If these men were neither mercenaries/security nor soldiers, but were instead, say, electrical engineers there to help rebuild a power plant, would you still feel so callous? The "true civilians" as the article calls them include people like that who can be killed just as easily. And, they all know the risks of operating in Iraq. They're all gambling with their lives. The difference is that civilian workers are seen as doing something good in rebuilding Iraq, whereas 'mercenaries' are regarded with some suspicion because they very well could be acting in an unscrupulous manner. But, they have a role there just like the other contractors do, providing security so other people can do their work. Their mere presence is insufficient, in my mind, for criticism. If and when we hear about abuses by security, then the criticism will be called for. They talked about these folks on NPR yesterday. Their article was about how these security guys are finding themselves in a pickle with the flare-up of violence. They've become targets. And, they've found they can't rely on the US Army for protection, or even information. The situation has prompted the various companies to be more cooperative with one another. In truth, I'm not too crazy about their presence in Iraq and recent events remind me of their role in power vacuum politics. With a foreign occupier and a weak Iraqi government and many indigenous factions fighting for power, Iraq is developing a caudillo or warlord structure of power. This will remain until the central Iraqi authority becomes strong enough to squash rivals to its power. In the meantime, the US Army is propping it up until it is strong enough on its own. But, each faction drains authority and credibility from the government. I think the foreign security agencies, especially with increased cooperation with one another, may be essentially a faction of its own. My hope is that they act as a place-holder, withholding power from an illegitimate but indigenous rival until the official government fills that space; at which point the security company can simply pack up and leave the power game altogether. The role they play is predicated strongly on the moral fiber and the military strength of these agencies. If they are genuinely interested in maintaining order and the rule of law and supporting the government, it may end well. But, if they're just in to get theirs or, possibly worse, if they are overrun by competing forces, it'll be bad for the occupation and for Iraq.
Ok this is just stupid reasoning ... You have no idea what the situation was for those contractors. You have no idea what their motivation was for going to Iraq. Also ... I work for the defense department as a civilian, and I work with contractors every day, and the one thing you will realize is that 80% of these "contractors" are ex-military people who have moved in the private sector after they leave. Many of these people could work anywhere, but they choose a position where they can still defend our country. Do they make more money? Hell yeah, what is wrong with that? That's the beauty of America. To say that you don't sympathize with them because they chose to go is stupid. Every member of the military also chose to join the military and defend our country and follow the orders of their superiors. Say what you want, but this whole piece about them being mercinaries is dispicable.
I don't feel any differently about the civilians who aren't doing humanitarian work. They all get hazard pay for volunteering to go. They take the extra money, they've done the calculus and figured the odds of their life for the extra money. A lot of that money goes into companies (that hire these folks) and people who contributed to Bush-Cheney. About half of the public relations crew for the Coalition are apparently doing Bush Cheney 2004 work - see the other thread on this. All of that money comes out of my pocket. I would prefer that professional soldiers get that money *instead*. Professional soldiers have obligations that private mercenaries do not. These hired guns are representing our country whether we like it or not, and frankly I've not seen one positive report on them out of Iraq except for this fact: we are so short handed on *real* soldiers we have to use them for security. The main problem is the almost the entire basis given to the American people for this war was built on a pyramid of half truths and full on lies. Even Chalabi pretty much admitted he made up most of the stuff about WMD. About the only true thing any one said was Saddam was a bad man. Now instead of Saddam killing his own people, we get to do it. Obviously the ones shooting at us deserve it, but not any of the thousands of others we are responsible for killing. If any of you wants to take up that tired argument of hey we got rid of bad guy Saddam, try looking at the half dozen countries in Africa in chaos with many more people dying *and* in actual slavery and answer why the US didn't bother lifting a finger to help them.
How does ANYTHING you said make them mercenaries. The specifically chose to go there, and that is the only difference between them and the soldiers. A mercinary is someone that is paid to go fight only for the money. A mercinary could care less what they are fighting for, and it is only for the money. You are extremely arrogant if you claim to know why these contractors went to Iraq. You are pathetic.
