"Civilian Contractors" = Mercenaries?

It's possible that contractors can be used to get away with things that regular military personnel cannot, as well. I think there is some doubt as to whether anyone has legal jurisdiction over the contractors involved in the prisoner abuse scandal (especially without any even "partial" Iraqi sovereignty).

http://travel.state.gov/iraq_securitycompanies.html

From the top of that page, "The U.S. government assumes no responsibility for the professional ability or integrity of the persons or firms whose names appear on the list." A few of these websites (ex Meyer & Associates) creep the hell out of me, what with their flash-based assassination animations and all.

Headquarters:
Post Office Box 52067
Atlanta, GA 30355
USA

Contact in Iraq:
John H. Walbridge, Jr. or Mauritz Le Roux
Tel: [964] 7901915494 or [88] 216 5201 4591/4592

"Description of Services:
We provide in-country "hands on" management of highly trained and experienced South African security personnel by former American intelligence officers with paramilitary backgrounds..."

They're based in Atlanta but employ former Apartheid South African soldiers... can you imagine what kind of jokes they tell around the old campfire?

The thing is, most of them differentiate specifically protection of assets & protection of VIPs.

I wonder what the ratio is of US/UK/other coalition nation forces to corporate mercs?

VIPs = important assets. Non-VIPs = Asshats.

I certainly empathize with any 25 year old reservist kid from Omaha who never imagined that joining the army for college money would have landed him in Iraq. I do feel differently about individuals and companies who are motivated primarily by profit (and whatever else)... It sucks for their families, but they made a gamble and willingly went into a hornet's nest of anti-American violence. I'm not sure I feel a whole lot of compassion, to be honest.

And Jessica Lynch says she was treated quite well by her captors...

BAGHDAD - The Iraqi government announced Monday it was ordering Blackwater USA, the security firm that protects U.S. diplomats, to leave the country after what it said was the fatal shooting of eight Iraqi civilians following a car bomb attack against a State Department convoy.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20819065/

I don't know how many private contractors Blackwater has employed in Iraq but if given one guess I'd say 'many' so one wonders where this will go

interesting. one of my classes this summer had a whole section about blackwater (and private contracting in the public sphere).

It's funny how Blackwater sounds like such an evil company name and they actually are evil

Evilcorp

There are like 120K contractors in Iraq! not that most are private armies of mercenaries, but blackwater is something else.. am i wrong but the worst of what they've been up to is nowhere near iraq, yes? off protecting the interests of big oil in africa. this should not be allowed to happen.

Erik Prince is probably the devil.

front page NYT headline today

here are the two old jeremy scahill articles

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060508/scahill - about the Falluja incident
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060605/scahill - about their ambitions towards more domestic operations, in the wake of Katrina

search this article for 'extraordinary rendition':
http://verbal.democracynow.org/2007/3/21/part_ii_blackwater_the_rise_of

blackwater was/is part of the Big Lie of "withdrawal" so yeah this is an intriguing turnaround.

More BW stuff: Investment advice from Blackwater mercenary.

Monetize the Iraq war's displaced.

The ban is basically meaningless, though, correct? Contractors are immune from any kind of criminal consequences, and the Iraqi government has no apparent authority to send any of them away.

It's funny how Blackwater sounds like such an evil company name and they actually are evil

I know rite!

Yeah and they're totally stealing all the contracts from my company: Twinkle Puppies Security, Inc. I don't know wtf is up with that.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VF2NvPMSrTg

http://msnbcmedia1.msn.com/i/msnbc/Components/Art/WORLD_NEWS/070920/AP_contractors_070920.gif

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20884905/

I just went on a tear about these worthless scraps of syphilitic ape filth on an e-mail alias that I share with a friend who now lives about 10 miles from the Blackwater corporate HQ. He says they roll in packs of black suburbans and harleys with psychopathic gun nut bumper stickers and if you see them parked outside a bar you stay the fuck away. I couldn't help it so I had my usual flip-out after he brought them up:

I honestly hope all of them get killed. The fact that walter reed is full of kids making poverty money while they roll out on cushy diplomat security bullshit putting away a thousand dollars a day tax free funnelled through five layers of corrupt KBR bullshit front companies is kind of the most sickening thing about the entire war to me, at least in terms of what makes me the most depressed on a regular basis.

