Rebels may be bolstered by private armies, report says

[David__77]

Source: The Australian


Private contractors could be sent by the US to Libya to help rebels fighting Muammar Gaddafi under plans being considered in the event of a stalemate in the conflict. Source: AP

US President Barack Obama has not ruled out shipments of arms to the opponents of the dictator, although critics fear that such a move might lead to the deployment of ground troops to offer training and support to the disparate rebel groups.

A senior former Pentagon official has told The Times that one option to be discussed was the use of contractors instead of troops.

...

Mr Obama has pledged that US ground troops will not be sent to Libya, but the use of contractors to train the rebels would circumvent that public commitment.

"The private sector has plenty of experience in this sort of work and it doesn't even need to be training on the shooting end of the war, they could be used to provide logistical support to get the rebels more organised," the source said.

Read more: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/rebels-may-be-bolstered-by-private-armies-report-says/story-e6frg6so-1226031194555

[aquart]

1. No. This is not an exercise in Blackwater enrichment.

That would be where my support ends.

[bhikkhu]

9. I'd have to second that

If the Libyans can't manage Gadhafi, then all the rest becomes a bit pointless. I would look at it at how the idea of a nation forms in a people, such as how the revolutionary war shaped who we are and how we think about ourselves and the role of government. If the French had simply come in and just swept the British out on their own, there would be no "American character" as we know it (and possibly no French Revolution, and no Bolivarian revolutions as well).

The Libyans have to do it, and just how much help we can give is a tricky thing - too little is better than too much. That they are considering the possibilities is ok, but I hope they make the right choice. I'm at least convinced of the adequacy of the mental capacities of those making the decisions, unlike previous administrations which needn't be named...

[rug]

2. Blackwater, the paragon of liberty.

[Iliyah]

26. YOU GOT THAT RIGHT!

BLACKWATER!!!!!!

Hell, it will allow them to destroy, kill, kill, destroy, what they are made for!

[F Bastiat]

63. Blackwater is no longer in existence.

[abelenkpe]

3. K&R nt

[Vinnie From Indy]

4. "Gonna raise me an army, some tough sons of bitches

I'm gettin' my soldiers from the old religions." B Dylan

Does anyone else think that "privatizing" armies is a bad idea? Hitler had a "private" army and he made people wear flair.

[sabrina 1]

24. You mean mercenaries. We are talking about sending in

mercenaries. The U.S. currently has more mercenaries in Iraq than regular troops. Contractors are people who build things, NOT Blackwater thugs who shoot up towns and slaughter innocent civilians.

This whole thing is getting worse by the day.

I thought it mercenaries were illegal when we first discovered that the Bush administration was using them.

Those poor Libyans, I will say it again for the record, I fear for them the same way I feared for the Iraqis. Their revolution has been hi-jacked.

[joshcryer]

27. So, should their revolution be helped or not?

And if so, what extent should those who wish to help their revolution go?

[daleo]

30. More to the point

Is there any place they wouldn't go?

[Hannah Bell]

35. why don't *you* go help, josh?

[joshcryer]

37. My tax dollars are.

And I'm glad they are. :hi:

[Hannah Bell]

38. why not do all you can, josh?

why have others fight your war?

[joshcryer]

39. I think my tax money is the best way for me to help them.

:hi:

[Hannah Bell]

40. let the lower-class schmucks do the actual fighting.

[joshcryer]

41. You consider the educated lawyers, students, engineers, "schmucks"?

Telling.

[Hannah Bell]

42. lol. please tell me what percent of combat troops are former lawyers.

cheney thought his tax dollars were a better way to fight in vietnam too. and he spent his entire career sending people to war with his tax dollars.

get yer war on. yay freedom.

it's going to be a cock-up, & i'm willing to bet when that day comes you wont' be in those threads.

phoney bullshit propaganda war.

[joshcryer]

43. I bet you'll keep denegrating them once they have a democracy.

[Hannah Bell]

44. who is "them"? i reserve my denigration for the psy-ops guys & the hypocritical

politicians.

you can keep pretending "the people" are running this train, but you're wrong.

[joshcryer]

49. I'm right, and once they've established a democracy...

...you'll continue using innuendo and conspiracy garbage to denigrate the Libyan Democracy.

[Hannah Bell]

50. well, i'll bookmark this & we'll see. there's supposedly democracy in iraq now too.

so we're told.

[joshcryer]

51. Iraq is occupied, Libya will not be.

[Hannah Bell]

52. i'll bookmark that prediction too.

[joshcryer]

Care to make a prediction of your own?

[Hannah Bell]

54. clusterfuck is my main prediction.