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=mercenary n. pl. mer·ce·nar·ies 1.) One who serves or works merely for monetary gain; a hireling. But I know the definition of the words I use. You didn't address either of the issues of a.) where my tax dollars are being spent b.) responsibility of people being paid by my tax dollars.
The professional soldiers are serving for free and not taking any type of payment or compensation from the U.S. government?
If you want to nitpick on definitions I am pretty sure the word professional implies payment for services. They are also held to a very high standard for conduct - and into a void of rules is where mercenaries lie. Does not mean what I think it means?
The key word there is "merely" ... Sorry but I doubt these guys are risking their lives for not that much more than they could make here, but I don't know what these guys were thinking and neither do you so STFU
Yes, most definitions of <i>professional</i> refer to payment and/or livelihood. This seems to be reasoning that you are pursuing: That what the four men were doing is something reserved only for professional soldiers. By taking those positions, they were acting as proxy soldiers. Some have disagreed with that reasoning and posted earlier in this thread. From the same dictionary link that you gave: <a HREF="http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=mercenary">mercenary</a> n. pl. mer·ce·nar·ies <i>2. A professional soldier hired for service in a foreign army. </i> Those four men did not seem to be integrated into the Command & Control structure of the U.S. military and it makes it more difficult to advance the idea that they were acting as mercenaries (definition choice #2). Choosing #1 over #2 fits your needs in this thread, but it doesn't seem to be what <i>mrpaige</i>, <i> JuanValdez</i>, <i>Uncle_Tim</i>, <i>bnb</i> and others had in mind when responding. I went back to to the original article that started this thread and looked for mention of the men acting with some degree of integration with the U.S. military. From the original article: In Iraq, Blackwater provides security not only for Bremer but also for food shipments in the turbulent Fallujah area. Doesn't really show them acting as part of the U.S. military as the title suggested (using <i>mercenaries</i> #2) and what you have been advancing in this thread. We are going around in circles about this because of the differing choices in what <i>mercenaries</i> means and whether those men were acting as soldiers.
You're right Mango. RMJ, nice try to bait me, but calling me names isn't much of an argument. If you have nothing to fall back on... What's wrong with mercenaries instead of soldiers: http://slate.msn.com/id/2098571/ Hired Guns What to do about military contractors run amok. By Phillip Carter Posted Friday, April 9, 2004, at 2:57 PM PT The ambush and gruesome killing of four U.S. contractors in Fallujah, Iraq, has sparked some of the most intense combat since the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime last spring. It has also brought the actions of private military contractors—hired by the U.S. government to provide extra manpower and firepower in Iraq—into sharp focus, with reports that they are fighting their own battles with their own weapons, helicopters, and intelligence networks. Military contracting in wartime is nothing new. The military depends on a vast support network of civilians to feed, clothe, equip, and train the forces. Indeed, today's U.S. military couldn't function without civilian contractors to troubleshoot its high-tech equipment. What is new is the extent to which these contractors are conducting combat operations in Iraq; rather than the purely support functions they have performed during recent missions in Bosnia, Kosovo, and Afghanistan. This shift raises a number of problems for the U.S. government, with which the Pentagon is only now beginning to wrestle—principally, how to control these contractors and ensure that their actions under fire further the national interest. The first set of problems arises from the legal status of contractors. Armed contractors—like the four men ambushed in Fallujah last week—fall into an international legal gray zone. They aren't "noncombatants" (as unarmed contractors are) under the 4th Geneva Convention, because they carry weapons and act on behalf of the U.S. government. However, they're also not "lawful combatants" under the 3rd Geneva Convention, because they don't wear uniforms or answer to a military command hierarchy. These armed contractors don't even fit the legal definition of mercenaries, because that definition requires that they work for a foreign government in a war zone, in which their own country isn't part of the fight. Legally speaking, they actually fall into the same gray area as the unlawful combatants detained at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Practically speaking, this legal murkiness creates real problems in Iraq. The law of armed conflict requires soldiers on both sides to distinguish between combatants and noncombatants. Armed U.S. contractors wearing quasimilitary outfits and body armor blur these distinctions, making it very hard for our enemies to play by the rules of war (assuming they wanted to in the first place). It also leaves these armed contractors open to treatment by foreign governments as unlawful combatants, U.S. citizenship notwithstanding. Should a group of armed contractors stray into Syria or Iran because of a GPS malfunction, it is entirely possible that they'd be locked up on these grounds. The second major problem with the use of private military contractors is the lack of formal rules for them to follow. Soldiers fight according to rules of engagement, which in theory, are vetted to align with