That’s an easy thing to cite. Give me a sec and I will upload some pictures. My internet connection sucks.
Why would you (as in the American public) want to?
So. Basically…
The USA is paying independent contractors to do our job since we can’t get enough boots on the ground?
Because President Bush did not take advice from Generals about how many men it would take.
Is that about it?
In the meantime, here’s some light reading:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&rls=com.microsoft%3Aen-US&q=ugandans+iraq
I think the US always hired independent contractors to do wetwork. You only know about it now because your access to media.
I’m sure the link above should have plenty of information. In case there’s no pictures in them, here are two from my hard drive.
That’s the standard Ugandan uniform. Seems like every contracting firm gives them the same outfit and equipement. All tan clothes with black plate carrier and AK47. The patches are always unique to the corporation though.
Well this seems like small potatoes next to the killings last year but they are an unpleasant bunch. Pretty much everything about them screams wannabe fascist thuggery to me. From their silly schoolboy designed logo to Mr. Prince’s I know better than thou demeanor it all says I want to be a bad ass.
I can only hope under the new administration they and other contractors with a similar flavor are cut off at the knees.
Please- none of these people are mercenaries. Mercenaries are soldiers for hire working for non-US interests.
Most private security firms provide high quality, former SF/Ranger/SEAL/SWAT personnel to companies and the US gov’t, providing personal security, executive protection and transportation. It’s true that some of the lower-level guys are often foreign (non-US) personnel, but I know in the case of one company that their Chilean guys are top notch.
:dubious:
That’s pretty much the definition of ‘Mercenary’.
No, it’s not. Mercenaries FIGHT WARS. These guys are not fighting (at least, the non-Blackwater guys aren’t).
Now you’re just being silly. The syntax of your argument is so terrible it’s difficult to respond to.
non-Blackwater mercenaries are mercenaries. non-Mercenaries are not Mercenaries.
What’s your point?
I do see a niche for Blackwater. They could ride shotgun on ships in the Indian Ocean and kill pirates as they attempt to hi jack ships. There is a real need for this service.
Sorry- my niece was born the other day and I’ve had very little sleep!
Mercenaries actively engage in offensive combat operations while in the pay of a foreign government. Pretty simple.
The security company employees we are discussing are providing security for US gov’t officials and private parties in various war zones. For example, an operator might be escorting State Department folks from the Green Zone to the airport, or providing site security for oil rig workers in Kirkuk, or any number of other tasks. They are not fighting the war in Iraq, or anywhere else for that matter.
Better?
ETA- my beef is with calling them “mercenaries.” Call 'em something else- assholes, if you like.
So the Swiss Guards at the Vatican - not mercenaries?
That’s a start.
EJsGirl Congratulations on the addition to your family. Sorry if I was a bit snippy.
Basically, yes, I understand the difference between security personnel and mercenaries.
Simple but I do not accept that definition.
They are doing soldier work for pay. Now, the requirement that they be hired by a “foreign service” is not there but extending the meaning of the word is appropriate because there is no other word for “domestic mercenaries”. Until now, when a country needed soldiers, it hired soldiers or foreign soldiers (mercenaries). But the USA, in trying to get around the Geneva conventions and all sorts of other laws and other practical issues is hiring what are in effect “illegal combatants”. But since the term is already taken to describe the enemy then I think “mercenary” is a perfectly good word.
The notion that they are somehow “good guys” who are “not really fighting” is ludicrous. They are, for all intents and purposes, doing the work of soldiers in a war zone and they are only “non-soldiers” so that they can get around those pesky laws which forbids soldiers from doing certain things.
What “leaked details of grand jury proceedings”? Reading the article, I don’t see anything about deliberations or discussions that happened inside the grand jury room, which are what the law does keep secret. The story only says, “A grand jury is investigating X.” And the fact that a case is being or will be presented to a grand jury is not secret. The press took a liberty with the word “investigating”, to be sure, but there’s no “leak” here.
They aren’t doing a soldier’s work. I don’t know how else to explain it to you- my brother is a soldier and what he does for a living is the opposite of what these contractors do. I know- he has done both. His last contracting assignment was trying to keep a bunch of Texas roughnecks from Boots & Coots from getting killed as they tried to cap wellhead fires. That is private security work.
Carrying a gun doesn’t make someone a soldier- far fucking from it.