If there is a chance that you may try for a power grab for dictatorship and you have new prisons all over for unwilling subjects, you will need your own personal army to enforce YOUR decrees without question unlike the US military that may balk. Hitler had his SS.

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The biggest scam of the Iraq War was the idea that the four mercenaries killed, burned and hung like meat from a bridge in Falluja were "Patriots" and 'Heroes." They got exactly what they deserved and the Bush Admins crocodile tears for them was just an excuse to ramp up the war and committing more atrocities against the Iraqis. Not one single American soldiers life was worth defedning Blackwater mercs so-called memory. The only bad part about the whole thing was that not more mercenaries were killed that day. Corporation mercenaries are a disgrace to humanity.

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It's not just that the Bush Administration "keeps Congress and the American people in the dark," the problem is that Congress and many of the American people prefer to be kept in the dark. Everytime I think I have outrage fatigue, I remind myself that this stuff is very real. Just add fear and it comes to life. We can't begin to imagine, I suspect, the damage that Blackwater's agents—freed from the Geneva Conventions and the uniform code of military justice—have done in our name.

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This is corruption based on infinite layers of secrecy. The more secrecy an administration has, the more money its members can steal from the people. The Bushies are corrupt and murderous humans at their very worst. Impeach these criminals before they totally bankrupt the USA.

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The problem with subcontracting warfare is very simple. It is rooted in the attitude of all governmemt subcontractors. Their allegence is questionable. Are they loyal to the people or to the political hacks who cut their checks? Things get much worse when republicans/democrats are allowed to extort money from these same companies in the form of campaign contrubutions.

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1-The US Army has an operation called the (IMA) Installation Management Agency. They are so strapped for cash that they cannot pay their utility bills on some installations.
2-Hiring for civilians who do many important jobs supporting soldiers and their families have largely been frozen. People needed to help spouses and families, take care of the sick and injured, etc., are not available as their positions have been eliminated or unfilled positions frozen.

Despite this money keeps on rolling in to KBR, Blackwater & others. Hardly a peep from mainstream media of Congress.
Amazing.

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These security companies do not have to perform, they just need an inside connection to pull in the big bucks, and they sure seem to have the right connection. (and I do mean right!)

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This article describes a big reason why when anyone tryies to give me the bullshit line, "support our troops," I ask them if they mean the mercenaries too.

The article fails to mention that individual mercenaries working for blackwater are paid much more than USa's grunts, or even our "special" forces.

Can you say, "martial law?"

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What is the difference between “unlawful enemy combatant” and “private security contractor?” These security contractors are used by the pentagon and by private corporations to guard vips, oil wells and other facilities in Iraq and elsewhere, and are paid more in one day than US soldiers receive in weeks of service. In less euphemistic terms, security contractors are nothing more than mercenaries.

They appear to be accountable to neither US nor Iraqi law in Iraq. So, if I understand correctly, being motivated by ideology lands one in perpetual legal limbo, whereas, being motivated by money is lawful?

If, God forbid, a security contractor were to be captured in Iraq, what prevents the captors from giving that captured individual an “unlawful enemy combatant” designation, thus placing that individual in perpetual limbo?

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In my experience, much of "government contracting" under the pretext of supposedly saving money, is incredibly corrupt and ultimately costs the government more. First off, they are often ex-military types who use their influence to secure the contracts, next, they have a monopoly on the services and then jack up the requirements for more money when the contract renews. Worst of all, accountability goes down the tubes. Blackwater is just one example. Obviously with too few troops for everything the military wants, contractors are the ideal solution for DOD bureaucrats.

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Blackwater will be very helpful in implementing the police state after the next terrorist attack and attack on Iran. We were introduced to the idea in New Orleans after Katrina and nobody did anything about it. As I understand, they have a symbiotic relationship with the neocons. They only have to do what the repugnicans want without questioning and funnel lots of $ back into the election campaign chests of the repugnicans to keep the taxpayer money rolling in to their bank accounts. One might call it taxpayer-funded campaign finance; sounds good on the surface doesn't it?!? In turn, Blackwater gets unreal sums of $ for what they do, with no accountability (Top secret, for our safety is at stake here for god's sake--the terrorists want to hurt us!). Blackwater gets rich. The neocons get richer and more powerful. Nobody is held accountable. Everybody is happy. Just like tax cuts for the rich, just another way of borrowing $ to help the rich get richer and stay in power.

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That seems to be the common thread in the Bush Admin - if the law prohibits the government from doing something, they go and hire a private contractor to do the illegal work - for example, paying AT&T to put eavesdropping rooms in all their central server locations. Their other tactic is to try and change the law - something that Ken Lay of Enron pioneered back in Texas regarding polluting cola plants and tax issues. Don't like the law? Hire someone to break it for you - or even better, change the law! These guys are the envy of every major criminal on the planet.

To tell the truth, the line between defense contractors and the military in the US is almost nonexistent. "Lord of War" describes how this works in practice; Dyncorp and Monsanto in Columbia (biological warfare, anyone?) are just another example of the rise of corporate-government partnerships in the US (Mussolini called that fascism - he would know, wouldn't he?).