national-level goals and strategies. In a place like Iraq, a lot of attention is paid to the calibration of force, because too much or too little could result in disastrous consequences. If an actual soldier breaks the rules, say, by using an unwarranted amount of force, he or she may be disciplined for doing so. Private military contractors, on the other hand, do not fight according to the same rules of engagement as their military brethren, if they operate under any rules at all. Many of the explicitly military contractors who perform security functions, such as Blackwater Consulting, have use-of-force rules built into their contracts. They train their personnel on how to follow them. But these rules are often not vetted by Defense Department lawyers nor are they designed to match the levels of force desired by American commanders on the ground. Private military contractors generally don't have to listen to these rules and orders, in any event, and they have historically not been prosecuted for disobeying military rules. The Uniform Code of Military Justice's jurisdictional article (10 U.S.C. Section 802) provides that "In time of war, persons serving with or accompanying an armed force in the field" may be tried by a military court, but there's little precedent for military trials of civilian contractors who behave badly in a war zone—even assuming Iraq can legally be called a "war." Moreover, while the Justice Department has jurisdiction to prosecute military contractors for actions overseas under a 2000 law, it may decline to do so as a result of limited resources and the fact that there is no U.S. attorney's office (yet) established in Iraq to govern U.S. civilian activities there. The legal murkiness helps shield the contractors from effective discipline. The Coalition Provisional Authority has decreed that contractors and other foreign personnel will not be subject to Iraqi criminal processes. Yet, there's also no clear mandate for American jurisdiction. And in the absence of any specific mandate telling military officials to clamp down on contractors, American prosecutors can simply decline to do so as a matter of discretion—precisely what has happened on U.S. military deployments in the Balkans, as pointed out by Peter W. Singer in a Salon article on contractor transgressions during that deployment. The third set of problems with military contractors exists because they are not part of the regular military hierarchy. Contractors often live separately, drive nonmilitary vehicles, use nonmilitary radios, and report to their corporate bosses. When their contracts require it, these contractors will establish relationships with local military units and other governmental agencies, but these relationships rarely include important details like precise routes and times for contractor convoys or frequencies and call-signs for contractor personnel. That creates problems when soldiers and contractors work—or fight—in close proximity to each other. At their core, military command centers deal with the planning, synchronization, and management of violence. The destructive capacity of the average American military unit is staggering. It takes an enormous effort to focus that destructive power on the right objectives without killing civilians ("collateral damage") or each other ("fratricide"). Armed contractors operate outside of this military command structure for the most part, and thus their operations are not coordinated with military operations in most circumstances. When a contractor convoy drives from Baghdad to Fallujah, it's under no legal obligation to tell military commanders it's on the way. Nor are contractors required to call in reports to the military command in Iraq, leading to absurd situations like last week's battle in Najaf in which private contractors fought off attacks on the CPA headquarters that military officials learned of only hours later. Some of these problems can be alleviated through legal mechanisms. The easiest fix? Amend these government contracts to solve the discipline and coordination problems. Current (and future) agreements should be modified to require better coordination in the field or to require government contractors to fight from the same rules of engagement as their uniformed brethren. Similarly, the president could direct his Defense Department or Justice Department lawyers to immediately exercise jurisdiction in cases where contractors behave badly. Thankfully, there has been a dearth of such incidents in Iraq, but the large number of contractors there makes it likely that some criminal conduct will occur in the future. A clear message from the administration that it's serious about exercising criminal jurisdiction might deter some of that criminal conduct—or at least ensure systems are in place to adjudicate any incidents that do occur. The hardest problem to solve is that of armed contractors and their international legal status. Short of convening a new Geneva Convention to rewrite the laws of war, there is no way to fix the ambiguous status of these hired guns. And even if we could, it's doubtful that the international legal community would support legal protection for armed contractors conducting military operations. That's why, in the meantime, our government must do what it can to oversee the actions of these contractors and ensure they comport with our national policies and objectives for Iraq. As rational actors, we can assume that American private military corporations will pursue their profits above all else while operating abroad. The Pentagon must write contracts and develop control measures to make sure those profit motives and our national interests align. Phillip Carter is a former Army officer who attends UCLA Law School and teaches an undergraduate seminar on law and terrorism.
