Rumsfeld Seeking to Bolster Force Without New G.I.'s

[lebkuchen]

I believe Rummy purposely kept US troop numbers in Iraq low in order to lay siege to our military and force privatization as their numbers were "picked off." He does this so his friends in corporate America will thrive.

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/24/international/worldspecial/24TROO.html?hp

Mr. Rumsfeld told Congress he wanted to transfer to civilians or contract workers an estimated 300,000 administrative jobs now performed by people in uniform.

While some on Capitol Hill reject that total as high, one senior Pentagon official said that if even one-sixth of those jobs were converted, then the equivalent of more than two Army divisions could enter the fighting force without any increase in the number of paid military personnel.

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

1. Let us be utterly clear on one point:

Rummy can couch this in any manner he wants, but what he is proposing is the hiring and emplacement of MERCENARIES.

It would be folish to believe that these people would be placed into a combat area without being armed and ready for direct military action. It would be folish to believe that a good number of these people would be US Citizens. 300K is a large number of people. It would be foolish to believe that some of these people would not be used for black ops, properly sheep-dipped for world-class plausible deniability.It would be foolish to think that Rummy has not considered that these mercenaries would not exactly have to conform to the letter of the law regarding The Geneva Accords.

Let us remember: It is not tinfoilism to think that Rummy has anything but contempt for the rule of law, at least those that constrain his basest instincts. He is a CEO, and to him, all that matters is "results".

[J B]

2. Let me muddle your point.

Mercenaries would be armed persons fighting under the flag of the United States without being uniformed soldiers. That's not what Rumsfeld seeks: He seeks to place the logistical and administrative chain in civlian hands.

Note for reference: The US has had enormous problems getting existing civilian contractors to function in Iraq or to even show up. Therefore, these problems can be expected to multiply greatly if Rumsfeld gets his way. More tooth means nothing if the tail withers.

[lebkuchen]

3. Right...handing the BSB jobs over to private contractors

(base support battalions)

Funneling money to private contractors is also why Rummy is buying up property in Romania, Bulgaria and Poland...to build bases there for our unaccompanied army divisions who will be moving out of Germany...a huge waste of taxpayer money, and a gigantic disincentive for anyone (re)enlisting in the army.

Rummy et al are the greediest bunch of thugs the world has ever known.

[Martin Eden]

7. I think Tandalayo is essentially right

Perhaps not to the extent that we will have mercenary armies, but in the key aspect that privatization will cover all sorts of clandestine operations.

In a war zone, private groups that are not part of the regular military command structure but nevertheless controlled by the likes of Rumsfeld can engage in missions with less adherence to code of conduct and subordination to traditional channels of authority.

It doesn't matter if these private forces are nominally assigned to benign civilian support roles -- the private/corporate nature of their entrance into the theatre can provide cover for their real mission without the accountability that might be traced through the established military command structure.

If Rummy wanted to plant WMD in Iraq, I believe it would be this kind of surreptitios private operation.

[blackcat77]

4. Let me see if I understand what he's saying...

Rummy wants to privatize all the elements of the military who aren't directly involved in the shooting, right?

So that way, in theory we have more firepower with the same number of people in the military.

But that makes no sense, really. Say he privatizes the cooks -- then the food service for the military would have to turn a profit whereas now they do not. Where are the savings?

Or is this not about saving money at all, but just about creating an illusion that we AREN'T militarizing at a horrific rate.

[lebkuchen]

5. Rummy gets it both ways, with smoke and mirrors.

He privatizes to the max all support positions in the military, handing over hefty taxpayer subsidized contracts to his buds, and he does it without making it look like Bush has gotten the country into another Vietnam by escalating troop involvement, even if that's exactly what he's doing, only worse.

By moving soldiers out of support roles onto the battlefield, he's inadvertantly admitted that we needed more troops all along, just like his advisers had told him. I submit that Rummy didn't go into this war "on the cheap," as Col. Hackworth has stated, but rather kept the troop numbers purposely low in order to create a need once we were entrenched, via the casualty rate, to push for privatization.

[SoCalDem]

9. Privatized soldiers

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=174742

SoCalDem (1000+ posts) Thu Aug-14-03 02:53 AM
Original message
Privatized "soldiers"??...creeeeeepy


http://www.newcity.com/exitlog/frameset.php?close=http://indyweek.com/durham/2003-07-23/cover.html




Soldiers of good fortune

They fly helicopters, guard military bases and provide reconnaissance. They're private military companies--and they're replacing U.S. soldiers in the war on terrorism

B Y B A R R Y Y E O M A N

At a remote tactical training camp in a North Carolina swamp, six U.S. sailors are gearing up for their part in President Bush's war on terrorism. Dressed in camouflage on a January afternoon, they wear protective masks and carry nine-millimeter Berettas that fire nonlethal bullets filled with colored soap. Their mission: recapture a ship--actually a three-story-high model constructed of gray steel cargo containers--from armed hijackers. July 23, 2003

C O V E R F E A T U R E


The men approach the front of the vessel in formation, weapons drawn, then silently walk the length of the ship. Suddenly, as they turn the corner, two "terrorists" spring out from behind a plywood barricade and storm the sailors, guns blazing. The trainees, who have instinctively crowded together, prove easy pickings: Though they outnumber their enemy 3-to-1, every one of them gets hit. They return from the ambush with heads hung, covered in pink dye.


...snip



Boquist and his colleagues fled to the embassy from their downtown hotel--but when they got there, their superiors from DynCorp were nowhere to be found. "They had left the day before," Boquist says. "Just disappeared." Boquist tried to contact the company for several days and finally reached DynCorp's U.S. offices by telephone. "Do the best you can to get your personnel out," he recalls being told. By then, though, the airport in Monrovia was closed. Stranded in the burning city, Boquist and his colleagues armed themselves--buying weapons on the black market and picking up abandoned guns from the street--and defended the embassy and the refugees inside until U.S. military reinforcements arrived. "It's easy to be patriotic when you don't have anyplace to go," he says.

Boquist hasn't forgiven DynCorp ("it was hell on earth"), but notes that it's only natural for businesses to be concerned with their bottom line. "They're worried about liability and being sued, and that takes precedence," Boquist says. "That's the same problem you're going to face in any major conflict."

Despite such experiences in the field, the Bush administration is rapidly deploying private military companies in the Persian Gulf and other conflict zones. By March, DynCorp alone had 1,000 employees in the Middle East to assist in the invasion of Iraq. "The trend is growth," says Daniel Nelson, the former professor at the Pentagon's Marshall Center. "This current president and administration have--in part because of September 11, but also because of their fundamental ideology--taken off constraints that somewhat limited the prior administration." According to some estimates, private military companies will double their business by the end of the decade, to $200 billion a year.



....snip

[comradebillyboy]

6. maybe the us needs its own version of the foreign leigon

non citizens to do the dirty work in exchange for citizenship after 10 years of overseas service

[yorgatron]

8. so all the clerks and jerks

in the rear with the gear are going to be retrained as infantry? the basic and AIT (63T apc mechanic) i went through placed little or no emphasis on weapons or combat training.i would have been more likely to blow myself up with a claymore than inflict any damage on the enemy.

[lebkuchen]

10. Although....they're a lot better trained at hitting the foxhole

than anyone in the private sector whose job it is to support the military in the field.