Free Republic

We've fought in Afghanistan for 16 years now. Are we making progress? After 9/11, we invaded, overthrew the Taliban, killed Osama Bin Laden and -- stayed. Afghanistan is now America's longest war, ever. President Trump's solution? He'll send several thousand more soldiers. Erik Prince says he has a better idea -- fight terrorists with only 2,000 American Special Operations personnel, plus "a contractor force" of 6,000. Prince is the founder of Blackwater, the private military contractor. The military uses contractors to provide security, deliver mail, rescue soldiers and more. Private contractors often do jobs well, for much less than the...

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is now getting ready to hire public companies, individual contractors outside government, to scour public data and social media in order to provide information for the new “domestic terror watch lists.” From the description it appears DHS is going to pay “big tech” (Google, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, SnapChat, Twitter, etc.), via contracts, to hire and organize internal monitoring teams to assist the government by sending information on citizens they deem “dangerous.” Gee, what could possibly go wrong with this?… NBC is reporting on these new developments as the U.S. intelligence apparatus is preparing to...

Clinton's secret arms dealing -- and how it led to disaster in Libya. Hillary Clinton led the charge in the Obama administration to go to war in Libya. Her objective was to overthrow the regime of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi. Not one to be deterred by opponents in the Pentagon and Congress to her reckless interventionist plans, Hillary decided to end-run them. Her State Department helped facilitate what Andrew P. Napolitano in his scathing article has called “Hillary’s secret war.” When the secret war began to backfire, as arms ended up in the hands of anti-American jihadists, Hillary Clinton and other...

The Benghazi affair is beginning to shape up as a bi-partisan scandal — making Trey Gowdy’s life doubly difficult, of course. But the former prosecutor has been doing a bang-up job with his select committee, demolishing the mantra that there is “nothing new” to be learned about Benghazi and building a sober, far-reaching inquiry. Without Gowdy, recall, there would be no Clinton secret server, no Sidney Blumenthal trail, no new emails, and no upcoming testimony from Mrs. Clinton and her inner circle . On the latter, Gowdy is holding firm, saying he will not schedule testimony until all relevant emails...

You are driving down I-57, I-55, I-90/94, I-294 or any other major highway in Illinois. Suddenly, you see a sign that reads "road construction ahead for next 15 miles". The speed limit drops from 65 to 55 miles per hour and traffic begins to back up. Let's say you are traveling north on I-55 and you are unexpectedly riding on a road which is graded and unpaved. The other lane is in its usual condition, in need of repair or not, but there is no construction crew in sight. In fact, there are no road crews for the entire stretch...

'America's private army' under fire for Illinois facility Anti-war activists, locals are wary about military contractor's new training site By E.A. Torriero Tribune staff reporter 6:11 AM CDT, July 23, 2007 MT. CARROLL, Ill. Strangers rarely venture onto the twisting gravel roads in this corner of the state, and those who do sometimes get lost amid the rolling hills. So it came as a surprise to many locals when the expert marksmen of Blackwater USA -- a controversial military contractor that provides armed security guards in the Iraq war -- took over an 80-acre rifle range and opened up a...

The Left is in a tizzy over the use of private security companies in New Orleans following the destruction of Hurrican Katrina. And it has less to do with the fact they have been used on US soil than the fact that they exist at all. I have absolutely no problems using such companies overseas (I wish we could just hand over the entire country of Iraq to such a company), but as a free ‘non-serf’ citizen I am always on guard against strong arm tactics by government on any level that may endanger the rights of the citizenry. But...

In Iraq, private contractors do just about everything a soldier would do. They sling Spam in mess tents. They tote guns along base perimeters. They shoot. They get shot. Sometimes they get killed. And it's not just in Iraq, but around the world — in conflict zones from Liberia to Kosovo to Afghanistan — that the United States is putting hired help behind the front lines to ease the burden of its overworked armed forces. By paying civilians to handle military tasks, the Bush administration is freeing up U.S. troops to fight. But the use of contractors also hides the...