"Civilian Contractors" = Mercenaries?

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