Modern Mercenaries on the Iraqi Frontier

[seemslikeadream]

In Iraq, hired guns guarding the American administrator, L. Paul Bremer III, second from right, and an Iraqi official.

By JAMES GLANZ

Published: April 4, 2004

IN his own way, Stevie is a modern soldier-of-fortune, paid by a private security firm to lead a 44-man unit that is protecting American officials in charge of rebuilding the infrastructure of Iraq. He left his native Glasgow, Scotland, to join the British army at 16, served for 24 years in conflicts around the globe, about half that time as a member of the special forces. In the shadowy tradition of his trade, he asked that only his first name be used and declined to say much about the wars he has fought.

"That is one topic I'd rather not talk about," he said in his rich brogue, speaking by phone from the Baghdad villa run by Kroll Inc., the company that employs him.

But as Stevie begins describing himself and the men in his unit, the footloose, swashbuckling stereotype of his profession evaporates. He reckons that 75 percent to 80 percent of his unit is married. He has been married for 19 years, with three children back home. Mostly in their 30's and 40's, his men typically have not just one or two decades of military experience, but clean driving records and stable lives back home - wherever home might be.

Such is the corporate but still consummately dangerous world of "security" or "risk management" firms that have struck gold in the lawless frontiers of Iraq. They are hired by private and government contractors, by the media, and by the Coalition Provisional Authority itself to provide protection from the bullets and bombs that still make up so much of daily life there. It was one of the largest of these firms, Blackwater U.S.A., that lost four employees in a horrific ambush in the central city of Fallujah last week.

more
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/04/weekinreview/04glan.html

[saigon68]

1. I wonder whose code they are responsible to?

The face of KorPorate AmeriKa in the year 2050

[jimshoes]

3. I've been wondering about that myself...

Do these guys swear a loyalty oath to their employer or who ever hires them. Do you suppose these rent-a-thugs could ever be contracted to do some "work" here in the USA against little old "We The People". Or is that a little too tin foil. Nevertheless, they remind me of another "Elite" private army that had its heyday back in 1940's Germany.

[homelandpunk]

14. Just a couple head shots is all that is needed.

The dumb neanderthal monkeys think their heads are impervious to bullets.
Or, Bremer told them not to wear helmets cause that would would be "bad form" for his personal posse. Designer sunglasses are more important... stylin' and profilin' with the Bre-e-e-e-e-e-mmm!

[seemslikeadream]

17. Surrogate Military Force

The use of private military forces raises tricky questions for the U.S. government. The most important one is why is the Bush administration is recruiting civilians to work there when our government can't possibly guarantee the security of the area. Another question: Why aren't these jobs in combat zones being carried out by American military forces, instead of mercenaries?

Building up a surrogate military force, along the lines of the French Foreign Legion or the Gurkhas, has been the ambition of conservatives for many years. The thinking is that future wars will be characterized by "low-intensity," or guerrilla, warfare. If the fighting is done by a force of irregular surrogates, people won't question their casualties as they would those of regular military personnel. The contras in Nicaragua were an example of what a surrogate fighting force might look like, and special ops types from South Africa’s former apartheid regime have long been involved in fighting in southern Africa.

http://www.theexperiment.org/articles.php?news_id=2020

[SquireJons]

22. "They expect an opportunity"

An opportunity to do what, exactly?

I agree with seemslikeadream. Why are there 140,000 military personnel there if security is handed over to private companies? Are these companies held accountable for their actions? At least the Army has to respond to reports of civilian deaths and report their own casualties. This smells really bad to me, but I'm not surprised.

I feel a little bit guilty saying this, but I don't feel the least bit sorry for the 4 American mercenaries whose bodies were abused. From the perspective of many Iraqi's, they deserved it. And these weren't kids, sent there by an immoral president. These guys wanted to be there for the money and danger.

[Malva Zebrina]

25. right--it's those sunglasses that make them obvious as private warriors

I mean like Bremer and the other Iraqi guy--well they don't have designer sunglasses do they? Of course not--no one would recognize them in their photo ops.

[Joanne98]

2. Somebody needs to start a mercenary research thread

So it can be archived for future use. I wonder how many of these companies there are. NOBODY working for the US gov should be allowed to use private security firms. They're forming a fifth column here. A global fifth column. It needs to be outlawed NOW. Of course the Dems won't do it. They're voting to give it money. Stupid assholes. Noticed how the killers are "clean cut". Traditional family values types. THEY'RE FUCKING FUNDIES. How much you want to bet.

