Three questions regarding the Blackwater contractors.

[leanings]

And I'm going to sleep this off so I'll check out the answers in the morning.

1. Is anyone able to make the distinction betwixt "soldiers" and "security personnel"? Why or why not?

2. Much has been bandied about regarding bloodthirsty butchering American mercenaries. Can anyone provide an example of a credible source that talks of an employee of an American company actually killing anyone in a situation other than self defense, in the recent past, i.e. last ten years or so? Stories of rogue DynCorp employees, intelligence provided to the Columbian and Peruvian militaries, actions of civilians defending embassies in Africa while under attack, etc. doesn't count. For the kind of invective that pervades this board regarding those four Blackwater guys, I need to see a source that shows American civilians dropping a hammer on or pickling off a bomb at someone in an offensive action. And, yes, I'm sure they're all CIA, and the CIA probably knows the contents of my sock drawer too. Frank Perdue, "chicken man"? CIA. Everybody knows that.

3. Can anyone provide a reasonable suggestion for an alternative to private security companies for non-governmental organizations that find themselves in need of protection in a dangerous area? Don't limit yourselves to Iraq; every armed conflict in the world that NGOs are involved in use private security. What's the alternative? Are you willing to see the defense budget increase by an amount equivalent to half again what the Pentagon spends on private security firms to see these activities taken over by "legitimate" full-time military personnel? Try and keep reality in mind while answering; "If we kept the US out of foreign entanglements we wouldn't have that issue and unicorns would once again roam the land yatta yatta" answers are fully expected, but not acceptable.

G'night all, sweet dreams, peace be upon you...

[rooboy]

1. When you wake up...

why don't you humor us with your own analysis of the situation? I stopped doing homework assignments for other people when I left school.

[theHandpuppet]

8. Yep...

I've provided examples over and over but leanings dismisses these categorically. I'm wondering what qualifies -- a video of a mercenary caught in the act doing the deed with a garrot?

Leanings wrote:

Stories of rogue DynCorp employees"....

I assume this is a reference to DynCorp's notorious involvement in sex slavery in Bosnia.

"...intelligence provided to the Columbian and Peruvian militaries"

This no doubt is a reference to the murder of the American missionaries in Peru among other atrocities, like the deaths of Ecuadoran villagers killed when "accidentally" sprayed with herbicides from mercenary aircraft.

"... actions of civilians defending embassies in Africa while under attack, etc. doesn't count."

It should read "don't count" but that's neither here nor there.

Since these deaths don't count, why bother providing an endless stream of evidence that will be likewise dismissed? leanings provides the target, then keeps moving it. I could provide scores of links which won't be visited, further scores of articles and evidence that won't be read. At some point this is just a game, so let's just face it -- these gun-for-hire organizations are cover for a top-secret humanitarian organization vowing to put a teddy bear in the arms of every lonely child. The fact that they actively recruit ex-Pinochet thugs and SA secret police is just to throw us off track!

[leanings]

10. I don't think you get it.

"Guns for hire". "Contract killers". Those terms, to me, would seem to describe people who were hired for the express purpose of killing others. When I ask you for evidence of government contractors killing others in an offensive operation you provide me with articles describing sex crimes. The intelligence collection and counter-drug stuff in South America is the closest you can come, but even the strongest arguments there (aircraft providing information that leads to killing by the host nation's military) doesn't fit the bill. Nor do any villagers who may or may not have died from accidental spraying by herbicides.

I haven't moved the target at all. Actual killing done directly by these folks in an offensive operation. You obviously don't have any evidence that fits the bill, or you would have presented it by now intead of dancing around accusing me of being obtuse. Show me where one of these butchering mercenary hired contract killers killed someone in an offensive act with a weapon.

Edited for typo.

[theHandpuppet]

16. Oh, I get it all right...

You can't be bothered to do your own homework, and then when someone does it for you, you dismiss it. How many times do I have to provide you with evidence you won't read/dismiss anyway?

Here, have a couple more useless links on mercenary assassins, the same kind being hired by Blackwater and DynCorp... there are scores more references just like these, but do your own work. In the end, someone could lay the dead bodies in front of your face and it wouldn't matter. You'll have to row that boat down the river denial all by yourself.

http://www.sabcnews.com/africa/southern_africa/0,2172,76029,00.html
http://www.zwnews.com/issuefull.cfm?ArticleID=8866

[leanings]

19. We're getting closer...

Those links involve actual mercenaries; men hired to kill for pay (presuming that the charges against them are true, which looks likely). Now, if only you were able to find similar circumstances involving American companies, you might have an argument.