In many cases, to borrrow your analogy, we're using Ph.D. candidates to mow the lawn, while paying them CEO salaries. Regarding the outrage in Fallujah that brought attention to this mess: the four Blackwater men killed were, if I read the reports correctly, protecting food convoys to military bases (not, as has been suggested, aid to Iraqi citizens). They were in an unarmored SUV, without backup or the potential to call in backup, basically on their own. Nor did they have access to military intelligence on enemy positions. The original attack might not have even happened if the military was protecting its own supply lines (and I stress might). Military procedures do not allow individual vehicles to go out on their own, and military vehicles are better armored to withstand fire. The insurgents picked off a sitting duck precisely because these poor men were mercenaries, and not actual soldiers. I've read estimates that conclude there are at least 20,000 US and foreign security guards within Iraq, all paid for by US taxpayers. If the twenty thousand figure is correct, and I've seen it in a few places, that would mean that collectively, private soldiers of fortune outnumber the forces of our second-ranking government in the "Coalition of the Willing," Britain, by about two to one. Think about that. Mercenaries are the second-most willing members of our coalition. The security guards we're talking about are not like the Rustys at your local mall, their gunbelts filled with loose change. They're doing actual fighting, with actual guns, against actual Iraqis. They're performing roles in a war zone traditionally left to the US military, protecting supply lines and key military and CPA outposts. That makes them "mercenaries" in my book according to dictionary definition 2. And I suspect defintion 1 in many cases also applies, particularly for the international paramilitaries. And they are fighting. Last Sunday, eight Blackwater guards, four MPs and a Marine withstood a rebellion of hundreds of insurgents against the military headquarters in Najaf for nearly four hours before the actual military showed up, allowing US control of Najaf to stand for another day. ("Private Guards Repel Attack on US Headquarters," http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/articles/A53059-2004Apr5.html) According to the article, this Putting aside the moral aspect of this mess, this isn't very good fiscal policy. Some of these guys are making a thousand dollars a day. All of them, I would venture, make more than their US military counterparts. I don't want to pay a soldier-of-fortune, much less 20,000 soldiers of fortune, ten times more per day than a real US soldier (who typically joins up for genuinely patriotic reasons or because they see the military as an opportunity to college or a better life) makes for doing the same job, especially when the mercenary is not guaranteed to have the effectiveness or training of that real US soldier. And those that are highly trained, former US special forces who re-up with private firms, appear to be compensated exorbitantly. On the US side, we seem to have eliminated the standard revolving door policy between government and private business by simply eliminating the door. Morally, having an army of thousands of mercenaries in a war zone is reprehensible. As has been pointed out, they don't answer to the traditional rules of military conduct, would not be susceptible to court martial. A few bad apples must surely exist. Though most are stable family men who look at their work as just another job (http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/04/weekinreview/04glan.html)... Yet because of the setup, fear of reprisal for misconduct/harrassment of civilians would be less of an issue. As has been pointed out elsewhere, many of these mercenaries are the former enforcers of South African apartheid, Pinochet's goons. When it comes down to it, these mercenaries owe no loyalty to the US government, no loyalty to the US Constitution, no loyalty to the Iraqi people. Their only allegiance is to their own pocketbooks.
