Mercenaries Third Largest Force in Iraq

Here's a typical attempt by the media to portray the human side of one of these mercenaries:

Fitness Guru Among 4 Killed in Iraq

Yeah, he was just there to help the Iraqi people get in shape. Yeah, sure, in shape! Yeah, that's it, that's the ticket!

Maybe they'll send Richard Simmons over to get them all sweating to the oldies?

Here's what the story says they were doing in Iraq:

Blackwater Security, based in Moyock, N.C., provides security training and guard services to customers around the world. President Gary Jackson and two other company leaders are former Navy SEAL commandos.
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Here what Shemp reads between the lines: These guys were there to train a new generation of thugs in how to keep control over the population and protect the next dictator of Iraq. "Security training and guard services" my a$$! This guy didn't go there for $1,000 or more a day to train guys how to be rent-a-cops and ride around in little cars with flashing lights, carry a baton and make their nightly rounds punching time clocks. He was there to train Iraqi version of Tontons Macoutes.

I'm sad for his wife and kids, but for him, feh! This wasn't some kid who enlisted in the military because he had no job opportunities and a piss-poor U.S. public school education, with visions of traveling the world and shooting up the enemy like war is just some f*cking video game. He knew the risks. He took them. He lost.
 
evildave said:


My kind? What kind would that be?

The kind who served his country, spending his summers flying around in the Middle East watching Iranians and Iraqis killing each other back when Saddam Hussein was still our 'best buddy', then going up north for my winders to watch the Soviets probe our RADAR coverage with bombers.

Our only interest in the entire region is petroleum. It's not "freedom", or "democracy" or "justice" or any other such propagandist's tripe. It's oil.

When the oil is all gone, America won't care what people do to each other "over there", any more than we care what people do to each other in the parts of Africa that don't have natural resources that we want.

I am led to wonder what "kind" of person would actually buy into the propaganda that we're over there "to help"? Naiive? Blind? Retarded?

It's the military's job to break things and kill people. Not to play "nation builder". Not to play "liberator" for "opressed" people. Not to stand in and fight other people's civil wars for them.

We're running up a bill our grandchildren will still be paying off for absolutely nothing. The day after our troops leave, the whole thing will come unravelled.

We had carte blanche after 9/11 to do just about anything reasonable to stamp out the terrorist threat. Instead, we slapped a "Terrorist" sign on Iraq, attacked them, and pretty much destroyed any credibility we have in the 'War on Terrorism' with everyone on the planet.

Sorry, everyone but a certain "kind" of person.
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Yes your kind. The "it is only about the oil" kind. Iran and Iraq had our interest not because of oil, and you should know that. Iraq and Kuwait you say was about oil for us, but what happened to that oil? Now I did ask you a question and all I got in return was a question. I've now answered yours and have yet to get an answer from you. Why? Is that something else your kind has an issue with?
 
A_U_P and subgenius. I know the claim of semantics works for you when someone points out the spin in the story and the postings of you two. But there is a fair difference between a mercenary and private security. The people you two are trying to convince other squishy brained people that are mercenaries are not conducting any military operations and are only used in a defensive method for private corporations and people. It is a shame that you try to claim others are blind or blindly following some political affiliation for disagreeing with you.

But to be fair, I did make the claim of you being squishy brained, so I'm sure a bunch of left-wingers will argue with me and defend the stupidity in your posts, even though they can just look up the meanings of the words themselves and then compare those definitions to the usage of the people in question and see that you are in fact both wrong and just trying to put a spin on things to suit your own political agendas.

Wow, now I can see why you guys post like you do. This required very little thought or knowledge. But now I feel dirty
 
Somewhere out there, big brother is chuckling over this ad from the Blackwater web page.

bigbugeyes.gif


Those guys in the black suits have been eating too many donuts in the Falluja South Mall.
 
Good thing we have private security supporting freedom and democracy and not just our government's representative there.

Hmmmm, is freedom and democracy a piece of property?

Would any of our learned friends who feel there's no story of interest here care to comment on why Bremer being protected by private security rather than our armed forces?
 
These guys don't sound like mercenaries at all:

MOYOCK, N.C., April 1 — Nestled inconspicuously amid the pinelands and horse farms of northeastern North Carolina lies a small but increasingly important part of the nation's campaign to stabilize Iraq.

Here, at the 6,000-acre training ground of Blackwater U.S.A., scores of former military commandos, police officers and civilians are prepared each month to join the lucrative but often deadly work of providing security for corporations and governments in the toughest corners of the globe.

On Wednesday, four employees of a Blackwater unit — most of them former American military Special Operations personnel — were killed in an ambush in the central Iraqi city of Falluja, their bodies mutilated and dragged through the streets by chanting crowds.

The scene, captured in horrific detail by television and newspaper cameras, shocked the nation and outraged the tightly knit community of current and former Special Operations personnel. But it also shed new light on the rapidly growing and loosely regulated industry of private paramilitary companies like Blackwater that are replacing government troops in conflicts from South America to Africa to the Middle East.