[ChemEng]

24. Why did you bother to even reply then?

[gandalf]

2. Do you work for DynCorp as a freelancer or employee?

"Stories of rogue DynCorp employees don't count". Why not? This company is an important contractor.

Your questions seem somehwat biased. Do you want to promote private armies or an honest discussion?

[Florida_Geek]

3. And the facts that DynCorp members liked young kids

for sex... I guess those do not count also.

[leanings]

6. They certainly don't count

as examples of contract killings. I recall that some UN employees were involved in a sex for food deal in Africa, but I don't damn the UN.

[theHandpuppet]

9. No, they weren't contract killings...

... it's called sex slavery and the barter was children. Does that make it better than say, a contract hit?

[leanings]

11. OK

I'll throw the UN thing back at you. Sex for food in Africa. Does that damn the entire organization, or the entire field of charity food distribution?

And while sex slavery is a terrible thing, it still doesn't suffice to answer the question.

[Streetdoc270]

13. But does this affect the organization as a whole?

He lies the tale of the 'Bad Apple' who spoils the bunch. Do you look at the work of the rest of the employees or do you damn the whole process because of a few criminal scum? With this in mind lets talk about the Fallujia incident, the Blackwater employees were said to be there to provide security for food shipments. If this is in fact the case, and there has been no substantiated evidence otherwise, than these 'oppressor mercenary scum' was caring out humanitarian work providing a service that frees government combat troops to perform the tasks that they were trained to do.

[leanings]

14. Well, I wouldn't go so far

as to call it humanitarian work. They were providing security for another contractor who was delivering food to US troops. Therein lies the rub regarding the defense budget; who's willing to see it increased so that we have enough organic support structure to replace the contractors? I wouldn't be opposed to that in an ideal world, but I think there are many better things that the Pentagon in particular and the government in general need to spend funds on right now.

[theHandpuppet]

17. Who knew...

... that a business employing ex-Pinochet thugs and former South African secret police could be such humanitarians? That's it -- these guns for hire are covers for covert humanitarians! Who'd have thought?

[izzie]

4. 1-no congress over sight. 2. no congress over sight and 3 etc.

Need I say more? Your tax money is paying for what you do not know about and have no control over.

[Dunedain]

25. Sorry Wrong

Article 2 of the UCMJ.

(10) In time of war, persons serving with or accompanying an armed force in the field.

[AP]

5. They're just Pinkertons for fascists.

[havocmom]

12. and Pit bulls for Profiteers

with no requirments that they follow acceptable ROE.

[leanings]

7. I'm kicking this back up

Altho I apologize for the assholish tone; I was feeling pretty good this morning. :beer:

[HFishbine]

15. Don't be naive

It's not hard to find guns in Iraq. But once a contractor gets them, he receives virtually no instructions from the U. S. government on when and how he is allowed to use them. The only firm guideline so far has come from chief administrator Paul Bremer himself. At a meeting with contractors in the Green Zone last fall, Bremer conceded that civilians in Iraq could have to protect themselves because the CPA could not guarantee anyone's safety. His one request: Identify your target before you engage—know whom you're shooting at.

This level of ambiguity makes many contractors nervous. As former soldiers, they prefer clear rules of engagement. What if they kill someone? Worse, what if they kill the wrong person? Neither would be unusual in a place like Iraq. Then what? If a U. S. soldier shoots someone under murky circumstances, the Army's Criminal Investigation Division looks into it. But the CID has no authority over civilians off base. "I don't even know that if you engage someone there's even an investigative authority to follow up," Kelly said. "With no parameters, how do I know if I've done something wrong? It's like the Wild West, but nobody's the sheriff."

Or, depending on how you look at it, everybody is. Last summer, a British contractor was run off the road by bandits on a highway south of Baghdad. The contractor, a former SAS man, got out of his car and pretended to surrender. When the bandits approached, he shot both of them. One didn't die immediately, so he clubbed him to death. The Brit was still laughing about it when Bill ran into him a week later.

