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CheneyBush's "Mercenary" Legions
"Outsourcing" jobs overseas is only the tip of the iceberg. How about the CheneyBush Administration "outsourcing" our military, our intelligence-gathering, our nation's soul?
Taking private enterprise way beyond what is reasonable, or desirable, or safe, the CheneyBush Administration has turned over a huge raft of national-security functions to those not adequately trained, not accountable to the public or the law, not showing up on the political radar.
In short, CheneyBush have created what amounts to their own private legions -- soldiers, intelligence analysts, security guards, construction experts, supply specialists, et al. -- in effect, a "mercenary" force bought and paid for by the American taxpayer.
That's why there will probably be no draft: There is no guarantee of loyalty from those dragooned into service. Besides, many draftees have politically-connected constituencies. But when one's mercenary "volunteer" forces are totally beholden to the paymaster for their livelihood and under-the-table payoffs, they will dance with them that brung 'em.
These are no small numbers. It's estimated that in addition to the 160,000 regular troops in the field in Iraq, CheneyBush control anywhere from 60,000 to 100,000 private assets ("independent contractors"). Nobody's even sure under what "rules of engagement" these guys -- many in security and reconstruction fields -- operate, or whether they are accountable to anyone other than their corporate bosses' and the financial "bottom line."
History shows us the dangers involved when leaders have large extra-institutional forces at their command, such as the Praetorian Guards and Legions of ancient Roman Caesars, Hitler's Brownshirts, Saddam's Republican Guards, the private militias of political and religious leaders today in Iraq, Blackwater forces in control of New Orleans after Katrina, etc. By and large, these mercenaries swear allegiance to their employer, not to the rule of law, not to any constitution. The catastrophic damage done to democracy by the existence, and power, of these private forces can't be over-stated.
News flash: Blackwater, the huge corporation that CheneyBush rely on for most of the non-military functions in Iraq and elsewhere, is buying combat aircraft. Do we really want a private air force, effectively operating under the aegis of the Executive Branch, conducting secret ops in our names?
Purchasing Intelligence
In America's current case, there is also this ominous danger: Accurate intelligence is an absolute necessity in warfare and war-planning, but CheneyBush are increasingly going outside the usual intelligence channels and hiring private intel corporations. Even with the mass purgings in governmental intelligence agencies of those not sufficiently "Bush-loyal," Cheney in particular doesn't trust the CIA and the State Department's intel analysts, never has and never will. So we get this recent story from veteran Washington Post reporter Walter Pincus:
"The Defense Intelligence Agency is preparing to pay private contractors up to $1 billion to conduct core intelligence tasks of analysis and collection over the next five years, an amount that would set a record in the outsourcing of such functions by the Pentagon's top spying agency.
"The proposed contracts, outlined in a recent early notice of the DIA's plans, reflect a continuing expansion of the Defense Department's intelligence-related work and fit a well-established pattern of Bush administration transfers of government work to private contractors.
..."The DIA did not specify exactly what it wants the contractors to do but said it is seeking teams to fulfill 'operational and mission requirements' that include intelligence 'Gathering and Collection, Analysis, Utilization, and Strategy and Support'."
By outsourcing, CheneyBush, of course, get the intelligence they pay for, rather than risking that some CIA or State Department analysts might tell them intel-truths they don't want to hear, as was the case with Iraq.
Lowering The Recruiting Bar
How did CheneyBush begin to assemble their mercenary forces for the reckless misadventure in Iraq? At first, they started out with an all-"volunteer" army of sterling patriotic recruits, high school graduates, many from lower- and middle-middle circumstances, not well-connected politically, many underemployed and desirous of a stable career. But the brutality and criminality and constant fear of the Iraq War (never knowing for sure if civilians were good guys or bad guys, U.S. death rates going up, horrific injuries to body, brain and psyche) took their toll on the troops, suicide and post-traumatic rates mushroomed, and recruitment of top prospects plummeted.
