willybill asked above how these mercenaries (Blackwater, et.al.) became authorized. I think we have to assume the Executive permitted their hiring through one or more agencies, and that Congress provided the funding by allocating discretionary funds for the Executive to spend.

A different Executive, a (perhaps) different result.
As Bush said, "Elections have consequences." The election of 2000 was bad, but the one in 2008 is of even greater consequence.

America of "the dream" was never real to begin with.

We have about two years maybe less, probably some time after the Beijing Olympics have faded into memory in early 2009. China will have to decide if it is going to let its currency float to its real, (or some percentage of that), value or still play the fool's game to the American corporate class. For China is, getting close to that pivot point called diminishing returns.

Mind you the Chinese did not welcome the in the 2000 odd American owned factories for altruistic reasons. They know and will never admit, that all that talk from the lunatics like Freidman that the world's economy is flat, are the self deluded words of whores who serve an elite who long ago lost any real judgment and put forth a foolish belief there is some kind of capitalist international and all businessmen are Swiss and turning the tables will never cross the minds of their Chinese "partners".

The Chinese know history and are doing to us what the United States did to England in the 18th and 19th centuries – taking out technology refining it, creating whole new generations of skilled workers and engineers so that by 2020 or so, most large American corporations will be empty shells who long ago gave up the pretense they invent or make anything anymore.

They could buy INTEL right, now for cold hard cash, if they wanted to… there just waiting for the American stock holders of INTEL to become real desperate… So they bide their time and wait. Besides, the value of money and time is on their side.

That this process is speeded up and not going to take 75 years like the American version; you can thank Apple and IBM for rolling out the PC and the blind hatred of American elites of unions, fare labor laws, worker protection and the eight hour day and just about every reform that took place between 1880 and 1960.

The only part of this sad story, that truly frightens me is no one is telling the American people is what a true total historical water shed change this is going to mean for most of us.

The one million foreclosures vaguely eluded to in the press, are just the beginning of that process as the American population has been reduced already to millions of low paying jobs and to "stimulate" the economy funny money was throw away by the billions to sustain the lie that American capitalism still works, well, works as long as the central banks of other nations allow it to.

So let history be your guide look at England from 1850 to 1930, massive ill-health, crushing poverty for the vast majority, although somewhat mitigated by some unions fighting back, but for millions of British and Irish people the only real hope was leave and go to America, Australia.. anywhere really.

Where are millions of Americans going to go in 2015 or 2025?

When the Chinese elite decides it rather give true buying power, (meaning a raise), to millions of Chinese citizens, by letting it's currency float, which will allow millions Chinese workers to afford all the goods they now produce, rather than exporting them, most Americans will be lucky they can even find the newest flat panel TV in a store let alone afford to buy it.

If there is even an American buyers, likely he or she will work for some foreign dominated company and be part of a small percentage of the American population and that buyer will pity the millions trapped in the new ghettos circled by the private armies like Blackwater.

In that coming world, the world we live in now, will seem like a luxurious paradise because most of will have long ago sold off our PCs and houses if they could – just to eat-because gas will be $15.00 a gallon and a loaf of bread will by $25.00 and thus millions of dead end jobs will be the defining difference between life and death.

That is why the Patriot Act was passed and that's why Blackwater and companies even larger than Blackwater are massing guns and names and recruiting thousands more.

The business elites long ago gave up on America, in any tradition most of us would recognize, but they do believe in the Chile and El Salvador solution–only most Americans never got the memo-or even a handout of what happens to a nation when it leadership is totally bankrupt.

A now forgotten play right of the last century had a way of summing it all up: "….first feed the face, then talk right and wrong…"

Being a merc is an easy job, if you ain't got no scruples, of course, and if you don't have to answer to anybody for your stunt. Then why is it that they hire ex-navy seals and ex-marines to do the shitwork? Just give any thug a chatterbox, put him on a humvee in front of the escort, and he'll hemstitch every living thing on the way. Very simple, no need for crackerjacks.

This subject of mercenaries is incredibly important, and I see little benefit in bringing the subject of religion into it SiouxRose.

Minus the swearing, milesofmusic makes some excellent points. Outsourcing the Pentagon's duties on the basis of cost effectiveness is a very disturbing first step.

Large corporations could use private military resources for all sorts of work - as Dr. Zimmerman has pointed out in regards to early 20th century history.

I doubt whether the majority of highly trained ex-military people from South Africa, Australia, Europe, etc... are American style evangelical christians.

This topic is WAY BEYOND the "religion in american politics debate."

Smirking Chimp is a reference to Mr Bush.

To smirk means make a stupid little half-smile
and of couse you get the chimp part, right...

I can translate the "smirking chimp" phrase.

I believe it is a way some individuals refer to George W Bush.

Almost across the board, Americans participate in a mixture of sarcasm and labeling (a politically correct phrase for "name calling"). It is the American way of belittling a percieved enemy, and in an intellectual sense putting a "boundary" around them, so that intellectually, the enemy can be classified and then discounted.

It is a technique that has been perfected in American culture and it is all invasive.

While english is my native language, I am not an American, and it takes a while for a non-American to figure out what is going on, so if you do not speak english then you have an additional hurdle in understanding this technique.

Luckly, this "method" does not work in the rest of the world like it does in America. Non-Americans usually see it for what it is:
1) a shallow, juvenille attempt at dominance, which is routed in hate, not love.
2) a quick and dirty method for those in too much of a hurry to collect their thoughts and express their opposition or disagreement in a more thought provoking and positive fashion.

