doesn't give a fuck about anything except making money for themselves.

because security costs a lot of money.
Time to rein in the guns.

People that make war for pay are mercenaries. I don't care what they try to call themselves.

and yes that's the word.

As a former government contractor I find your post extremely offensive. I can assure that I, my co-workers and the companies who employed us all took national security very, very seriously. Our background investigations were performed by the exact same agencies as performed checks for military personnel and DoD civilians. And it's the government, not the contractor, that determines what level of clearance a position requires. Please educate yourself before speaking on a topic you know nothing about.

checks (for civilian employees and contractors) have been found over and over again to be fabricating the checks.

Government agencies do not perform the checks - private for-profit spin-offs from Booz Allen do all the checks. I am guessing your clearance experience is not recent.

What's going on is madness

We carried OPM creds but were 100% private. It's the same company that's been under investigation for shortcomings and errors.

The Defense Security Service is the DoD agency responsible for performing background checks for DoD, at least as concerns requests from private industry. The bulk of the remaining background investigations are handled by OPM.

here's a little more info from Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_Security_Service

You wouldn't happen to have a link to your info, would you?

They were going to get rid of military cooks for our frequently deploying Brigade and I tried to argue we needed the soldiers as civilians would not be deployable.

They privatized anyway.

In fact it would not surprise me if they do away with military entirely and have corporate armies.

What could go wrong. It's disgusting.

How could "privatizing" food for the Army be disgusting? What does privatizing even mean in this case? Most food served by military dining facilities is already prepared and served by civilain contractors. In the field you're generally eating MREs, which yes, are manufactured by civilian companies. Why the hate for contractors malaise?

and government for sale to corporations is fascism.

I remember hearing during the NSA mess that one of the conditions of the law that allowed privatizing our government services (like food and security clearance checks) could not be done if there was NOT a cost savings for the taxpayers. It is supposed to be reviewed annually.

BUT, the numbers are hidden by the agencies (particularly the military and intelligence agencies) and the budget office and our congress have ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA how much more we are paying because of the privatization.

The Government is not capable of performing some tasks. It hires contractors who can. I'm not seeing the evil there.

and would prefer just working directly for the Government.

As long as so much of our defense relies on publicly traded private firms which require growth to support share prices, the Government WILL ensure increased revenues and profitability.

It is outsourced.

from what you posted.

1. Control and accountability, they're loose cannons and the American People don't have a clue as to what's being done in their name because the government and corporate media don't post numbers when deployed as they do the armed forces.

2. They're a for profit leech against the defense budget, what goes to the for profit mercenaries doesn't go the Marines, Navy, Army and Air Force. Many experienced troops don't reenlist and go the for profit route as a result because the pay is greater, not to mention many non-Americans fight for the likes of Blackwater/XE or whatever their name is now.

The American Peoples' Armed Forces are gradually weakened as a result because of these modern day Hessians.

Thanks for the thread, malaise

Are there not perhaps 800 dead contractors from our two middle east wars? And don't they end up in historical oblivion, because their numbers do not tally in the count of US war Casualties?

Just wondering?

-90% Jimmy

from our two middle east wars.

I imagine they do end up in some form of "historical oblivion" other than to their families and friends.

Having said that, I don't imagine that makes too much difference to them when they're dead.

Regardless of the quality of bg checks.

Profit motive rules out fair play imo. They have skin in the game and can use their abilities for nefarious reasons. And thye cost tax payers too much money. And they let the govt off the hook, like in Iraq.

Just the truth