Not all contractors want more CPA oversight of their activities. That's understandable. There's something to be said for limited bureaucratic interference. One night in December, two DynCorp contractors caught a man they'd been looking for outside the Baghdad Hotel. According to local witnesses, the man had kidnapped several children and attempted to sell them. The contractors reduced him to a bloody mound before turning "what was left of him" over to the Iraqi police. They told me about it at breakfast the next morning. They looked pleased.

much more: http://www.keepmedia.com/ShowItemDetails.do?item_id=366991

[theHandpuppet]

18. Certainly sheds new light on this issue...

US retaliates over war crime immunity demand

By Bill Vann
5 July 2003

In a further bid to place US officials and military personnel beyond the reach of war crimes prosecution, the Bush administration cut off military aid to about 35 countries that failed to meet a June 30 deadline for signing bilateral immunity agreements.

Washington had demanded such deals with all the countries that have signed on to the International Criminal Court (ICC), using the threat of the aid cutoff to impose its will on foreign powers that are considered US allies. At least 90 have reportedly resisted the US blackmail effort. The Bush administration claims that 51 nations have signed immunity agreements, seven of them “secretly.”

<snipping>

Actually, the immunity deals sought by Washington protect not only uniformed soldiers and government officials, but all US citizens as well as foreign contractors working for the Pentagon or other US agencies. Presumably, any American mercenary engaged in war crimes in another country would be immune from prosecution, as would any foreign mercenary working under the direction of US military or intelligence.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2003/jul2003/icc-j05_prn.shtml

[leanings]

20. Very interesting article.

Thanks for posting it. Doesn't answer any of the questions I posed, but interesting none the less.

[leanings]

21. Kick

Again, and then I'm going to assume that no one has any answers to these questions. Because they don't know what the hell they're talking about when they say that these folks were mercenaries who deserved to die.

[dpibel]

22. Who said that?

This whole "deserved to die" line which gained so much currency in the wake of the WTC/Pentagon attacks has got to go. Here's a question for you: can you distinguish between, say, "voluntarily put themselves in a situation where there was a high risk of mortality" and "deserved to die"? I honestly don't know what anybody means when they say, "deserved to die" (incidentally, could you direct me to a post or, even better, several posts (since you refer to "they") in which people say the private security people in Fallujah deserved to die? To adopt your tone: Posts expressing the fact that they shouldn't have been too surprised to die, given the circumstances, do not count. I dunno, maybe those posts are there, and I just skim past them as too hyperbolic to require my attention.

As to your three really challenging questions:

1. Nope. I can't particularly distinguish between "soldier" and "security personnel." I mean, gosh, a soldier is a person whose sole occupation is carrying out the orders of a government, and a private security employee is carrying out the duties assigned by his/her employer. Does that count? Soldiers wear official uniforms and private security people don't? Jeez, I just don't know. Apparently this is some singularly diagnostic issue for you, and maybe you would get further with your point by telling the important distinction you make, rather than snarling out your pretty darned tough questions.

In this particular instance, it appears that the security personnel were carrying out quasi-military functions. I'd expect a soldier to be reasonably well-qualified to escort a shipment of food. Am I wrong about that? I mean, if your problem with the soldier/security person distinction is that soldiers are trained to carry out offensive actions, I think you're limiting the definition a bit too much. Soldiers can pull gaurd duty, which is a defensive, rather than offensive function.

But really, the question as stated is so broad as to be meaningless. So, if it's really important and diagnostic for you that someone be able to read your mind and determine what the question means, my answer would be: Jeez, under your terms and conditions, I just don't know. If that means you win, smug away.

2. Nope. Can't offer you a single instance. Of course, I somehow think that this might not be the sort of thing that would get bruited about a great deal. It's one of those Rumsfeldian things: the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Can you definitively say it hasn't happened, or is that just pretty much what you'd prefer to believe? You may have noticed that there are quite a number of things that don't get much press coverage these days. Embarrassing little instances of private security personnel "dropping a hammer on" or "pickling a bomb off" are not the kind of things we like much to acknowledge here in the land of the free and the home of the brave.

Since you reject as meaningless instances of bad acting aside from your specific demands, those instances are at the outset, of no import to you. That doesn't mean they fail to stand as some indication of why people might not like these for-hire types. I suppose you wouldn't mind if some foreigners were hanging around diddling children, so long as they weren't dropping hammers or pickling. Does that about get it for you?