English is not my native language. I keep encountering on this site the phrase "smirking chimp" (or is it chimping smirk?), and I cannot find it in the dictionary. Would someone please tell me what that is, possibly a picture? Thank you.

How many of the Blackwater people are Americans and how many have been taken from other countries like companies such as Triple Canopy who use Fijiians, Philipinos and Latin Americans to fill their ranks... That question wasn't even asked.

When this country starts to go sideways, these people are going to have a field day. All the guns and ammo and training and nothing to do but shoot niggers.... Prepare for civil war

who will guard us indeed?

from the article:

Blackwater is merely an extreme example of the rush to privatise. The process was well under way in the Clinton years, before the arrival of a Republican President convinced that the private sector is automatically superior to the public one. Health-care management, student loans and the US prison system have all been "outsourced" in varying degrees, to supposedly more efficient private operators. So why not the Pentagon?

------------------

this paragraph is the most important in the article.

the united states is the only western country that does not have health care. or any other social programs to speak of, and as pointed out in the article, they are being privatised as quickly as possible.

bill clinton did more damage, outside of iraq, to the united states than bush ever will yet people rather like him. he was effective at selling welfare reform and destroying unions for example. bush is useless in these regards because he can't speak english.

americans have been conditioned to think of government services as bad, largely on racists fundamentals like the one that goes (and i'm sure we have all heard it), with regard to wlefare - big fat black women will have twenty kids with twenty different big dicked black men and then you will have to pay for it.

racist and misogynist.

liberal has become a bad word by association with these sick and inhuman analyses and now folks see themselves as right wing - the system that brags about its benefit to the top 1 % of the population.

that 1% doesn't include you.

orwellian - good is bad - bad is good.

fuck, are you guys assholes or what!

It's the hypocrisy we all need to come to grips with. These mercs are doing little more than defense in Iraq. Our Special Ops branches are actively conducting illegal operations in sovereign nations, operations that result in deaths of whomever the Decider says deserves death. And they're not working for free.

Jack London wrote in IRON HEEL: "Another great institution that had taken form and was working smoothly was the Mercenaries. This body of soldiers had been evolved out of the old regular army and was now a million strong, to say nothing of the colonial forces. The Mercenaries constituted a race apart. They dwelt in cities of their own which were practically self-governed, and they were granted many privileges. By them a large portion of the perplexing surplus was consumed. They were losing all touch and sympathy with the rest of the people, and, in fact, were developing their own class morality and consciousness."
Hoa binh

It's always amused me the degree to which racist superiority mocks the young Arab boys persuaded to become suicide bombers as they give up this lifetime's misery for the prospect of being attended by 60 virgins in heaven. Where Eric Prince defines his vibrant mercenary soldier-force as patriotic, these boys, albeit far better paid than their professional military equivalents, march to the beat of a false religious drummer, too. As born again Christian Eric Prince truly believes he's on the vanguard of promoting a holy war that he believes is prophesied in the Bible, he's ultimately got on board many of like-minded types.

Religion, the abstinence of urges on this plane kept as contents under pressure to guide some purported ebullient burst of sensual joy in the next one (in part defined as Divine approval, eternal membership at heaven's IN group) is the common, albeit dangerously deluded central motive used by both teams/sides in this quest for Armageddon.

Does anyone know how these mercenaries become authorized?..The executive branch...Congress? And from where comes the appropriation of taxpayers money to fund these viscious bastards? These guys are paid killers, plain and simple. How do TPTB justify these thugs, morally and ethically to the American citizens? But, then again, we have a president who will not fun insurance for children. I guess paying these murderers $400-$500/day and more and from a former Blackwater employee, $2000 per dead Iraqi, is much more important than the health of our poor children. The "Smirking Chimp" sure has his priorities straight. Come 2008, vote for a third party, no matter who is running. Show them OUR priorities!!

Excellent info on the "Pinkerton Agents" RZ.

I don't think the citizens of America have much to worry about regarding companies like Blackwater. They will keep a low profile in America.
Its the rest of the world, especially the third world, that will be fertile ground for new mercenary contracts.

Where there is any resource a corporation wants to exploit, and where local enthusiasm needs to be "encourged", and perhaps government officials need to be "persuaded".

"I could hire one-half of the working class to kill the other half." -- Jay Gould, Wall Street financier, 1886

The Pinkerton National Detective Agency was a private U.S. security guard and detective agency established by Allan Pinkerton in 1850.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinkerton_National_Detective_Agency

During the labor unrest of the late 19th century, businessmen hired Pinkerton agents to infiltrate unions, and guards to keep strikers and suspected unionists out of factories. The most notorious example was the Homestead Strike of 1892, when Pinkerton agents killed several people in a battle with strikers, who also killed several agents, while enforcing the strikebreaking measures of Henry Clay Frick, acting on behalf of Andrew Carnegie, who was abroad. The agency's logo, an eye embellished with the words "We Never Sleep" inspired the term "private eye."[citation needed] The "Pinkertons" were also used as guards in coal, iron and lumber disputes in Illinois, Michigan, New York and Pennsylvania, as well as the railroad strikes of 1877.

"Everything old is new again"

Under another false flag national emergency, they would come in handy for rounding up potential troublemakers, i.e. progressives and the like.