...

they have no geneva convention to even pretend to adhere to, they make eight to ten times as much as the uniformed soldiers, they procure all their own equipment so they don't have to worry about pentagon logistics bullshit, since they can just pay a little extra to make sure they get theirs first, etc etc it's an insult to everybody on active duty over there for their sixth tour in 4 1/2 years that the US government doesn't even want to let regular marines do their goddamn job because dick cheney's buddies can skim more money if they pay through the nose for a bunch of greedy shitwipes to do it instead. At least it feels that way to me.

a coworker feels that if I want to be angry at somebody about this I should be angry at the government for hiring them, but how the fuck am I not supposed to be appalled at such an abhorrent level of shameless greed and disrespect?

these guys are the walking talking real live edition of those faceless thugs in action movies that you're not supposed to feel any sympathy for as they get mowed down by the hundreds in the hero's climactic victory. these guys are the fucking orcs, these guys make you root for the fucking extremists.

Is it fair to lay blame on an individual contractor just trying to make a quick buck?

(Not that I have any reason to disbelieve what you said...)

I mean, I'm sure some are just ex military dudes trying to pay off that mortgage and shit

I have an aquaintance over in Iraq who was hired as a chef. His contract was for a year, and at the end of the year they offered him a new job which is basically part of a goon squad. He was home last Christmas and was bragging that he gets to "play with guns a lot" and his tax exempt earnings ($150K) were being banked given that he only had to blow money on "booze and cheap whores." I'm sure if I would have listened to him longer, he would have said he loved the smell of napalm in the morning or some shit. He said it was like the wild west over there and I pretty much believe him.

The thing with positions / situations like this is that they can quickly transform the blameless regular "the pay's good" dude into someone who deserves a lot more skepticism.

Tom has been OTM a lot lately, so I'd like to offer him this seal of approval:

http://i37.photobucket.com/albums/e66/LimitedLiabilityGirl/OTMSensor.jpg

Is it fair to lay blame on an individual contractor just trying to make a quick buck?

If you go over there to be a cook or a truck driver or whatever then hey you know a job's a job.

These guys are, uh, signing up to be on a sanctioned death squad. Fuck them.

they make eight to ten times as much as the uniformed soldiers

This is a trend throughout the government security apparatus. The intelligence services, in particular the CIA, now employ a large number of outside contractors. They're called "green badges." And they earn more money as contractors than if they were direct CIA employees.

The idea is to work for the CIA for a couple years and immediately transition to a contractor. Then come back to the CIA to do the same job, or a similar one, you did before.

It's a serious problem, not only for morale, but in terms of conflict-of-interest and the nasty fact that the US taxpayer is paying much more for a less accountable intelligence agency employee.

If you have extended cable, Blackwater USA is on the Military Channel fairly regularly. There's a show called Futureweapons which is essentially a showcase for arms manufacturers.

Blackwater USA is in the arms development business. They have their own air force and are developing an armored car called the Grizzly, one they obviously want to shop. So they've been on Futureweapons, shilling their automatic shotguns, armored vehicle, storm and assault capabilities, etc.

Most of the episode, which has been running this week, shows Blackwater employees and the host bragging about the amount of firepower they can put downrange and how it would strike fear into the heart of the enemy. Since the slot was prescheduled, the fact that it's running this week would seem purely a weird and grotesque coincidence.

In view of current events its tone is ragingly psychotic. However, since the Military Channel is on far cable, probably not many Americans see it.

Then again, I've seen plenty of video on YouTube, placed by arms vendors and fans of these types of shows, all qualifying as ragingly psychotic.

And I don't think anybody who's going over there for some good old tax free $$$$$$$ deserves an ounce of sympathy when they get brutally murdered because that money comes with an implicit waiver of me-giving-a-shit-about-you cf. explanation of death star construction workers from Clerks.

