Military hangs `Help Wanted' sign in Afghanistan

[Coventina]

Source: Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — The military buildup in Afghanistan is stoking a surge of private security contractors despite a string of deadly shootings in Iraq in recent years that has called into question the government's ability to manage the guns for hire.

In recent online postings, the military has asked private security companies to protect traveling convoys and guard U.S. bases in troubled southern provinces such as Helmand and Kandahar. And if truckers hired to transport fuel for the military want protection, they can hire their own armed guards, the military says.

The Bush administration expanded the use of such companies with the onset of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan because it can save the military time and money. But the practice lost much of its appeal with Congress after September 2007, when five guards with what was then called Blackwater Worldwide (the company recently changed its name to Xe) opened fire in a crowded Baghdad square and killed 17 Iraqis.

Those killings followed a 2006 incident in which a drunken Blackwater employee fatally shot an Iraqi politician's bodyguard.



Read more: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5ivTscD0Sy3hJdvyYgLFsJ_P-B_XwD9732JS80

[iamthebandfanman]

1. lol, blackwater changed its name?

we gotta make sure to still refer to them as such...

if they think they can run away from their dirty past by changing their name, they are sadly mistaken

[AndyTiedye]

2. Graywater Comes from the Sink. Guess Where Blackwater Comes From

[alfredo]

3. They are not contractors, they are mercenaries.

[Roy]

4. This just sounds bad on many levels...

"In recent online postings, the military has asked private security companies to protect traveling convoys and guard U.S. bases in.....

The greatest military in the world needs guards?

It looked bad to me in Iraq, pictures of military brass walking around with private bodyguards.