[seemslikeadream]

4. There's alot of information here

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=125&topic_id=9558&mesg_id=9558

[leftchick]

5. this is pssing me off big time!

I am guessing our Dems in congress did not know the US would be hiring mercenaries, they thought they would be "security contractors"!
Now the cat is out of the bag and our tax dollars are paying for these thugs while short changing our troops. It is time for phone calls to them and scream that they need to call out the WH on this issue! :grr:

[theHandpuppet]

6. Here's one...

Just paste together this URL for a thread on the GD forum that has a lot of links to the topic.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/
discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=1324008

[JohnyCanuck]

8. Here's a clickable link to the DU URL, Handpuppet

Blackwater Pinochet Apple Pie

[theHandpuppet]

18. Thanks!

I'm truly pretty darn hopeless when it comes to computer stuff. :)

[bobthedrummer]

27. Here are a couple of links that are very helpful to researchers

interested in mercenaries.

Windfalls of War
http://www.publicintegrity.org/wow/

Military Privatization 101-Making a Killing: The Business of War
http://www.theexperiment.org/articles.php?news_id=1884

[Amerpie]

7. Racially Imbalanced

Since most of these guys from the Special Operations "community", I'll guarantee you that minorities are dramatically underrepresented in the overpaid and overused "security consultant" field.

The military as a whole is disproportionately made up of minorities as compared to the general population, especially in combat arms. Special Forces are exactly the opposite and, in fact, have a reputation for being "unfriendly" to African-American service members.

[SquireJons]

23. Minorities...

... should consider themselves lucky, then.

Beyond the obvious stupid risks for money, I'd like to believe that I have a soul, and someone who does what they do - for nothing except money - has sold their soul for a few pieces of silver.

[goforit]

9. Dick Cheney's underground Gov't .........at work!!!!

I guess we'll just sit around and watch this
country become a Banana Republic!!!

Thank you US military for stepping up to this Tyrranny!!!

[seemslikeadream]

10. Mercenaries 'R' Us

By Bill Berkowitz, AlterNet
March 24, 2004

With the casualty toll ticking ever upward and troops stretched thin on the ground, the Bush administration is looking to mercenaries to help control Iraq. These soldiers-for-hire are veterans of some of the most repressive military forces in the world, including that of the former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet and South Africa's apartheid regime.


In February, Blackwater USA, a North Carolina-based Pentagon contractor, began hiring former combat personnel in Chile, offering them up to $4,000 a month to guard oil wells in Iraq. The company flew the first batch of 60 former commandos to a training camp in North Carolina. These recruits will eventually wind up in Iraq where they will spend six months to a year.


"We scour the ends of the earth to find professionals – the Chilean commandos are very, very professional and they fit within the Blackwater system," Gary Jackson, the president of Blackwater USA, told the Guardian.


While Blackwater USA is not nearly as well known as Halliburton or Bechtel – two mega-corporations making a killing off the reconstruction of Iraq – it nevertheless is doing quite well financially thanks to the White House's war on terror. The company specializes in firearm, tactics and security training and in October 2003, according to Mother Jones magazine, the company won a $35.7 million contract to train more than 10,000 sailors from Virginia, Texas, and California each year in 'force protection.'


Business has been booming for Blackwater, which now owns, as its press release boasts, "the largest privately-owned firearms training facility in the nation." Jackson told the Guardian, "We have grown 300 percent over each of the past three years and we are small compared to the big ones. We have a very small niche market, we work towards putting out the cream of the crop, the best."

more
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=18193

[cliss]

11. An ugly side issue of the war,

which was not supposed to come out into the open.

If it had not been for the 4 "contractors" which were killed in Fallujah last week, this whole issue would have remained a secret. I've been following the story of Iraq for over a year now, every lead and scrap of information I could get my hands on because I was opposed to it. Not once did I ever read a single word about paid soldiers of fortune.

Now, this.

The financial figures are making a little more sense now. We're spending about $4.2 billion per month on our little adventure. Different organizations have been able to figure out about 1/2 of the expenses. The other half has been a mystery.

Looks like this is part of it.

[SquireJons]

26. The information was out there...

I read it here at DU, I think. I read the very article that has been quoted, a month ago, when it came out.

The problem isn't that the information is unattainable. It's there for those who really work at it. But the main stream press ignores any critical analysis in all situations. Why? Because the vast majority of people; young, old, men, women, back, white and everything else - they can't be bothered to look at anything in depth. Americans are truly becoming a willfully ignorant populous. Almost every household in America has access to The News Hour, on PBS. This show routinely wins honers for being the best, in depth nightly news, but has the smallest viewership. Americans want to know about Michael Jackson and Britney Spears, not Iraq, the IMF or American sponsored mercenaries in Haiti, Iraq, Venezuela or anywhere else for that matter. They didn't care about the contras, even when it was laid at their feet.