"This is basically a new phenomenon: corporatized private military services doing the front-line work soldiers used to do," said Peter W. Singer, a national security fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington who has written a book on the industry, "Corporate Warriors" (Cornell University Press, 2003).

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/02/national/02SECU.html?th
 
Mind if I put forward a suggestion?

Why don’t you people do a little research on the subject before writing about it. That advice is for conservatives and liberals alike.

A few points:

1.) Security is a military function. Saying that a person is hired to perform security does not make it a function exclusive from other military operations.

2.) A good chunk of mercenary companies operating out of the US are run by former special operations troops. A great many of them have the same loyalties they had before they left the service. They now get paid much more than when they wore a uniform. Many retired early and took on these jobs because the military pay is just not that good. The notion that “They would have shot anyone in that crowd, no questions asked, if their employer ordered them to do it” tells me that somebody here has seen to many movies. There are some people who would do anything for the right amount of money. Most people are not like that.

3.) Guarding a convoys in an area where they are likely to be attacked is a job for a trained military force, not a rent-a-cop with a cheap uniform and no training. Using mercenaries as guards is a grey area in terms of international conventions.

4.) In addition to mercenaries, there are a great many other highly paid contractors are in Iraq. They range from truck drivers to cooks. Most contractors, mercenaries or cooks, are hired to free up soldiers so they can perform the larger organized tasks such as raids and patrols.

5.) The same people who work as guard today maybe training Iraqi or US troops tomorrow. There are a fairly large number of companies doing this sort of thing and they started doing it long before the current conflict.
 
Doubt, your thoughtful reasonableness irritates me no end.

Any comment on private security for Bremer? Just seems weird to me.
 
armageddonman said:
Wouldn't those guys have to be considered "unlawful combatants"? :D
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I would be interested in a serious answer to this question.

What treatment should they be entitled to expect from the enemy?

And please, don't give me a barrage of "they shouldn't expect to be burned and dismembered you crazy peacenik" or whatever.

As a genuine point of discussion, what status do these people hold in a warzone?

Graham
 
subgenius said:
Doubt, your thoughtful reasonableness irritates me no end.

Any comment on private security for Bremer? Just seems weird to me.
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Not quite as weird as using the same sort of people in Afghanistan protecting Hamid Karzai. It tells you how much we can trust the local security in his case.

These guys are highly trained and don’t screw up much. That makes them desirable as bodyguards around high profile people like Bremer. That frees up special operators to do missions. If mercenaries were used for raids, then the question of “unlawful combatants” moves from shades for grey to a black and white problem.

That does bring one question to my mind. Who is providing security for the various division commanders in Iraq? Under normal circumstances, they division band, (yup, musicians!) do that job. I wonder if that has not been stepped up a notch or two.
 
subgenius said:
Doubt, your thoughtful reasonableness irritates me no end.

Any comment on private security for Bremer? Just seems weird to me.
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I agree, what next rent a cops guarding the embassy instead of Marines?
 
A Memorial Fund has been established to support the victim's families of the March 31, 2004 Fallujah attack. All memorial gifts will be documented and appropriately acknowledged with due regard to the wishes of the donor and the nature of the contribution. Our thoughts and prayers are with the families of the victims

Please Mail the contributions to:
Memorial Fund
PO Box 159
Moyock, NC 27958

Please Make checks Payable to:
Memorial Fund
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These three men and one woman were human beings. They did not deserve to be murdered and then have their corpses abused by a mob of grinning barbarians.

The laughing and posturing of so called "liberals" on this thread makes me want to vomit. Most of you claim to be against capital punishment, so how is it that Shemp, AUP, and SG can be seen here joining in the glee of the mob? Is "mercenary" a crime for which capital punishment is in your opinion ok??

These could very easily have been aid workers, and in fact were providing their brand of "brutal mercenary thuggery" to secure food convoys in the area! Maybe some now unprotected aid workers delivering food will be next to be dragged in the streets? How will the liberal saints of JREF feel about that?

You so called "people" should feel ashamed of yourselves. :mad:

-z
 
I have said nothing derogatory about these people individually. No one deserves to die and be treated like they did.
I am raising issues, as have people much smarter than me about the use of mercenaries. It is a valid concern.
 
subgenius said:
I have said nothing derogatory about these people individually. No one deserves to die and be treated like they did.
I am raising issues, as have people much smarter than me about the use of mercenaries. It is a valid concern.
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Oh? Suddenly we're concerned? Sorry SG, better go edit while you can. The jovial song lyrics you posted earlier give lie to your "concern". The mask slipped man... :nope:

-z
 
What would be justice is to capture as many of those "RHs" in the pictures and turn them over to Blackwater employees.
 
The lyrics are not jovial at all. What's up guy?
If you think there's no issue with mercenaries say so and move along.
 
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