I'll cry for a coal miner or an alaskan crab fisherman or a Daniel Pearl, and I'll cry over 4000+ american troops, but war profiteers can all eat shit and die. There are a lot of ways for a fucking veteran to pay the mortgage without being a completely unscrupulous piss bucket.

Futureweapons is the worst thing that I've ever seen on television. They were running ads for it on the DC metro for a while. I'm proud to say that since becoming a "green badge" I've managed to steer clear of DoD and intel-related positions thus far. Based on what I hear from my less fortunate colleagues I think I'm better off for that than I can imagine.

applying the concept of outsourcing to the american military -- i.e. corporations doing 'military' work completely outside of any military jurisidiction or accountibility -- goes a lot deeper than 'they're just people getting a paycheck what's the problem'

from the msnbc article:

The State Department allowed Blackwater’s heavily armed teams to operate without an Interior Ministry license, even after the requirement became standard language in Defense Department security contracts. The company was not subject to the military’s restrictions on the use of offensive weapons, its procedures for reporting shooting incidents or a central tracking system that allows commanders to monitor the movements of security companies on the battlefield.

“The Iraqis despised them, because they were untouchable,” said Matthew Degn, who recently returned from Baghdad after serving as senior American adviser to the Interior Ministry. “They were above the law.” Degn said Blackwater’s armed Little Bird helicopters often buzzed the Interior Ministry’s roof, “almost like they were saying, ‘Look, we can fly anywhere we want.’ “

...

“They are part of the reason for all the hatred that is directed at Americans, because people don’t know them as Blackwater, they know them only as Americans,” said an Interior Ministry official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he feared for his safety. The official, interviewed before Sunday’s incident, said, “They are planting hatred, because of these irresponsible acts.”

http://www.yuricareport.com/Corporations/BlackwaterWorldsMostPowerfulArmy.html

BuzzFlash: Robert Greenwald, in his film about profiteering in Iraq, also addressed the issue of mercenaries. You and he both have pointed out that some of these men are paid up to $1,000 a day, and that many of the G.I.s resent them. They're doing a similar job, but without any of the legal constraints the G.I.s have, and they're making large amounts of money. To what extent is this neocon vision of a privatized military one that also involves profiteering and rewards to their supporters?

Jeremy Scahill: Well, Blackwater really captures everything that you just said there. We're talking about a company that was founded by a man named Erik Prince, who comes from a family that was one of the top bank rollers of, not only the "Republican revolution" of the 1990s that brought Newt Gingrich and the Contract with America to power, but also the rise of what we now know as the religious right or the Christian conservative movement. Erik Prince's family helped James Dobson found Focus on the Family. Erik Prince's family gave the seed money for Gary Bauer to found the Family Research Council. Erik Prince himself is a major bank roller of President Bush, his allies, and the Christian conservative movement in this country.

Someone who is deeply linked to the Christian right, and to the current Administration, has turned around and started what has become the world's most powerful private mercenary army. These guys are like neo-Crusaders. To have them on the government payroll to the tune of $750 million, operating in a Muslim country, should be frightening to everyone who understands that.

The fact of the matter is that this Administration has hired what is effectively a Christian army to operate in Muslim countries. This is very frightening to anyone who cares about civil liberties and the future of democracy and democratic processes. The fact is that these contractors provide the Bush Administration with an extraordinary level of political expediency. Their deaths don't get counted. Their crimes don't get reported or prosecuted. They're effectively a shadow army operating at the behest of an Administration waging a rogue war.

tombot OTM like white on rice

Futureweapons would be less disturbing if it were vaguely entertaining in a Beavis & Butthead 'hehehe blow shit up!' way. It's not.

No it really is basically a bald guy jerking off on a box of hollow points for an hour.

HOTTTT

It's much worse than the bald guy jerking off over Dum Dums. A lot of it is simply devoted to corporate videos designed to show off cluster bombs or automated mines.