As a result, the U.S. military felt forced to relax its high standards in order to even come close to meeting its replacement quotas. High schoolers and dropouts were prime targets of unscrupulous recruiters. Don't have a high school diploma? Don't need one. Felony record? Don't worry about it; we've got "moral waivers" now. Poor physical health? Here, have some more pizza and desserts. A gang member on the streets of L.A.? Here's your assault rifle, soldier, and welcome to the brotherhood.
And when lowering the standards still didn't yield the required numbers, the military went to simple bribery. Sign up now and get a $25,000 signing bonus. Not enough? How about $30K?
The military also is trolling for mercenary recruits among non-citizens in Latin America and elsewhere; those who sign up with the U.S. military are told that it could take them six months to become a U.S. citizen rather than 12 years.
But even with all those waivers and inducements, many potential recruits stay away; they are quite aware that troops in Iraq face serial deployments, rotations extended to 15 months each time, a constant high rate of deaths and injuries. Check out what seven serving NCOs have to say in the New York Times about the realities of this war. So it's no wonder that the Administration has taken to increasing the hiring of "independent contractors," at high salaries, to carry out tasks often associated with the professional military.
No wonder the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and perhaps even Defense Secretary Gates, are suggesting, as best they can without being summarily dismissed by the political lunatics in charge, that the U.S. military is stretched as thin as it can get in Iraq and Afghanistan, and that initiating more hostilities with other countries in the region (Iran and Syria come to mind) would not make much military or any other kind of sense.
Outsourcing Extreme Torture
In addition to outsourcing its military and intel gathering, one has to mention the outsourcing of interrogation and torture, especially of High Value Prisoners (HVPs). (Torture, as we all know by now, under CheneyBush, is officially-sanctioned state policy.)
CheneyBush send these suspects on CIA planes to secret U.S. interrogation centers abroad and then often forward the more recalcitrant detainees and other HVP to countries that specialize in especially brutal torture, including Egypt, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, even Syria.
These "rendition" flights abroad are not only to keep the U.S. vaguely in line with the Geneva Conventions and U.S. law, but also because those other nations have torturing down to a science by now, and, as long as these countries get paid off well, seem to have few moral scruples about breaking down the minds and bodies of prisoners sometimes even to the point of death.
"Catapulting The Propaganda"
The Administration sees the same polling numbers as the Democrats do and realizes that in order to be able to continue its surge at least through Election Day 2008 -- which would, they believe, get CheneyBush off the blame-hook for the "loss" of Iraq -- they need to mount an enormous public-relations campaign to cancel out the lies and sell the escalated war to the American public and Congress. Scapegoats for that "loss" are already being put in place: al-Maliki, the Democrats, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Petraeus, etc. etc. Never Cheney, never Bush.
When governmental policies stink, no policies are changed; instead, the common practice is to tell more lies and hire public-relations firms to disguise the crap being peddled by dousing it heavily with rose petals. Sell your policies like soap or perfume; the theory rests on a belief that enough Americans will buy the fragrant, handsomely-packaged new product to make politicians think twice about opposing Administration policy.
And so the Pentagon has set up an Iraq Communications Desk to coordinate the campaign to sell the Petraeus Report findings, and, through a covert "cut-out" organization, a new White House-connected group called Freedom Watch has launched a $15 million pro-war propaganda campaign in various media markets. The spots already are running, and they often feature Iraq War veterans and/or their surviving family members delivering the White House spin ("patience," "we're making progress in Iraq," "stop them there so they can't come here," etc. etc.).
In coordination with the Freedom Watch campaign, a powerful P.R. program has begun to aid in the transition away from the prickly Iraqi prime minister al-Maliki, to a more malleable, pro-U.S. figure, most likely former prime minister (and former CIA asset) Ayad Allawi. Hired to coordinate the campaign is the GOP lobbying outfit of Barbour, Griffith & Rogers.
CheneyBush are peddling the continue-the-surge idea because that's all they've got at this stage. That and the long-discredited attempt to link Iraq and 9/11 in the public mind. And why not? That latter lie worked for a few years after 9/11, so why not haul it out again? Haul out anything again that might confuse the American citizenry and bump up the pro-surge numbers so as to divide the Democrats and keep the war going at least past Election Day 2008 and, ideally, keep U.S. troops in their permanent Iraq bases for another decade or two.