A correction of the URL for the first article above: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A53059-2004Apr5.html And a source for the 20,000 figure and the scope of the problem: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A59516-2004Apr7.html This second article claims that that number could rise to 30,000 as the US makes a show of pulling out more troops. The article gives several instances of these mercenaries fighting and dying, unsupported by private or military backup. From one account in which a man died, Then, And, in whether or not the military itself views the "security guards" as the equivalent of actual troops, a telling comment:
Gee, our biggest cost in Iraq is turning out to be: mercenaries. Seems insisting on unilaterism and trying to go small has a big cost. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/19/international/middleeast/19SECU.html?8br Security Companies: Shadow Soldiers in Iraq By DAVID BARSTOW Published: April 19, 2004 his article was reported by David Barstow, James Glanz, Richard A. Oppel Jr. and Kate Zernike and was written by Mr. Barstow. They have come from all corners of the world. Former Navy Seal commandos from North Carolina. Gurkas from Nepal. Soldiers from South Africa's old apartheid government. They have come by the thousands, drawn to the dozens of private security companies that have set up shop in Baghdad. The most prized were plucked from the world's elite special forces units. Others may have been recruited from the local SWAT team. Advertisement But they are there, racing about Iraq in armored cars, many outfitted with the latest in high-end combat weapons. Some security companies have formed their own "Quick Reaction Forces," and their own intelligence units that produce daily intelligence briefs with grid maps of "hot zones." One company has its own helicopters, and several have even forged diplomatic alliances with local clans. Far more than in any other conflict in United States history, the Pentagon is relying on private security companies to perform crucial jobs once entrusted to the military. In addition to guarding innumerable reconstruction projects, private companies are being asked to provide security for the chief of the Coalition Provisional Authority, L. Paul Bremer III, and other senior officials; to escort supply convoys through hostile territory; and to defend key locations, including 15 regional authority headquarters and even the Green Zone in downtown Baghdad, the center of American power in Iraq. With every week of insurgency in a war zone with no front, these companies are becoming more deeply enmeshed in combat, in some cases all but obliterating distinctions between professional troops and private commandos. Company executives see a clear boundary between their defensive roles as protectors and the offensive operations of the military. But more and more, they give the appearance of private, for-profit militias — by several estimates, a force of roughly 20,000 on top of an American military presence of 130,000. "I refer to them as our silent partner in this struggle," Senator John W. Warner, the Virginia Republican and Armed Services Committee chairman, said in an interview. The price of this partnership is soaring. By some recent government estimates, security costs could claim up to 25 percent of the $18 billion budgeted for reconstruction, a huge and mostly unanticipated expense that could delay or force the cancellation of billions of dollars worth of projects to rebuild schools, water treatment plants, electric lines and oil refineries . . . The Bush administration's growing dependence on private security companies is partly by design. Determined to transform the military into a leaner but more lethal fighting force, Mr. Rumsfeld has pushed aggressively to outsource tasks not deemed essential to war-making. But many Pentagon and authority officials now concede that the companies' expanding role is also a result of the administration's misplaced optimism about how Iraqis would greet American reconstruction efforts. . . . In practical terms, these convoluted relationships often mean that the governmental authorities have no real oversight of security companies on the public payroll. In other cases, though, the government insists that security companies abide by detailed rules. A solicitation for work to provide security for the United States Agency for International Development, for example, contains requirements on everything from attire to crisis management. "If a chemical and/or biological threat or attack occurs, keep the area near the guard post clear of people," the document states, adding in capital letters, "Remember, during the confusion of this type of act, the guards must still provide security for employees or other people in the area." The words are emphatic, but empty. Government contracting officials and company executives concede that private guards have every right to abandon their posts if they deem the situation too unsafe. They are not subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice, nor can they be prosecuted under civil laws or declared AWOL.
What an ingenious business plan. You can create the demand by starting a war. Before they only made money on weapons and supplies. Now they make bucks on temporary staffing agencies and outsourcing. Very cool. Maybe in the future these security companies can be traded on the stock exchange like the private prison companies.