Americans - as a whole - disgust me these days. Not only are we getting fatter, but shorter and dumber too. We have become everything we were accusing the communists of trying to be for over 50 years. Add to that a totally thoughtless hedonism, and welcome to the 21st century; The Century of American Destruction.

[progressivebydesign]

12. I'm sorry, those guys look like they're playing cops n' robbers..

It's a big boost to their manhood to walk around, guns slung across their torso, dark sunglasses. Very macho. They answer to no one. Mercernaries are NOT security guards. They kill.. that's what they do. If they wanted real security guards, there are quite a few 120 pound, uneducated, guys who couldn't get into police work or the military that are looking for work.. for about 7 bux an hour. These corporations KNOW they are hiring killers when they call in mercenaries.

[homelandpunk]

15. Right. Their self image is their main concern. Not Bremer's safety.

Though, I must admit, Bremer's safety is no fucking concern of mine, either.

[saigon68]

21. They even look like thugs

[DinahMoeHum]

13. Here's another DU thread for you. . .

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=1325622


In particular, the second post.


:nuke:

[seemslikeadream]

16. CIA, Cocaine, and Death Squads

On the other side are the communes where guerrillas, not the government, retain control. Residents of the communes live under a law of silence, trying to avoid all contact with the guerrillas, paramilitaries and government officials for fear of being accused by one side of collaborating with another.



http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2000/colombia.noframes/story/photo/


Refugee barrios are commonplace outside Colombia's cities. An estimated 40,000 people crowd into the one in Cartagena, and more arrive daily. When the sun went down on June 24, 2000, this field at the barrio's western edge contained only grass and a few small trees. By morning, hundreds of refugees had moved in, clearing the weeds and turning the trees into frames for their crude tents.


CIA, Cocaine, and Death Squads
by the Eco-Solidarity Working Group
CovertAction Quarterly, Fall / Winter 1999



Forty million people, along with the most biologically diverse, endangered ecosystems in the world, are under attack by the U. S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and mercenaries paid by oil companies. This war is fought with bombs and bullets, as well as with herbicides and media misinformation. The cause of the war is as diverse as the region's terrain and its ethnic variety The rapacious greed of multinationals like Occidental Petroleum, Shell, BP, Texaco, and their counterparts in the Colombian elite is the main problem, but cocaine use in the U.S. is the fuel that fires this inferno. Drug exports pay for the weapons of the right-wing government-backed death squads and the revolutionary guerrillas.
For years Colombia was banned from receiving U.S. military or drug fighting money due to its poor human rights record and its failure to cooperate in the drug war. In 1998 they received $89 million, and this year the total reached $289 million. Despite continued human rights abuses. Colombia is now the third largest recipient of U.S. military aid after Israel and Egypt. Direct U.S. military intervention looms on the horizon for this region, which exports more oil to the U.S. than the entire Middle East. President Clinton is giving the nod to a death-squad offensive. These squads work closely with Colombian military and together they are responsible for the deaths of 25,000 people this decade-300,000 since 1945. Violence has displaced 1.2 million people in the last three years (mostly women and children).
Death squads guard petroleum facilities and shipments of cocaine. The head of these squads, Carlos Castano, is a key player in the Cali Drug Cartel, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration. Castano took over the direction of the death squads from another CIA asset, Colombian Army General Van Martinez. CIA involvement in Colombia began in the 1950s and grew along with the drug trade. In 1991 the CIA established a Colombian naval intelligence group that became a key part of the death squads' continuing terror campaign against guerrillas and anyone who speaks out for change or peace. ~ Many death squad leaders graduated from the School of the Americas in Fort Benning, Georgia, where thousands of Latin American soldiers have been trained in counterinsurgency and torture. Castano proudly takes responsibility for his massacres. He has kidnapped Colombian senators and he speaks in radio interviews about the need for more killing. Arrest warrants for Castano, army officers and other death squad leaders gather dust on the Attorney General's desk. Evidence mounts of collaboration between the military and the death squads 2 In July, the largest Colombian guerrilla group, Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC) launched an attack against the mountain headquarters of Castano, but were driven back by the Colombian army with U.S. intelligence assistance.
Hundreds of U.S. military personnel are on the ground, training elite units of the Colombian Army Sophisticated U.S. spy planes, like the U.S. RC-7B, inform and direct combat operations. DynaCorp and East Inc. operate a private air force used to eradicate poppies and coca plants, dousing hundreds of square miles of the countryside with herbicides. Monsanto's Roundup is the toxin of choice, but the U.S. has pressured Colombia to use Dow Chemicals more lethal tebuthiuron. Trade named Spike, it comes in a granular form making it easier to apply Colombia is the only country in the hemisphere where drug crops are sprayed from the air. Genetically engineered viruses are also being developed for the drug war arsenal. Despite this toxic rain, coca production has risen dramatically In July, two DynaCorp employees were killed along with five U.S. military personnel when an intelligence-gathering aircraft hit a mountain or a FARC missile in southern Colombia.
The news media have confused the issues and kept secret U.S. culpability in this dirty war. They create an impression that the FARC and the Ejercito de Liberacion Nacional (ELN), Colombia's other major guerrilla group, have long controlled most of the drug trade, but, in fact, "ELN until now has been a minor player." Moreover the guerrillas are presented as unwilling to lay down their arms as part of a peace plan. In the late 1 980s, guerrillas put down the gun for the ballot box. They were met with the votes of many people and a hail of bullets from the death squads. Almost 5,000 members of the opposition political party, Patriotic Union, have been killed by the right wing since 1989.