Futureweapons loves Blackwater.

http://pics.obra.se/humanity.jpg

tom OTM for the most part. Again this shouldn't happen - shouldn't it be illegal?

One of the things that has happened as a result of these mercenary forces is that there's been a real drain to the special operations community. Special operations commanders have spoken quite openly about this, saying that they're in a real crisis right now for numbers. U.S. taxpayers are spending tens of millions of dollars, in some cases, to train U.S. Navy SEALs, or Delta Force, or Army Rangers, or Green Berets. The taxpayers shoulder the financial burden of training these elite forces, and then Blackwater and other companies come around and hire them away. Then they repackage them to the federal government and say it's much cheaper to pay our guys because you don't have any of the overhead of deploying them. We'll absorb the cost of that. But they never take into account that they're essentially taking money out of the public sphere that was spent on these soldiers in the active duty military. They're taking all of that training that U.S. taxpayers have paid for, taking it away from the military, and repackaging it as a privatized entity.

http://www.danablankenhorn.com/images/2007/05/03/erikprince.jpg
"I'm just an auto-parts fortune heir trying to pay the mortgage and feed my kids!"

Then they repackage them to the federal government and say it's much cheaper to pay our guys because you don't have any of the overhead of deploying them

An obvious lie, one only an idiot would believe. An obvious item is that one way for Iraqis to hasten the departure of American forces is to suspend the majority of private armies. This puts a lot of US-led activity in an immediate bind, as it has done with US embassy work. Naturally, this is unpalatable to the Bush administration so it is almost impossible to imagine that any major changes would be made. For the Iraqi government to make anything stick, it would have to declare Blackwater USA the equivalent of a criminal gang or terror organization and try to get its military or police force into action against it.

That would be interesting but it would never happen. Blackwater's business model depends upon it being able to go into failed states where formal militaries or police forces can't or won't act against it.

eagerly anticipating his RIP thread

x-post

Oh as far as the government eating the cost of training, that's every outsourced job, not just killing people. That's everything. That's why I don't buy it that the DC area can sustain any of this recent economic growth - the biggest arguments for outsourcing everything the entire federal government does, from defense to domestic police work and emergency services, are all based on the same scam, fingers crossed that nobody listens to the GAO when they inevitably release a report summing up how much redundancy and sheer out-and-out waste has come from it all.

Yes, it should be illegal. But it never will be as long as congress writes the laws.

they should privatize the secret service next, is what I think

"why make a guy take an oath, and risk having to give him a pension, when I can just pay this other guy a bunch more money upfront and he'll do the job just as well if not beh"

"oh, shit"

and yeah while it can be argued with many examples that civil servants have a minimum of accountability at best, I can state for a fact that with the rare exception of truly amazing matos-stepdad-minus-one-hundred level imbeciles who get fired for plainly violating multiple laws (e.g. storing child porn on a govt. computer), there's absolutely no accountability whatsoever in the contracting business either. None.

We should just use a headhunting firm to fill the oval office and congress.

whenever erik prince dies it'll be far, far too late

If we did, Hurting, that would be the one instance where we could not possibly do any worse than the current system

Not that I would expect to see a subpoena ever get issued, but having Prince testify to Congress would be amusing (in that all he'd do is take the Fifth).

whenever erik prince dies it'll be far, far too late

o ye of little faith

payback's a bitch, karma strikes at unexpected moments, etc. (see also: Lee Atwater brain aneurysm)

I mean really what's the worst case scenario, we hire a brain-damaged former alcoholic with a falsified resume and a charmless paranoid warmonger to fill the executive branch and accidentally fill every other position with a bunch of sycophantic, power-queer rubber-stamping morons who only show up to work about half the time?

in fact yeah that's kind of a hilarious realization that randomly picking the next thousand resumes to get posted on monster.com would probably generate a better government than what we've achieved through democracy

so much for this social experiment I guess

It's entertaining to think of Blackwater USA's ambition to have brigade-size deployable heavily armed security forces as a uniquely capitalistic spin on the development of an American Waffen SS. Give 'em a couple more years and they'll be able to field an entire panzer corps.

