Saturday, January 27, 2007

Private armies, private loyalties

The LA Times recently ran an Op-Ed on mercenaries and Blackwater in particular by Jeremy Scahill, who has been writing a book on that cute company. The facts he brings out only touch the surface of this menacing development, but they are frightening, nevertheless.
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.

The president's proposed Civilian Reserve Corps was not his idea alone. A privatized version of it was floated two years ago by Erik Prince, the secretive, mega-millionaire, conservative owner of Blackwater USA and a man who for years has served as the Pied Piper of a campaign to repackage mercenaries as legitimate forces. In early 2005, Prince — a major bankroller of the president and his allies — pitched the idea at a military conference of a "contractor brigade" to supplement the official military. "There's consternation in the [Pentagon] about increasing the permanent size of the Army," Prince declared. Officials "want to add 30,000 people, and they talked about costs of anywhere from $3.6 billion to $4 billion to do that. Well, by my math, that comes out to about $135,000 per soldier." He added: "We could do it certainly cheaper."
Under the false banner of "private works better than public" they try to replace troops who risk their lives for their country with those who are loyal to whomever pays them. And never forget that it was public monies that initially trained all the mercs, Blackwater does not hire raw recruits. They hire by drawing off the best of the US services with large sums of money. But they still want us to believe that guys working for $1000 a day are cheaper than ones working for $2000 a month. But one question remains unanswered. Who will Prince turn his private army on when a legitimate US government cuts him off from the public tit?

// posted by montag @ 12:40 PM
Comments:
I said my piece on mercenaries.
# posted by Blogger Fixer : 6:35 PM
 
I like your angle. The friction between the US soldiers and the yahoo privateers in shades is palpable in Iraq.

Here's another piece to amplify your message.
Privatizing War in Iraq
# posted by Blogger GDAEman : 9:38 PM
 

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