more
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/CIA/CIACocaineDeathSquads.html



A sentry patrols the streets in the FARC controlled town of San Vicente. The country's largest leftist guerrilla group, the FARC, controls much of the territory where coca is grown. To destroy the coca crop, the Colombian Army will have to move into FARC territory, a prospect the guerrilla group says will only escalate the ongoing civil war.



Colombian soldiers at a base in Tres Esquinas. In the coming weeks and months Colombia will step up its military offensive against coca farmers and drug traffickers with the help of $1.3 billion in U.S. aid. Nearly 70 percent of the money will go toward military and police equipment, such as attack helicopters.

http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2000/colombia.noframes/story/photo/

[saigon68]

28. a Lot of $$$ will go in Pockets of Corrupt Generals + Colonels

Just like the Nam--- Kick Backs for everyone.

[seemslikeadream]

19. The Globalization of Slaughtering

"This incident happened in Fallujah where two days before that, the American army shot many, many people, women and children, on the streets, and — in a bizarre shooting incident that was unjustified, killing many people. Fallujah has been a place where the U.S. Army has actually used brutal force to suppress the people there, including using the F-15s, and F-16s to attack villages and place where they think the resistances are, which is unjustified to use high explosives against individuals. This resulted in many, many casualties in the province. Added to it, they have detained, for 50 or 60 days, hundreds of people on and off, which alienated the people against the American forces and the American contractors or the American security contractors, which are really a private army, uncontrollable by the U.S. This is part of the privatization of the war. Two days ago, three days ago, there was a similar incident in Mosul, where two contractors were killed, under electricity. They were going to the electricity generating plant. The important — the thing that I know is in the media says that the contractors were involved in protecting the food supply. This is the food supply for the U.S. Army, not to be confused with providing help to the local population or anything. It's just a routine U.S. convoy that may have food and may have on other occasions, armaments or anything. So, the resentments of the people of Fallujah are justified. What happens to them is — it's a sad thing, but you know, brutality breeds brutality, and violence breeds violence, and he who started first should take the responsibility, and I think the U.S. army has used an unjustified force against the people of Fallujah, and they have brutalized the people of Fallujah to the point where they had to respond with the same brutality."

more
http://www.pressaction.com/pablog/archives/001570.html

[seemslikeadream]

20. Danger, not derring-do, marks security work

By James Glanz
The New York Times

But in the high-stakes, high-risk game of providing protection there, each company insists its own peculiar approach is the safest and that any other way of doing business increases the already astronomical risks.

It is unclear exactly how many private security employees are in Iraq. Estimates range from 15,000 to 25,000, and speculation about the number of firms ranges from 25 to about 40.

"If anybody tells you a (fixed) number, they're probably full of baloney," said Deborah Avant, associate professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University, who studies the trend toward privatization of military tasks

more
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2001895125_blackwater04.html

[bobthedrummer]

24. Guess who gets these "contracts"?

Post-war Contractors Ranked by Total Contract Value in Iraq and Afghanistan
http://www.publicintegrity.org/wow/resources.aspx?act=total

Campaign Contributions of Post-war Contractors
http://www.publicintegrity.org/wow/resources.aspx?act=contrib