[joshcryer]

55. Care to define 'clusterfuck'?

[joshcryer]

53. dupe

dupe

[frylock]

5. fucking wonderful

[pdefalla]

6. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

No boots on the ground means NO BOOTS ON THE FUCKING GROUND

I'm ready to impeach this corporate lackey

[dkf]

16. It's just a no fly zone right? Time limited right? Scope limited right?

If this is true his word is crap.

[provis99]

7. Qadaffi hires 'mercenaries', America hires 'contractors'

What bullshit lying propaganda.

[ixion]

8. And so it goes...Pax Americana rolls on

:(

[reformist2]

23. On foreign policy, there's no difference between the parties.

I guess there is one difference: the Republicans are in your face about their belligerence. The Democrats just pretend they're peaceful, but then go ahead with the wars anyway. Disgusting.

[killbotfactory]

10. Well that's just not fair.

[Fool Count]

11. So what's the plan? Xe Services LLC go in, depose Qaddafi

and then what? Are they also going to charter a private Libyan Company to run the country and keep the oil flowing? Are we all supposed to buy
its shares on NYSE to pay for it all? The rebels, sure as hell, are not going to be able to hold on to power gifted to them without some kind of
occupying force. What could have possible gone wrong with this splendid "humanitarian" idea?

[timo]

25. xe?? dont forget

triple canopy which is CHICAGO based!!!!!!!

[hollowdweller]

12. Too Big To Fail

Why is it that everybody but the american worker is worthy of gov't help, but when it comes time to stand up for them nobody's home.

I wish Obama would have been as passionate about bending the law to allow the public option, or supporting the Wisconsin strikers.

Really feeling disillusioned now.

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

13. Hmmm, I hear weasels

If you hold a weasel up to your ear, you can hear the lawyers.

:hi:

[former9thward]

14. Blackwater's business in Iraq is down a bit.

They have to make it up somewhere.

[dkf]

15. This is too much.

I didn't think I could be more disgusted but it just has to get worse.

[daleo]

17. This would be unconscionable. n/t

[AllTooEasy]

18. Although pure speculation, I like/prefer this to ground troops...here's why

Here me out:

Contractors have the right to say "Fuck it, I quit" and go back home to their families if they feel it's getting too hot. 19 yrs old American soldiers do not.

Contractors are usually older and much more experienced.

Their mission will be solely to train. If they want to engage in combat, that's on their own dime and I doubt these capitalists will want to do that!

It's a great way to get the right wing rednecks out of this country. Okay, that was wrong, but see my point. Anybody crazy/unstable enough to voluntarily join this contracting mission would probrably be a menace to society over here.

You know that Liberals aren't going to sign up for that shit. Less conservatives over here is a great thing.

I'm not ignorant to the fact that contractors are less controllable. NO DOUBT a well documented, major risk! I definitely prefer no contractors or ground troops, but contrators over troops. I would also prefer that the rebels didn't need them!!!

[daleo]

31. Why not just put Libya up for sale to the highest bidder? n/t

[Catherina]

19. Good thing the US had the foresight to insert mercenary exemption from prosecution in UN resolution

that mercenaries could not be prosecuted by the ICC, only by their country.

... mercenaries hired by the Gaddafi regime to kill Libyan protesters would be immune from prosecution for war crimes due to a clause in this weekend's UN resolution that was demanded by the United States.

...

The key paragraph said that anyone from a non-ICC country alleged to have committed crimes in Libya would “be subject to the exclusive jurisdiction” of their own country. It was inserted despite Susan Rice, the US ambassador to the UN, saying that all those “who slaughter civilians” would “be held personally accountable”.

Speaking to reporters outside the council chamber, Gerard Araud, the French UN ambassador, described the paragraph as “a red line for the United States”, meaning American diplomats had been ordered by their bosses in Washington to secure it. “It was a deal-breaker, and that's the reason we accepted this text to have the unanimity of the council,” said Mr Araud.

...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/libya/8350968/Libya-African-mercenaries-immune-from-prosecution-for-war-crimes.html

It's all coming out in the open now.

Rec'd

[midnight]

22. Crap.....

[EFerrari]

46. Given that empires always use mercenaries, it's just common sense, really. n/t

[Kurska]

20. Gadaffi has mercenaries, fair is fair.

Gadaffi hired nearly 5,000 soldiers from chad and the Rebels could pay mercenaries right out of Gadaffi's frozen funds.

[joshcryer]

21. They wouldn't be fighting for the rebels.

They'd train them at most, give them communications equipment, show 'em how to use it, etc. It'd be cleaner than Gaddafi's tactics.

[sabrina 1]

28. Sure it would, just like it was/is in Iraq.

Caci, Blackwater and the rest of our brutal army of mercenaries, are cowboys who slaughtered, sometimes just for the hell of it, untold numbers of Iraqi civilians. For most of their crimes, they were never prosecuted. However, the Iraqi government, not that they care much about their citizens, but they DO care about staying in power, demanded a change in the law that exempted them from prosecution.