so much for this social experiment I guess

roll out the bones for good king richard
raise up your glass for good king john

I think what you mean Gorge is "give 'em a couple more years and they'll be able to mount a coup on any democrat who thinks they deserve to be commander in chief"

just noticed this from the Scahill interview:

The vast majority of Blackwater's contracts in Iraq are not with the Pentagon. They're actually with the U.S. State Department.

note the note again:

http://msnbcmedia1.msn.com/i/msnbc/Components/Art/WORLD_NEWS/070920/AP_contractors_070920.gif

Immunity deal hampers Blackwater inquiry

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071029/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/blackwater_prosecutions;_ylt=Ah36k3CV5jd5rbW6RloPWEis0NUE

WASHINGTON - The State Department promised Blackwater USA bodyguards immunity from prosecution in its investigation of last month's deadly shooting of 17 Iraqi civilians, The Associated Press has learned.

The immunity deal has delayed a criminal inquiry into the Sept. 16 killings and could undermine any effort to prosecute security contractors for their role in the incident that has infuriated the Iraqi government.

"Once you give immunity, you can't take it away," said a senior law enforcement official familiar with the investigation.

big huge fucking surprise

wtf kind of immunity is it, anyway? diplomatic? give me a fucking break

stupid whores

Hopefully, this doesn't mean immunity from "Iraqi" prosecutions.

oh whatever. they're all getting away scot free just like the telecoms who sold our conversations to the intel community. fuck it. fuck the whole decade.

"Getting away with it" == a given. "Public relations fiasco" == hopefully.

See, eventually the Bush regime will collapse under the weight of scandal, amirite?

Even if not, I can still enjoy a little schadenfreude at seeing Bushco squirm.

"squirm" is pretty far away from "die in a fire" which is what all these people deserve tbh

I think water torture and thumbscrews on the rack would be a lot fairer, L-T.

I only woke up the thread because I was somewhat nervous about this getting buried, but it's looking fairly loud already

Garrity protections generally are given to police or other public law enforcement officers, and were extended to the Blackwater guards because they were working on behalf of the U.S. government, one official said. Experts said it’s rare for them to be given to all or even most witnesses — particularly before a suspect is identified.

“You have to be careful,” said Michael Horowitz, a former federal prosecutor in Manhattan and senior Justice Department official. “You have to understand early on who your serious subjects are in the investigation, and avoid giving these people the protections.”

It’s not clear why the Diplomatic Security investigators agreed to give immunity to the bodyguards, or who authorized doing so.

Bureau of Diplomatic Security chief Richard Griffin last week announced his resignation, effective Thursday. Senior State Department officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, have said his departure was directly related to his oversight of Blackwater contractors.

wow, glad they didn't run Nuremburg

The State Department has just renewed its contract to provide security for U.S. diplomats in Iraq for at least another year. Threats by the Iraqi government to strip Western contractors of their immunity from Iraqi law have gone nowhere. No charges have yet been brought in the United States against any Blackwater guards in the September shooting, either, and the FBI agents in Baghdad charged with investigating whether Blackwater guards committed any crimes under United States law are sometimes protected as they travel through Baghdad by Blackwater guards.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/05/10/africa/blackwater.php

http://www.newsobserver.com/front/story/1112843.html

Erik Prince, who owns Blackwater and Presidential Airways, briefly discussed the lawsuit in a meeting today with editors and reporters at The News & Observer. Prince was asked to justify having a case involving an American company working for the U.S. government decided by Afghan law.

“Where did the crash occur?” Prince said. “Afghanistan.”

Milgram experiment

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/aramroston/daniel-corbett-navy-seal-jail-serbia-mercenary-yemen

"In 2012, police in Madrid said Bojovic and his men killed a fellow criminal and then ate his flesh and threw his bones in a river"

let those among us who have not gotten a wee bit carried away during a city break cast the first stone

sometimes one can be a bit too chewsy with ones friends.

lads!

it was just desserts