In Iraq, Bush's rent-an-army

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/opinion/orl-rent2907jan29,0,1338313.story?coll=orl-opinion-headlines


As President Bush took the podium to deliver his State of the Union address last week, there were five American families receiving news that has become all too common: Their loved ones had been killed in Iraq. But in this case, the slain were neither "civilians," as the news reports proclaimed, nor were they U.S. soldiers. They were highly trained mercenaries deployed to Iraq by a secretive private military company based in North Carolina -- Blackwater USA.


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Now, Blackwater is back in the news, providing a reminder of just how privatized the war has become. Last week, one of the company's helicopters was brought down in one of Baghdad's most violent areas. The men who were killed were providing diplomatic security under Blackwater's $300 million State Department contract, which dates to 2003 and the company's initial no-bid contract to guard administrator L. Paul Bremer III in Iraq. Current U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, who is also protected by Blackwater, said he had gone to the morgue to view the men's bodies, asserting the circumstances of their deaths were unclear because of "the fog of war."

Bush made no mention of the downing of the helicopter during his State of the Union speech. But he did address the very issue that has made the war's privatization a linchpin of his Iraq policy -- the need for more troops. The president called on Congress to authorize an increase of about 92,000 active-duty troops over the next five years. He then slipped in a mention of a major initiative that would represent a significant development in the U.S. disaster response/reconstruction/war machine: a Civilian Reserve Corps.

"Such a corps would function much like our military Reserve. It would ease the burden on the armed forces by allowing us to hire civilians with critical skills to serve on missions abroad when America needs them," Bush declared. This is precisely what the administration has already done, largely behind the backs of the American people and with little congressional input, with its revolution in military affairs. Bush and his political allies are using taxpayer dollars to run an outsourcing laboratory. Iraq is its Frankenstein monster.

Already, private contractors constitute the second-largest "force" in Iraq. At last count, there were about 100,000 contractors in Iraq, of which 48,000 work as private soldiers, according to a Government Accountability Office report. These soldiers have operated with almost no oversight or effective legal constraints and are an undeclared expansion of the scope of the occupation. Many of these contractors make up to $1,000 a day, far more than active-duty soldiers. What's more, these forces are politically expedient, as contractor deaths go uncounted in the official toll.

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From Iraq and Afghanistan to the hurricane-ravaged streets of New Orleans to meetings with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger about responding to disasters in California, Blackwater now envisions itself as the FedEx of defense and homeland-security operations. Such power in the hands of one company, run by a neo-crusader bankroller of the president, embodies the "military-industrial complex" President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned against in 1961.
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just another business scam run on the american people

Blackwater should be outlawed

The army, the government the whole shebang.

wages compaired with what the criminal blackwater people get paid.

The workers themselves are not criminals, they are former army, navy, air force, marines and police officers who took the job to be able to make moer money. Please don't call all of them criminals, it's just not true.

Some of them do actually just provide security to Iraqi Diplomats and such as they move around Iraq.

work for a criminal, you become a criminal too.

it's called aiding and abetting

US Citizens in the army and police force won't harrass and fire on other US citizens. Global Corporate slavery is coming; I really wish more people would talk about it.