Or, at the very least, FUBAR the situation there so badly that a Democratic president in 2009 would be unable to extricate U.S. forces easily or maybe even at all.
Thinking The Unthinkable
And, if CheneyBush are unable to keep the U.S. public from demanding that Congress close down this quagmire of a war, they might well decide to unleash their ultimate weapon of mass distraction by finding a good reason to attack Iran "pre-emptively" (via a false-flag operation?). When Iran responds in self-defense by attacking U.S. assets in the Persian Gulf and elsewhere, the American public will be told that it's imperative that the U.S. must fight in Iraq and Iran to stop the Muslim hordes from taking over the world, and controlling "our" oil.
Think it won't happen? Think Iran is not in the planning bombsights right now? Dream on. The CheneyBush gang is desperate and will do anything, including using nuclear weaponry, to maintain its power and control. Former Middle East CIA specialist Bob Baer says that senior intelligence officials told him recently that CheneyBush are likely to attack Iran within six months.
Most Americans didn't think CheneyBush would be crazy enough to invade and occupy Iraq. We should have learned our lesson by now; these ideological zealots are unhinged enough to do it again.
And it looks like the Democrats, who should be forcefully leading the opposition to stop the Iraq War and to prevent the Iran War, are going to be enablers of CheneyBush policy once again, either out of stupidity or political cowardice. That's the moral tragedy of where we are in late-2007.
Bernard Weiner, Ph.D. in government & international relations, has taught at universities in California and Washington, worked for two decades as a writer/editor for the San Francisco Chronicle, and currently co-edits The Crisis Papers (www.crisispapers.org).
© Copyright 2007 by Bernard Weiner
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46 Comments so far
Show All"The Defense Intelligence Agency is preparing to pay private contractors up to $1 billion to conduct core intelligence tasks of analysis and collection over the next five years"
why would bush pay so much money for intelligence?
after all, he's just going to ignore their findings.
as he's done repeatedly.
you, sir, are so fuckin fired.
Meet your new police force.
You know that the corporatocracy will be here with their private armies to bitch-slap the US into submission.
I think that the "surge" was never what it was said to be.. an addition of troops for securing Iraq. I think that this was actually a way to relieve the mercenaries from the Iraqi theater so they can transition to the Iran theater. It will probably happen a day before we even hear about it, considering the lack of news we actually receive.
Let's see.... Mercenaries + KBR's 'illegal emigrant detention centers' (capacity 500,000) = ?
You might get a shock as to how many mercenaries may be being quietly transferred back here. Should We the People get really fed up and start forceably demanding change, we may well find ourselves drowning in Blackwater.
The view through razor wire may be bleak indeed.
Interesting, and scary... but to those of us (outside the USA) who've been paying attention, a lot of this is old news. E.g. those four guys whose murder sparked off the siege of Fallujah - just what did you think they were doing there, helping little old ladies cross the street?
Still, look on the bright side - the thousand-year Reich only lasted twelve.
I agree with libertas fugit. The only thing we learn from history is that we don't learn anything from history. Give me liberty or give me death!
What's to worry? In order to receive a "contract" from Cheneybush Inc. you have to prove you lack the competence to get the job done, done right, done cheap, or any combination of the three. So now we got a buncha paid morons playing spy-for-hire? Lucky if they can find a needle in a haystack of needles for no less than thrice the price of the gov intel agencies.
Will any of the Dems announce their plan to rescind any "private" intel or military contracts? Or, even better, offer a smarter, more cost-effective, less Democracy-destroying plan?
Let's say the Iraq occupation ended tomorrow... would the Blackwaters et al then disband? Our first corporate armies begin. Like in some graphic novel, someday we will see corporate conflicts called war.
But that will be some time in the future just yet. What we will see will be corporate sponsored 'military solutions' under the guise of security. Translation>>> A sniper takes out a union activist and it is blamed on gang violence? A security force was dispatched to secure corporate facilities from rebels and an indigenous tribe's village and most of the adult male population become no more?