I stole this from dailykos http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1206725,00.html US military in torture scandal Use of private contractors in Iraqi jail interrogations highlighted by inquiry into abuse of prisoners Julian Borger in Washington Friday April 30, 2004 The Guardian Graphic photographs showing the torture and sexual abuse of Iraqi prisoners in a US-run prison outside Baghdad emerged yesterday from a military inquiry which has left six soldiers facing a possible court martial and a general under investigation. The scandal has also brought to light the growing and largely unregulated role of private contractors in the interrogation of detainees. According to lawyers for some of the soldiers, they claimed to be acting in part under the instruction of mercenary interrogators hired by the Pentagon. US military investigators discovered the photographs, which include images of a hooded prisoner with wires fixed to his body, and nude inmates piled in a human pyramid. The pictures, which were obtained by an American TV network, also show a dog attacking a prisoner and other inmates being forced to simulate sex with each other. It is thought the abuses took place in November and December last year. . . . A military report into the Abu Ghraib case - parts of which were made available to the Guardian - makes it clear that private contractors were supervising interrogations in the prison, which was notorious for torture and executions under Saddam Hussein. One civilian contractor was accused of raping a young, male prisoner but has not been charged because military law has no jurisdiction over him. . . .
OK, it appears the punishment for sodomy of a shackled prisoner is being fired - if you are a contractor. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationw...30apr30,1,922401.story?coll=la-home-headlines . . . Myers said two U.S. firms — CACI International of Arlington, Va., and Titan Corp. of San Diego — were involved in providing private interrogators and translators at Abu Ghraib. Both firms were named in a military investigative report looking into the allegations. According to the report, a CACI employee was terminated from duty at the prison because of the infractions. Myers said it was difficult to know what percentage of the prison's staff consisted of private contractors, but he said those figures and other elements of the operations would be disclosed during a trial. Pentagon officials late Thursday did not deny that private contractors were being used as interrogators, but referred questions to U.S. military officials in Baghdad, who said they could not comment on Myers' account. . . .
At least a few of these contractors got what was coming to them. Exhibit A. http://www.sundaytimes.co.za/2004/04/18/news/news03.asp Iraq victim was top-secret apartheid killer A security contractor killed in Iraq last week was once one of South Africa's most secret covert agents, his identity guarded so closely that even the Truth and Reconciliation Commission did not discover the extent of his involvement in apartheid's silent wars. Gray Branfield, 55, admitted to being part of a death squad which gunned down Joe Gqabi, the ANC's chief representative and Umkhonto weSizwe operational head in Zimbabwe on July 31 1981. Gqabi was shot 19 times when three assassins ambushed him as he reversed down the driveway of his Harare home. Author Peter Stiff this week confirmed information that Branfield was an operative identified in his books, The Silent War, Warfare By Other Means and Cry Zimbabwe as "Major Brian". He said Branfield, a former detective inspector in the Rhodesian police force specialising in covert operations against guerrilla organisations, came to South Africa after Zanu-PF came to power in 1980. . . .
OK, I was wrong, the worst thing that can happen to a contractor is he can be fired and lose his security clearance. A soldier can get court martialed. This unaccountability is unacceptable. http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?040510fa_fact . . . General Taguba saved his harshest words for the military-intelligence officers and private contractors. He recommended that Colonel Thomas Pappas, the commander of one of the M.I. brigades, be reprimanded and receive non-judicial punishment, and that Lieutenant Colonel Steven Jordan, the former director of the Joint Interrogation and Debriefing Center, be relieved of duty and reprimanded. He further urged that a civilian contractor, Steven Stephanowicz, of CACI International, be fired from his Army job, reprimanded, and denied his security clearances for lying to the investigating team and allowing or ordering military policemen “who were not trained in interrogation techniques to facilitate interrogations by ‘setting conditions’ which were neither authorized” nor in accordance with Army regulations. “He clearly knew his instructions equated to physical abuse,” Taguba wrote. He also recommended disciplinary action against a second CACI employee, John Israel. (A spokeswoman for CACI said that the company had “received no formal communication” from the Army about the matter.) . . .