I remember clearly one their most beautiful victims when they went on one of their regular rampages in the middle of a busy square, killing 17 innocent men, women and children. One of those victims was a woman, a doctor and a mother and wife. She was driving her daughter to school that day.

They tried to pay her husband off, a few hundred dollars or whatever insulting amount we pay the victims of these thugs, but he refused, insulted as he should be.

I recorded along with many other people, stories of the atrocities committed by British and U.S. mercenaries for several years.

The MIC is back in business in a new location. Mercenaries get paid multiple times what regular soldiers get. I do not want one dime of our tax dollars going to pay murderers who make their living killing people in foreign lands.

Shameful. All it is a way to get around actual 'boots on the ground' and most likely was the plan all along.

Today, I heard one of those poor rebels on NPR stating angrily that 'we have been betrayed, by our commanders'. These 'commanders' who, he said, just sit around setting up bank accouts etc. lied to them about what they would be facing, urging them to go fight, telling them they had adequate weapons to win, and sending them almost to their deaths. Instead, they were overwhelmed and driven back, AND he said, after being asked if he was serious about being betrayed, 'Yes, you cannot imagine what I have seen here'.

They were being urged to fight an impossible fight, it was obvious from early March and caused a lot of people to begin questioning what was going on.

[joshcryer]

36. Do you think the freedom fighters would allow this to happen in Libya?

Here if "contractors" kill civilians they will be met with an uprising against them. As one rebel once said, if the United States put troops on the ground the revolutionaries would fight against them just as hard as they have Gaddafi.

Please link me to that NPR program. I don't believe a word you're saying until you can start backing it up.

I read today that the commanders told them not to move so hastily, and that in the end the rebels disobeyed them out of exuberance (Gaddafi's forces kept retreating so why not keep chasing? Oh, maybe because it spreads your lines too thin and it's an ambush?). Everyone is reporting that the rebels are disorganized and not following a command structure, so I need a citation before I believe misleading and illogical stories.

I'd bet money that this "contractor" thing doesn't happen and that if it does that it'll be very small in scope. Those contractors if they were found out to be there would have to deal with a lot of Libyans kicking them out. (See the SAS forces who got caught by Libyan farmers; for sure there are Libyans who want assistance but they'd be smart not to allow other Libyans to know about it.)

[sabrina 1]

61. It depends on WHO you mean by 'freedom fighters'

The actual, original fighters will probably have no say in anything. Read this article and then try to answer your own question.

On the ground in Libya: Rebels with a cause, but little

At the 7th of April Army base here, a major rebel army headquarters, Ibrahim, 57, says any appearance of organization is illusory. He said he's too embarrassed to invite reporters inside because, he said, he doesn't want the world to see "all the rubbish we have."

A tank leaving the base isn't on its way to war, he said, but to pull a civilian car from a ravine. A rusted tank returning will be pillaged for parts.

"All the tanks here are for show only. We don't have ammunition. We don't have weapons. We don't have anything," he said, the exasperation evidence in his voice.

He openly distrusts the man who had, until Thursday, been charged with running the rebel army, Abdel Fatah Younes, Gadhafi's former interior minister, who defected last month. Until then, he'd spent nearly five decades at Gadhafi's side, including playing a key role in the 1969 revolution against King Idris, which brought the then 27-year-old Gadhafi to power.

Ibrahim said the rebels should have prosecuted Younes for his crimes during the regime, not chosen him as their leader. He's not the only person Ibrahim doesn't trust.

"Let's be frank," Ibrahim said, pointing to a soldier standing next to him. "This guy standing beside me could be a traitor. I don't know. I don't know him."

So who was urging these people who were so unprepared, to march on Tripoli and take over the country? That is when I began to wonder about this whole thing and to worry about the revolutionaries. Looks they are too.

The Special Forces feel the rebels are slowing them down; the rebels don't trust the Special Forces and want to defend the movement they started. Both groups are ill equipped to confront Gadhafi's better armed forces.

The rebel council hasn't done much for him, other than provide food to fighters, he said.

"It's useless," he explained.

His friend and fellow fighter, Mohammed Saleh Ojadee, 23, a mechanic shop owner turned rebel fighter, offers a more ominous prediction. He said he fears that the power vacuum, and the constant feeling of mistrust here, could spark a civil war, based on vengeance for acts of betrayal that happen during this uncertain period.

"The continuous unrest that is happening in Benghazi has never happened before. We are not used to it. I am afraid people will lose hope living under that pressure and turn on another," Ojadee said. "We need a leader."

As for what I heard on the radio, it was much the same as this. The fighter was angry, feeling betrayed and addressing the exact concerns many observers have for them, 'why were they sent out to fight well-armed and trained troops and told they could 'do it', when it was clear they were out-armed and out-matched'? I hope he is interviewed again and tells what it is he claims he has seen there.