But emergency riot or crowd control in the USA will be a kicker. Care for a game of Rollerball in our world of emerging 'corporate nations'? Some will have their own armies... some will just rent?
Won't that be fun? Mercenary intel services and independent data mining corporations.
You can't have freedom without having rights. Our lives become an open book... only we aren't allowed to read it. Somebody else will know more about us than we do.
Too bad nobody seems to have considered our children and grand children will have to live with these extra-legal private armies.
One characteristic the European fascist regimes shared was that each had a private army. If you think it can't be happening, remember, it's been tried before. See "The Plot to Seize the White House", by Jules Archer (Hawthorn Books, 1973). This is not fiction.
Corrected title: "The Plot to Seize the White House", by Jules Archer (Hawthorn Books, 1973)
WRT Blackwater et al, I think it wise to review the USA's first Balckwater--Pinkerton Detective Acency--and how it operated insynch with the corporations and all three levels of government--local, state and federal. My reading of this history tells me if the local government had actually been democratic in essense--not bought by the local corporation as was almost always the case--Pinkerton would not have been allowed to operate (become the provacateurs) setting the stage for state/federal intervention through invasion by state National Guard troops. Those few localities able to deter such invasions were highly communalistic and took the Second Amendment seriously by fielding their own local militias.
Pinkerton still exists. Blackwater and its ilk will continue to exist unless laws are passed to outlaw such organizations, and such laws are zealously enforced.
The real question here is: Are the Democrats and the Republicans really in lockstep on this? I don't see any Democrats mentioning this private army or how the existence of such a force is detrimental to the sovereignty of the United States.
And I haven't seen much effort on the part of Democrats to put a stop to much of what this administration has done. Could it be all part of a much larger plot to subdue the masses?
You can bet that mercenaries will be used against us here at home in the future. They always have been in the past.
Weiner is correct in saying the loyalty of those with the outsourced contracts is suspect, and that we should be concerned about their level of competence. I believe it is important to note the competence and loyalty of the military and intelligence communities is low to begin with. It is obvious they are obedient to the President, who himself is not competent at winning wars or in understanding foreign nations, and he is obviously disloyal to the nation as a whole. It is difficult to be better than your leader without a stubborn adherence to professionalism, which is rare in the military and too infrequent in intelligence. The military is clearly incompetent at winning wars, at least for the last 60 years, and hasn't exactly defended the US itself very well. As for loyalty, remember that the 911 attacks were incited by US "policies" (far too polite a term when one of them is mass murder) carried out by the US military, the prime 3 being the stationing of US troops in Muslim lands, a truly horrendous war against the people of Iraq (which began more than 10 years before 911 and never stopped but only slowed down), and support of Israel's 60 year war against the Palestinians and other primarily Muslim peoples. At Pearl Harbor, of course, the senior civilian and uniformed leadership of the military developed and carried out a plan to incite the Pearl Harbor attack, and then proceeded to actively assist the attack until its success was assured. The war between the states? Half the military defected for the right to defend slavery. The Indian wars? Carried out against much of the US for the sake of stealing land? The Cold War? They threatened to kill us all by leading the way into the mess. The Soviet threat was always a reaction to the larger and earlier US threat. After all, US had invaded CCCP, not the other way around (during WW1). And, it is the US that pioneered the development and first strike use of nukes at the end of WW2.
Once you start counting trees, it is pretty clear it's a forest
Would someone please explain to me how many exposures and admissions of violations and illegal acts does it take before Congress is finally forced to impeach and hold BushCheney to their oaths of office? Hell, BushCheney stampeded Congress into both a complete surrender of it's own duties and a paralyzing fear of a sixth of the world's population by conflating less than a single handful of terror incidents involving less than a bus full of cadre total. In contrast, there are thousands upon thousands of almost hourly assaults against the Constitution. How much evidence must be piled up before it is impossible for Congress to ignore?
