Under Obama It's Business As Usual for Mercenaries in Iraq and Afghanistan

[tekisui]

Source: Radio Free Europe Radio Liberty

Remember Those Private Security Contractors?

Earlier this week the U.S. Justice Department announced that a private security contractor called ArmorGroup North America Inc. had agreed to pay $7.5 million to settle a dispute with the government. The company got into hot water for a host of misdeeds committed while its employees were guarding the U.S. Embassy in Kabul. (If you want to see some rather gross pics of their antics, you can take a look here. Hat tip to Spencer Ackerman and the folks at Danger Room.)

Interestingly, this mess didn't prevent the State Department from recently signing another contract with the company to guard the embassy.

All of which raises an interesting point: What is the Obama administration's policy on private security contractors?

We heard a lot about this issue during the George W. Bush years. The dubious actions of companies like Blackwater (which ultimately saw fit to change its name because of the drumbeat of bad publicity) highlighted the drawbacks of using private companies to carry out tasks that had once been the exclusive preserve of the government. A series of books, ranging from the sober to the sensationalistic, turned over the pros and cons.

Some of the most vociferous critics of the use of private security contractors were the two leading Democratic candidates for president back during the 2008 campaign. New York Senator Hillary Clinton co-sponsored a bill to outlaw the use of Blackwater and other "private mercenary firms" in the war in Iraq. "The time to show these contractors the door is long past due," she declared at one point.

Her rival, a certain senator from Illinois, struck some similar tones. "You've got young men and women signing up to serve, willing to spill blood for America. How could they be treated less well than private contractors?" candidate Obama told one crowd in 2007. "And these private contractors, they go out and they're spraying bullets and hitting civilians and that makes it more dangerous for our troops." As the campaign proceeded, Obama made it clear that he wasn't quite willing to ban the use of such firms, but insisted that he would aim for much greater "accountability" if he became president.

So how has the policy toward the use of private security companies changed since Obama entered the White House?

When I asked that question of David Isenberg, author of the book "Shadow Force: Private Security Contractors in Iraq," the answer turned out to be "not much."

more: http://www.rferl.org/content/private_security_contractors_us_afghanistan_iraq/24260106.html

[tekisui]

1. Use of hired guns tripled since June 2009.

[kenny blankenship]

2. The fiddler will not stop and the dancers continue without rest

Once, I remember, we came upon a man-of-war anchored off the coast. There wasn't even a shed there, and she was shelling the bush. It appears the French had one of their wars going on thereabouts. Her ensign dropped limp like a rag; the muzzles of the long six-inch guns stuck out all over the low hull; the greasy, slimy swell swung her up lazily and let her down, swaying her thin masts. In the empty immensity of earth, sky, and water, there she was, incomprehensible, firing into a continent. Pop, would go one of the six-inch guns; a small flame would dart and vanish, a little white smoke would disappear, a tiny projectile would give a feeble screech--and nothing happened. Nothing could happen. There was a touch of insanity in the proceeding, a sense of lugubrious drollery in the sight; and it was not dissipated by somebody on board assuring me earnestly there was a camp of natives--he called them enemies!--hidden out of sight somewhere.

"We gave her her letters (I heard the men in that lonely ship were dying of fever at the rate of three a day) and went on. We called at some more places with farcical names, where the merry dance of death and trade goes on in a still and earthy atmosphere as of an overheated catacomb; all along the formless coast bordered by dangerous surf, as if Nature herself had tried to ward off intruders; in and out of rivers, streams of death in life, whose banks were rotting into mud, whose waters, thickened into slime, invaded the contorted mangroves that seemed to writhe at us in the extremity of an impotent despair. Nowhere did we stop long enough to get a particularized impression, but the general sense of vague and oppressive wonder grew upon me. It was like a weary pilgrimage amongst hints for nightmares.

--Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

[blindpig]

3. k&r for the phony withdrawal.

[CelticThunder]

4. Plus ça change

[drokhole]

5. So, basically, they gave back $7.5 million of taxpayer money.

How mighty kind of them.

[bvar22]

6. Under Obama,

Its just plain Business as Usual.
The increased use of Mercenaries in Iraq and Afghanistan is NOT an exception.

The DLC New Team
Progressives Need NOT Apply

(Screen Capped from the DLC Website)
http://www.dlc.org/ndol_ci.cfm?contentid=254886&kaid=86&subid=85


Anybody remember this?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5t8GdxFYBU

I really though he was being serious.
I didn't realize he was just polishing his Stand Up routine.

[Obamanaut]

7. "Change you can believe in" turned out to be code for "Business as usual." nt