Arming these fighters, which ones? Do you think the U.S. will be pick the good guys or the ones they are familiar with, their own infiltrators, or maybe inadvertently the Qaddafi infiltrators?

I'll say it again, I fear for the Libyan people especially since the West revealed its role in the whole thing starting last year.

And fyi, President Obama issued a secret order 'weeks ago' permitting the CIA to operate on the ground in Libya. So, now there are so many factions among the rebels, who knows who is who at all? The real revolutionaries are left just trying to protect their homes at this point. Their revolution has been hi-jacked.

[Runework]

48. US Mercenaries make friends around the world

(Blackwater has a new name- Xe )

Peshawar - Fear is spreading across University Town, an upmarket residential area in Pakistan's north-western city of Peshawar, due to the overt presence of the controversial US private security contractor Blackwater. Sporting the customary dark glasses and carrying assault rifles, the mercenaries zoom around the neighbourhood in their black-coloured armoured Chevy Suburbans, and shout at motorists when occasionally stranded in a traffic jam.

The residents are mainly concerned about Blackwater's reputation as a ruthless, unbridled private army whose employees face multiple charges of murder, child prostitution and weapons smuggling in Iraq.

http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/news/279077,us-blackwater-xe-mercenaries-spreads-fear-in-pakistani-town--feature.html

http://dearkitty.blogsome.com/2010/12/03/us-mercenaries-in-afghan-pedophile-prostitution-scandal/

[sabrina 1]

60. How can this government permit these thugs to be sent into

those countries knowing their history? And have you noticed when Congress is asked for 'money for the troops', NO ONE mentions how much of it goes to mercenaries?

Poor Libya, if they thought things were bad under Qaddafi, they have only to ask the Iraqis what 'liberation' is like. I imagine too that their free health care system which, like Iraq's used to be, and education etc. are about to vanish.

Sometimes the devil you know is better than the one you don't know.

[amandabeech]

29. Advisors, right. Just advisors.

This mission is creeping, and if Xe goes in as advisors, they'll soon enough be shooting at Libyans on both sides. These guys have very bad reputations.

They will be mostly US citizens, and everyone will know it. However, our government will not have real control over them, but we will all be blamed when they become berzerkers.

I have not supported this war from the beginning, and I see no reason to support it now.

Gadaffi is a real piece of pond scum, but I think that the French and British have to take care of this under the guise of NATO, not us.

A Canadian is in charge, but I doubt that he has the kind of experience that the Brits do in this kind of thing, and I don't expect great things from inexperienced people.

[joshcryer]

56. If they shoot on the revolutionaries they will have signed a death sentence, imo.

They won't let that go and the US will have just lost any good will it may have barely received by not ignoring the wishes of the revolutionary representatives. If the US tries to rescue them then all bets are off and it'll be nasty. In the end the contractor forces, if they ever arrive, are going to have to tread very carefully. This is Libya's battle.

[sabrina 1]

62. The revolutionaries do not want boots on the ground. So, who

are the real revolutionaries? Have they changed their minds? They mentioned often not wanting their country to be turned into another Iraq. I am sure they know the damage done to the Iraqi people by Mercenaries, mercenaries who are above the law btw.

If they ever arive, I would expect the real revolutionaries to show them the way out of their country. Anyone claiming to be a revolutionary who welcomes these thugs to Libya, will be outed as NOT one of the people who were the original protesters.

And anyone who cares about the Libyan people would do all in their power to keep those criminals out of that country.

The Iraqis, who btw, have a protest movement of their own, are demanding that they be removed and prosecuted for the crimes already committed by them.

I cannot believe that anyone would try to defend this and still say they support the revolutionaries.

[Starry Messenger]

32. Obama always wins the wars of semantics.

Should have seen this coming.

[tcaudilllg]

58. It's talk like this which make him untrustworthy.

[plumbob]

33. Just another reason for me to be against this whole operation.

I am, I have been since the beginning, I am against the US having any presence whatsoever in Libya, just as I was, am, and will always be against being in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Don't want anyone later saying I got on a bandwagon.

[Amonester]

57. Yeah, but the oil kings don't need your approval.

If you have a car that runs on oil...
If you drink water in plastic bottles...
If you use anything made of polyester...

You enrich them each time you use them.

[Hannah Bell]

34. so if the US pays mercenaries to fight in Libya it's somehow different than if we

pay our own army to?

bullshit mr. obama.

what a cockup.

[Runework]

45. More Rome Parallels

mercenaries to help maintain the empire

http://www.newsweek.com/2010/08/10/mercenaries-in-iraq-to-take-over-soldiers-jobs.html#

[ronnie624]

59. *

:thumbsup:

[DeSwiss]

47. K&R

"A double minded man is unstable in all his ways." - James 1:8