The attacks on the Constitution are so unrelenting, so broad, so thorough, and so far reaching as to amount to a repeal and repudiation of everything this country once stood for. Yet nothing, not even admitted torture and murder by the present Administration, seems to motivate Congress to reconsider whether what has been done is neither necessary, prudent, or even actually useful for any purpose other than creating a risable dictatorship.
Almost everything has been given up in return for little or nothing of value. Is everyone in Congress ignorant, craven, fearful, weak, lazy, ineffective, indifferent or some combination thereof? Or, worse yet, has CheneyBush used his illegal spying on Americans primarily to uncover blackmail on the Congress members which keeps them from acting?
Those are important questions. Why aren't a majority of our representatives asking them?
Jeremy Scahill, who wrote The Book on Blackwater, recently was interviewed on CNN. He described how he encountered some camaflogued Blackwater guys in the French Quarter several days into the Katrina disaster, security guys who were asking for directions to a particular hotel.
Scahill struck up a conversation with them, and learned they had come to New Orleans on contract to provide anti-riot security for the business district, and were being paid $300 per day. Scahill later did some background checking, using the Freedom of Information Act, and learned that the contract was between Blackwater and the Homeland Security Agency, with the company being paid $950 per man per day.
All this was taking place while the Louisiana and Mississippi National Guard and reserves were unavailable due to Iraq war occupation duties. And the scandal, of course, was that some of the homeless might have abused their $2,000 debit cards issued by FEMA.....
Bill from Saginaw
An Australian comedian said recently that he had heard that the man who was George Bush's brain, Karl Rove, was leaving Bush's service. He then went on to say that after looking at what Bush had done while he had a brain he was scared stiff of what Bush would do now that he no longer had one.
I have only one big objection to a mercenary combat force in Iraq.
It should not be at any cost to the public, and it should be funded by the private sector. Private is private, without government subsidies.
If EXON-MOBILE, BP, SHELL, GULF OIL, etc., want to hold-up the gas station in Iraq, Iran or where-ever, let them do it on their own dime.
And if the rest of the world thinks their mercenaries actions are illegal, or possibly even 'war crimes', let them take the perpetraters to the World Court in The Hague.
The sooner the light-of-day falls on the activities of monolithic international corporations, the better it will be for all of us 'people.'
Billary and Hellary will save us.
Who will face of with the Clintons and ask them
where they stand with this Private Army that
is promoting the interests of the
CARLYLE GROUP. Where the hell is Ralph Nader?
Does he understand anything besides the
faulty car that he bought thirty years ago?
He should use his soap box to expose this new
Cheney-Bush private army.
There is a solution,,,,,,
"It also gives us a very special, secret pleasure to see how unaware the people around us are of what is really happening to them. "-Adolf Hitler
Coffee
It has all the elements of a 21st century "clash of the titans." If these armies for hire work for whoever can pay them, even if Bush-Cheney left office they'd own the wealth to maintain these mercenary forces for their OWN interests. In other words, even if another party or person was elected (and most of us in this forum GET that it's a difference between 2 very similar virtual toothpaste brands) power could remain in the hands of those, like feudal lords of old, capable of raising the largest private armies.
LAWLESSONE: Your points are similar to an excellent argument made on today's TRUTHOUT.org (it's another good site if you don't know about it.)
GDE & Bugs Bunny: I can relate to the issues you bring to light.
Do you truly feel secure in the belief that Bush/Cheney are leaving at all? With a huge, well-armed private army and a false-flag operation, wouldn't they have all they need to declare martial law and call off elections - or do just about anything else they please? Didn't Congress just give them that power? (If I sound paranoid, it's because I've been reading the news. And remember, the mere fact that I am paranoid is not proof that there's no plot against us. Just ask the 'paranoids' who were watching Germany in the '30s.)
Personally, I believe they ought to be impeached now and tried; and, whether or not the Senate has the morals and the guts to convict, they ought to be sent directly from their Senate trial(s) to the Hague.
These guys scare the bejeepers out of me - and it's hardly comforting to know that most of the Democrats in office have supported every criminal act. I don't want to hear any more crud about the years of minority status, either. When the Republicans were in the minority last time, they ran amok, and successfully defied the Democratic majority to try to stop them. If the Dems had had the guts to do something then, we might not have been where we now find ourselves. (As they're repeating the pattern now, one must wonder...)
