force might look like, and special ops types from South Africa’s former apartheid regime have long been involved in fighting in southern Africa.

http://www.theexperiment.org/articles.php?news_id=2020