3. From what I read, these guys are pulling down a grand a day. (The fact that the pay is that high might give them some hint that bad things could happen to them in the course of their employment.) That means that whoever is paying for them is paying substantially more than that, since they're just contract employees, and their employers have to make enough to keep body and soul together. So would you kindly explain to me how it is that using soldiers instead of private security personnel would result in increasing by half the amount paid for these private security people. An E-5 with 6 years of service gets $70 a day base pay. Infrastructure and equipment for that soldier runs $1430 a day (more that that, since I'm just using the pay for the private security people, since I don't know what the cost-plus number is)? Do you know? Or are you just pulling numbers out your, umm, hat?

And why, pray tell, is the idea of keeping the US out of foreign entanglements equivalent in your mind to unicorns and yadda yadda? I can think immediately of one foreign entanglement that is going on for no reason other than the amusement and enrichment of a small boy king and his friends. Why is it unicornianism to think that it would have saved a pile of money and a great many lives, including the four that have you so hot and bothered, if the US had not got involved in that foreign entanglement? There wasn't a thing inevitable about it. So why is that line of argument excluded from your universe of permissible topics? I mean, why other than that it doesn't suit your needs?

You know, there's an old saying: I can win any argument, as long as I get to define the terms. It's a great principle as long as the important thing to you is winning an argument. It's not all that useful if you're interested in exchanging ideas.

I suppose if your principal intention was to snarl out a few questions qua commands for the purpose of teaching some pansy-ass fooks a thing or two, though, it'd all work out pretty well. Think?

[dpibel]

23. Awaiting my thrashing/education n/t

[F.Gordon]

26. You're not asking the right questions

The nature of your questions precludes that you've assumed a complete understanding of the Blackwater contract. But, you're not even luke warm.....

===============================================================
Blackwater Lodge*, Moyock, N.C., is being awarded an estimated $35,667,512 indefinite-delivery and indefinite-quantity, multiple award, delivery order contract for turnkey and instructor-only force protection training that includes force protection fundamental training; shipboard security engagement weapons training; visit, board, search and seizure training; armed sentry course training; and law enforcement training. Work will be performed in Norfolk, Va. (78 percent); San Diego (15 percent); and San Antonio (seven percent), and is to be completed by September 2007. Contract funds in the amount of $38,668 will expire at the end of the current fiscal year. This contract was competitively procured under an electronic request for proposals, with one proposal solicited and six offers received. The Naval Air Systems Command, Naval Air Warfare Center Training Systems Division, Orlando, Fla., is the contracting activity (N61339-02-D-0015).

Surgical Shooting, Inc.*, Ramona, Calif., is being awarded an estimated $12,292,920 indefinite-delivery and indefinite-quantity, multiple award, delivery order contract for turnkey and instructor-only force protection training, including force protection fundamental training; shipboard security engagement weapons training; visit, board, search and seizure training; and armed sentry course training. Work will be performed in Groton, Conn. (55%) and San Diego (45 percent), and is to be completed by September 2007. Contract funds in the amount of $38,500 will expire at the end of the current fiscal year. This contract was competitively procured under an electronic request for proposals, with one proposal solicited and six offers received. The Naval Air Systems Command, Naval Air Warfare Center Training Systems Division, Orlando, Fla., is the contracting activity (N61339-02-D-0016).

http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Sep2002/c09162002_ct471-02.html

The Human Systems Department supports basic and applied research, and advanced technology development leading to applications for the Departments of Navy and Defense, and U.S. Industry. We are committed to active exploration programs that are at the leading edges of medical science, human performance, biotechnology, training and human factors, neural information processing, and biorobotics.
Programs supported by the divisions range from molecular biology to the development of advanced medical therapies for saving lives and strategies for preserving a healthy and fit fighting force. Investigations are conducted of neural, perceptual, and cognitive levels of organization, with an emphasis on the reverse engineering of biological systems to develop devices for fleet operations. Additional emphasis is placed on the study and exploitation of biological processes toward protection of the environment.

http://www.onr.navy.mil/sci_tech/personnel/

Within the Naval Air Systems Command, the NAVAIR Training Systems Division (TSD) is the Navy's source for a full range of innovative products and services that provide complete training solutions. This includes requirements analysis, design, development and full life cycle support. Of significance is NAVAIR TSD's ability to provide continuous learning across a wide variety of applications (aviation, surface, undersea, etc.). NAVAIR TSD integrates the science of learning with performance-based training and measurement of training effectiveness focused on improving the performance of Sailors and Marines. We continually engage the warfighter to understand challenges, solve problems, create new capabilities and provide essential support.

http://www.ntsc.navy.mil/