Hit these guys where it hurts...SECOND BOSTON TEA PARTY...April 15th should not happen this year...get some balls people...
DO NOT PAY TAXES!!!
THEY HAVE RAPED OUR TREASURY OF $500,000,000,000...
Find out who made money from the war and make them give it back...or we take it back...
I am so pissed off!!!
Ditto that, pi_dpiper. Taxes are theft. Allowing that theft funds the war criminals and makes a taxpayer complicit in murder.
Q: How do you defeat a Mercenary Army?
A: Offer to pay them more
I agree with the refusl to pay taxes suggestion, and wish more people would grow the balls to go along with it.
Think about it. It's the single most effective tool of protest we have at our disposal. Why wait for Congress to exercise their power of the purse when we can simply deny them the purse itself?
It's a way to hit the government from all sides simultaneously, and there is no way they could pursue every refuse-nik at once. To be efficient and get their money's worth for the collection effort, they'd have to ignore the little guys and go after the big fishes, the ones who should be paying more taxes anyway.
Would it immobilize the federal goverment? Of course not. The coffers wouldn't dry up, they'd just not get replenished per expectations. It might prod Congress to reconsider just how high a priority the war in Iraq is compared to everything else we need to fund.
speaking of taxes...
i haven't paid mine since 2003. if the irs calls you, politely state why you refuse to pay. your refusal to support illegal wars, for instance.
according to what i've heard, this, believe it or not, gives you the greatest legal standing to refuse to pay.
not paying because "bush is an asshole" is not a good reason, and will likely get you to court on the fast track.
something about the difference between "tax evasion" and "tax avoidance".
i urge you to look it up for yourself, but this is what i've come to understand.
oh... no one's called me yet but i assume they will at some point. i'm ready to argue my case if i have to.
but again, study up and don't simply accept the word of a stranger who posted to a site you enjoy reading.
just giving you my impression from what i've gathered.
We're going to outsource intelligence services? You mean we're dissatisfied with the quality of intelligence we got from the Office of Special Plans under Doug Feith? Or from the White House Iraq Group under Rove and Libby?
I am not sure - but was told - that the income tax ratification act, implementing taxes, was never ratified by congress (or some such scenario), making it illegal from the start. Does anyone have any documentable info on this?
Private contractors working for large corporations will tailor the intelligence to each customer and seek many other customers to buy the same intelligence.
How much would China pay to get the same intelligence report and the U.S. reaction to it?
I don't understand...
So a "private security contractor" is not bound by the laws of the United States, IE, they can beat, arrest, and detain anyone without repercussions or adherance to constitutional protections?
Does that mean that the contractors themselves are also not protected by the law, and don't get constitutional protections?
If both are true, this is government sanctioned anarchy.
If the latter is false, then private contractors are really just gradeschool type bullies who can do whatever they want since they are not bound by any constitutional law let alone any local law, yet they have guns and other marvalous weapons.
In other words, if a private contractor decides he wants to beat me with a nightstick... that's A-OK, there is nothing that will stop him, and nothing to be held accountable for after. Yet if I want to fight back and defend myself, by say, hitting him with a baseball bat or just my bare fists, i'm the one who gets arrested and thrown in jail for 3+ years for assualt, and the merc gets off scott-free? like it was just daily business for them?
And i'm not even being paid 500 dollars per day like these mercs.
'Private Contractor' What a great name. Let's see. Two private contractors killed and dragged through the streets. Hmm. Those damn terrorists, killing and dragging a carpenter (plumber, electrician) through the streets. And they're just over there trying to help. Just leave our private contractors alone!
Have you ever wondered about the mental stability, morals and social background of these mercenaries? Let's call them what they are. As Count Floyd used to say, "very, very scary"!