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Just a couple of factual errors in the article.

The "services" that Blackwater supplies the DOS are not normally supplied by the US Military. They are supplied by the DOS's own secret service style unit called Diplomatic Security Service...DSS. The contract with BW is to supply additional agents for this program. They are required to have experience levels quite higher than the average "Joe" The equivalent would be to pull several battalions of Special Operations personnel from the US Military to supply these services.

Just a point of clarification. Definately not facts that will change your opinion, but if you are going to be against something be against it with sound facts.

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As a soldier currently deployed to Iraq, I can tell you that most US servicemembers do not "hate" Blackwater or other mercenary groups operating in this theater (we are occasionally jealous of the massive salaries and nice equipment they get, but that's a whole different issue).
The reason: most of these contractors are former US military, and are highly trained professionals who are pleasant and easy to work with. Regardless of how one may feel about the larger issues (whether it's appropriate for the US to use mercenary forces, whether they should be paid more and equipped better than soldiers, whether so many of the contracts should be secretive no-bid affairs), it is singularly callous and horrible to imply that they deserve to die and then have their bodies desecrated.

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All fascist regimes need ultimately unaccountable shock troops to maintain themselves. It's more efficient that way.

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Mercenary troops have been a specialty of the Central Intelligence Agency for a very long time. We started that in 1952, and I was a fifteen year old kid drafted to be part of it. The trick of putting someone in the regular Army on the record, and making them what amounted to a merc (they were called "specialists" then) was called "sheep-dipping."

Deciding it needed a program and organization of personnel capable of assassination of foreign leaders, the CIA created what was named and referred to only obliquely. "The specialists," or the "Special Force," for instance.

We realized quickly, though, that were anyone who was a soldier to kill the leader of a foreign state, and get caught at it, it would constitute an act of war. Remember that part of the Nuremburg Trials - Skorzeny and company?

I did missions in Iceland, East Germany, Hungary, and Finland (Russia, actually - I think). Then, sent to Cuba to kill Fidel Castro or Che Guevara, I started thinking. On every mission, I'd been betrayed, left high and dry. Then, too, there was the fact that everything I was told about Castro and Cuba was a bald-faced, propaganda-generated lie. Repudiating orders, I repatriated on my own, and wrote Fidel a letter - with photos - informing him of my mission and of Mongoose, the plan to kill him (as a matter of fact, Castro's sister answered the letter).

All hell broke loose. I've been paying for it all all my life; and it all happened because "Americans" are like the folks who write here. That's biased almost beyond sanity, polarized politically - in fact, they obviously get most of their information from sources tainted by political bias - and all but entirely neutralized and having little real effect on their government as a result. The most political nation ever, our political process has become totally impotent.

People invariably have the governments they deserve, and when the government retaliated against me (it's in my book, "Letters to Aaron, the Hal Luebbert Story") the public couldn't have cared less. When I wrote literally hundreds of letters, to congressmen and senators, to attorney generals, to news media and TV stations, letters that included tape recordings and incontrovertible proof of widespread felony crime in government, I got NO response. Except more violence and IRS attacks. When, again and again, I fought government goons in the street, in full view of dozens of witnesses, I got no help from anyone. NONE!

Run down seven times on my bicycle and as a pedestrian by vehicles that came up on the sidewalk to get me, I could get no one to appear as a witness or make a complaint to police about the fact that no charges were ever filed by cops.

In 1988, when I sued under the Freedom of Information Act to obtain records that would corroborate my story, the government argued that the records were exempted under the national secrets exemption, and the court quashed my suit. The press refused to cover that, too.

In 1986, when Senator Charles Grassley of Iowa responded to my visit to his house by writing the first Omnibus Taxpayers Bill of Rights, a sniper intending to prevent my testimony at hearings on the new bill wounded me three times from ambush. No newspaper, radio, or television news program would cover the story.

In short, I fought for my life - in public - time and time again, unable to get ANY help from all these citizens now so enraged and "involved" about the poor Iraqis, Afghans, Lebanonese, Israelis, and just about anybody foreign.

People have the government they deserve. They're responsible for what that government does, too - and they don't discharge that responsibility with mere talk, however belligerent and condemning, either.

Look up Flast v. Cohen, see it it suggests anything to you.

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Could you please re-check your stated figures. As given the figures raise questions.

As stated in the article:
$229.5-million agreed on for five years
$321.7-million paid after two years (June 30)
$100-million discrepancy (conclusion in text)

Putting a "pencil" to it:
$229.5 / 5 = $45.9-million per year
$45.9 * 2 = $91.8-million after two years
$321.7 - $91.8 = $229.9-million discrepancy

Error flags for me:
The $229.9-million figure:
1 - is much more than $100 (arithmetic error)
2 - is oddly similar to the agreed amount for two years

So: either the discrepancy amount just happens to bear an odd symetry to the original contract amount for five years - OR - some source figures are incorrect here which needs to be checked simply because of (1) the apparent arithmetic error (leading to doubt) and (2) the similarity between the original contract amount and the difference which raises error-checking suspicions.

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