Posted on 10/31/2007 11:41:39 AM PDT by Bokababe
Focusing on Blackwater while neglecting MPRI is like investigating Ivan Demjanjuk for years on end, but allowing Adolf Eichmann to live peacefully in Buenos Aires.
Up to 17 Iraqis were killed on September 16 by mercenaries working for the security company Blackwater USA, in what Iraqi and some U.S. officials say was unprovoked murder. Earlier this week two Armenian Christian women were killed by Unity Resources Group hired guns. A devastating report by the House Oversight Committee accused Blackwater of acting like murderous cowboys, but the firm still operates with impunity—unaccountable under either U.S. or Iraqi law. Yet while exposing the misdeeds of “security contractors” is necessary and long overdue, it is curious that the media have neglected the work of a far more sinister mercenary outfit, one that has caused thousand-fold more death and suffering over the years.
Since time immemorial kings and governments have hired militarily skilled men and groups to do their fighting and provide security services. In the two decades since the Iran-Contra scandal, however, a few major “international security firms” and “private military contractors” have come into being to satisfy a particular requirement of the U.S. government: to provide military training, logistics, arms, equipment and advice to foreign clients whenever it is desirable for Washington to be able to plausibly deny direct American involvement.....
(Excerpt) Read more at chroniclesmagazine.org ...
This is a hit piece on a company htat conducts training for U.S. forces.
.....Bob
htat = that
Iraqis called it murder so that makes it murder. BS. They were fired upon and they returned it. None of these guys want to end up like the four guys in Fallujah.
By they way, what ever happened to the five brit secuirty huys who were kiddmapped by people dressed as Iraqi security?
“This is a hit piece on a company that conducts training for U.S. forces.”
It does more than that. It trains foreign militias and armies, as well. For all we know, they could be training both sides — our boys, as well as the enemies who kill them. This is “a business enterprise” that Americans are paying for and we have a right to know who the hell these people are and what they do.
“Iraqis called it murder so that makes it murder. BS.”
I am not debating whether or not Blackwater was guilty or innocent in that incident. Frankly, I am on the side of anyone who kills our enemies.
But it is about time that we start debating whether or not a private company of mercenaries that can be used anywhere and anytime without necessary Congressional approval is in America’s best interests. We are footing the bill for them, don’t you think that we should know who they are and what they do as it affects our foreign policy and our own military?
I have read stories about how the US Military’s best and brightest are recruited by MMPI, Blackwater & others at salaries that are 5 times what the US military pays — so we train them and then mercenary companies hire them away. Shouldn’t this be a concern?
Privatizing our military capabilities worries me and it should worry all of us because it alters the balance of power between the President, Congress, the Military and our citizenry, whether we realize it yet or not. The President and Congress have always had to depend on a willing citizenry to make and fight wars. Privatizing the training and fighting makes it far too easy to start wars that our boys will have to finish and we will have to pay for. And these companies are in the business of making wars, not making peace — so whose side are they really on? Their own! And they profit from war, not peace —that is a huge difference from the aims of our own military.
I’ll listen to people like you when you come up with problems that are more than “theoretical.”
Until then, you’re just engagging in agit-prop!
bump for later
MPRI were wonderful to deal with and are excellent Americans. May God bless them.
Hey, wanna have some fun?
We could deconstruct her post the same way she deconstructs the contractor’s role.
They may pay them more but contractors DO NOT get any benefits whatsoever, they don’t get sick time, insurance, loans, healthcare, housing, vacation pay, tuition, their families receive nothing, etc. (BTW, I believe the military earns every one of those benefits and then some.) You only get paid when you are on the clock. You take on this job at your own risk. And why is wrong for soldiers who have had years of training not be able to apply them in the private sector? Some of the skills they are proficient at don’t necessarily carry over to civilian jobs. Besides that, there are some men who love to live life on the edge. A desk job would never do for them. And as for training foreigners, our own government has been doing it forever. Remember Manuel Noriega? He trained at Fort Benning and Fort Bragg.
Hard as this is to believe, this is not about you personally, Expat. Nor is this about “ganging up” on anyone.
It is about the fact that most Americans were not even aware of our use of mercenaries before this Blackwater incident or how it affects our country.
“As for trained soldiers getting out and going to work for these companies, so what, if you can make two or three times as much money doing contract work why not. People get out of the military everyday and go to work for companies to make more money. I was a contractor (mercenary if you like)and damn proud of it.”
That may be true, retired military have always left, often for the “greener” pastures of private business, but as taxpayers, we weren’t continuing to foot the bill for it either.
Yes, you may make “two or three times as much money doing contract work” but add on your companies profit and the US government through our taxes may be paying as much as ten times what what we would have paid you in the military. Good reason to give our own soldiers a raise — hell, yes! But not to hire contractors and give our own guys crap weapons and shielding to make up for what we are paying the contractors.
“Most of the guys I worked with were retirees or former military guys. All of our guys were American patriots first.”
OK, that may be true at the moment. But what guarantees that down the line? Nothing. And you don’t vote on your missions, Congress doesn’t vote on your missions, we don’t vote on your missions. The president can send you anywhere he wants for as long as we wants without any checks and balances on his power that are in place for our own military. Contractors are wild cards in the political process and in the balance of power that has kept our government in check.
Whether you want to see it or not, military contractors like MMPI and others have made it way too easy for our government to go to war for no good reason. Americans not willing to send enough of their sons to die for a foreign war that some DC bureaucrat dreams up? No problem. They just send MMPI or Blackwater and as long as we are willing to pay the tax bill or endure an enormous government deficit, no problem.
And we wonder why there is a disconnect between DC and us citizens? Because DC no longer needs us for anything other than paying taxes and voting some idiot in every four years (and they don’t even need all of us to vote)! They don’t need us for anything else, especially any input on foreign policy because they have guys like you to die for their foreign policy blunders upfront for a few dollars more, before our guys have to go in! All they need from us to shut up, work and pay taxes so that their cronies can profit from war. Is that really what America should be about? I don’t think so.
Blackwater employees DO NOT GET BENEFITS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Why, because they helped you with that dirty little ethnic cleansing operation for you in Croatia? Yes, we are real proud of them for that. Not!
Bull****.
These aren’t anywhere near the traditional mercenary that you seem to want to convince yourself that that they are.
Blackwater personnel are heavily vetted. The organization operates under contract to the US gov, as per design during the “draw downs” of the “peace dividend” restructuring.
It was decided at that time that there was no reason to continue the practice of long term employment in gov agencies for highly trained personnel that would only be needed during specific periods of conflict.
Most of the persons employed by Blackwater are former US spec ops and heavily secure in their loyalties.
Just because the mouth-breeders and their useful idiot snot-gobblers liable them as mercs and try to slather them with crap accusations, doesn’t make them so.
How many times do you have to get lied to, mislead and maliciously misinformed by the same agitpropers in the msm before you start to catch on to their pattern?
This smells like Serbiam propaganda to me, and any argument that includes the words “as far as we know” isn’t factual, it’s an opinion.
That's why we kicked ass in less than 96 hours.
What “ smacks of Serbian propaganda”? MPRI was hired by the Croat government to train them to do exactly what happened in the Medak pocket. That’s a fact, not propaganda. So where is the question mark?
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