The present convergence of the formation of private armies of the far right (as Blackwater can rightly be seen), the building of detention camps, the ever-increasing militarization of police departments, the vague conditions under which martial law might be declared, the apparent indifference of the average American to the effective repeal of the Bill of Rights and Posse Comitatus, the ease in which most of our fellow citizens can be panicked by fabrications and the proven servility of the major media to the government, should raise urgent alarms among those of us who still prize what remains of our Constitution and our liberty.
Tony Vodvarka, Hartly DE
"Have you ever wondered about the mental stability, morals and social background of these mercenaries?"
They're brainwashed plain and simple. Most are probably cold-hearted, insecure and are seeking approval from authority. That's why they do what they do, they want attention, and they want to be "loved" so they gravel to their masters in hopes that the master will throw them a bone. The dog analogy works well. The master just mocks the dog, yet the dog keeps coming back for more; always loyal to the master.
They think they're doing good, but even deep they know what they're doing is corrupt.
vodvarka August 29th, 2007 10:37 am
They're not going to be happy untill "security Cameras" are installed in the homes of every American, and private mercenaries are at their door everyday.
Scary that some people would actually welcome such a scenario. A good 25% of our nation would have no problem, and would whole-heartedly embrace and back a military police state in America. another 50% would be too lazy and apathetic to care. Another 25% of us would complain, and those who complained the most would be whisked away to prison "detention facilities" with no rights whatsoever.
If the corporate mercenary mutation is to be stopped, it must be by making such operations illegal. South Africa has already done this due to a long history of their mercenary goon squads doing horrible things throughout Africa. But with our corporate Congress of corrupt invertebrates, this might be difficult. Part of the mercenary plan, already in operation, is for elite and well-paid American mercenary "officers" to then command grunts from developing nations. This is intended to supplement the inadequate number of American soldiers on the ground. The developing nation recruits get paid a fraction of what the American white officer class gets paid. Thus far the results are questionable, other than making the Blackwater top dogs rich off tax dollars. And it is worth noting that the head of Blackwater, Eric Prince, is a Christian conservative who has donated to both politically active "Christian" organizations as well as the Bush campaign.
Mastershake, The statistics on our fellow citizens are scary, forty percent at least functionally illiterate, about half not interested enough in politics to vote, twenty percent waiting for the rapture, largely up to their necks in consumer debt and without job security, hoping they don't get sick. "Deer Hunting With Jesus", Joe Bageant lays it out nicely. Tony Vodvarka
Type "War Profiteers" in google...
And read...read...read...
It will make you VERYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY Angry...
NOTAX 4/15...
TONY VODVARKA: Not sure I read any prior postings by you, but want to applaud your contribution to the forum. (Welcome, if appropriate.)
So let me get this straight. Our service men's families qualify for food stamps. There is no money for their treatment. But we can pay for a private army that no one controls? And now we are going to let them collect "intelligence"?
So since Bush got caught illegally spying on us and now he is going to outsource the illegal spying so he can get away with it? Why hasn't anyone asked if he was listening on Kerry's campaign when he "won" the last election? How can you have fair elections if the other guy is listening in?
When the contractors got killed in Iraq I thought these were guys that were building roads and schools. No wonder they decided to drag them thru the streets.
no mention of what the mercenarys are getting paid. starting wage 150K, upwards to 250K. a year. compare that with the base pay of a soldier, 15-20K.
Gracias, Siouxrose, The main problem with private armed forces is that, traditionally, they've been used to threaten any segment of the regular armed forces that did not support a declaration of martial law and remained loyal to the Constitution, viz, Hitler's S.A. or Franco's Spanish Foreign Legion. Hopefully, we will never see such a day.
Tony Vodvarka
Our troops should go on strike to get the same pay and benefits as Blackwater mercenaries. That would certainly put a damper on warmongering.
As our economy goes into the crapper, and more businesses are lost, pensions are wiped out, the fed printing more dollars and taxes are increased...then we will all be working for the government just to survive. The last time I checked, that was called slavery. Our government is beyond dysfunctional. Congress does nothing more than spend money like a crack whore who one the lottery and the naive believe that this is done for the collective good. Collectivism is a dirty word. And what is the one thing that would change all of this?
I was thinking of something simpler - what funds all of this nonsense....