In liberal democracies, the need to convince the populace that a war is worthy of its costs - in terms of blood and treasure - and the need to find volunteers to fight it are structural safeguards that limit the wars we fight.
Perhaps if the government cannot find enough volunteers to fight this war, it means that the war should not continue to be fought. Otherwise, we Americans should openly revisit the national debate about conscription, rather than permitting the administration to covertly circumvent that prohibition with money. by Daniel Baer - Guardian
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When as a country, you wage wars without public support or without enough support for those who want to wage war to actually well....go fight in those wars, and without a draft, and when you decide to become the global police and you have bases and soldiers around the world, when your military is stretched so thin, that a national emergency such as Katrina, finds your National Guards troops have been deployed to fight wara in foreign lands, and then all you have are the mercernaries of Blackwater to patrol the streets of New Orleans....
When you have to pay mercernaries to fight your wars, when lawlessness takes over, and the mercernaries are held above the law, are not held accountable for their lawlessness......
When your War Dept has a 5 billion dollar annual Public Relations budget, which includes recruitment of new soldiers, and still not enough soldiers......
Then you get former Navy Seal, Erik Prince's Blackwater, (named after the Seal code for a "black op") now named Xe. with a string of shootings, massacre, including Nisour Square, charges of weapons smuggling, murder, mayhem, human rights abuses, fraud, and then you have the corruption of their continuing government contracts because of the revolving doors between Blackwater and the Pentagon, the CIA
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JANUARY 8, 2010. Germany Probes Blackwater-CIA Report
German authorities are investigating a published report that the Central Intelligence Agency conceived a plan with the Blackwater security firm to assassinate a man who allegedly helped fund the Sept. 11 hijackers in Hamburg. The alleged plot was never carried out, but under certain circumstances planning a murder could be a crime under German law. A German parliamentary committee and Hamburg prosecutors said they had initiated separate investigations into the matter.
The allegations have been widely reported in Germany in recent days, reigniting old fears among some German politicians that U.S. intelligence agencies don't respect German sovereignty and operate at will here. Such concerns could create tension in the U.S.-German relationship just as Washington is trying to persuade Germany and other allies to commit more troops to the war in Afghanistan, according to German political observers. The war faces strong popular opposition in Germany.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB126297717069421903.html
January 8, 2010. Guardian - Blackwater Contractors Charged with Murder
Despite Blackwater's contentious record, the US military and intelligence agencies continue to maintain a close relationship with the company.
Two former guards with the security company Blackwater have been charged in the US with the murder of Afghan civilians in a case likely to reinforce accusations that the firm ran a rogue militia that showed a reckless disregard for human life.
Arrested after indictment, Justin Cannon, 27, and Chris Drotleff, 29, for murder and other offences after they opened fire on a car following a traffic accident in Kabul. Two people were killed and one wounded.
Government officials have repeatedly ignored Blackwater’s transgressions. Senior Iraqi officials "repeatedly complained to U.S. officials" about Blackwater’s "alleged involvement in the deaths of numerous Iraqis, but the Americans took little action to regulate the private security firm."
http://thinkprogress.org/...
Blackwater has been all over the headlines last week and this week for a number of developments. Blackwater dodged a bullet last week when charges accusing it of wrongdoing in the 2007 Nisour Square shooting in Baghdad were dismissed by a judge. And this week, it was reported that Blackwater has settled a series of federal lawsuits, brought by Iraqis, accusing of it using excessive force in Iraq, including in Nisour Square.
But the third development is likely to renew scrutiny of the secretive defense contractor: The New York Times today reports that two of the C.I.A. agents killed in last week's suicide bombing in Afghanistan were Blackwater employees.
Ciralsky's article on Blackwater shines light on the company's extensive ties with the C.I.A. and its shadowy activities in Iraq and Afghanistan.
http://www.vanityfair.com/...
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Erik Prince, recently outed as a participant in a C.I.A. assassination program, has gained notoriety as head of the military-contracting juggernaut Blackwater, a company dogged by a grand-jury investigation, bribery accusations, and the voluntary-manslaughter trial of five ex-employees, set for next month. Lashing back at his critics, the wealthy former navy seal takes the author inside his operation in the U.S. and Afghanistan, revealing the role he’s been playing in America’s war on terror. Prince, according to sources with knowledge of his activities, has been working as a C.I.A. asset: in a word, as a spy. While his company was busy gleaning more than $1.5 billion in government contracts between 2001 and 2009.
http://www.vanityfair.com/...
Private security contractors are forbidden by international law and the Geneva Conventions from actively taking part in hostilities — unilaterally or alongside soldiers. The laws of war, however, don’t forbid the use of contractors as a police force. Contractors may also use force in self-defense, or when absolutely necessary to defend other individuals or protect property. In Afghanistan and especially in Iraq, it’s been difficult, if not impossible, to make the distinction between security and combat operations involving contractors. That’s one reason private security contractors are increasingly called mercenaries, even though the definition of the word under the Geneva Conventions’ Article 47 leaves room for debate.
Contractors working with American occupation forces, including private security contractors, are considered civilian non-combatants. Depending on the circumstances, they operate under the laws and usages of war and resolutions of the United Nations Security Council, under U.S. law, including Coalition Provisional Authority orders, and under Iraqi law. Which jurisdiction applies in which circumstances is a murky question made murkier by American initiatives to shield contractors from legal accountability.
http://middleeast.about.com/...
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Last December, contractors made up 69 percent of the Pentagon's personnel in Afghanistan, "the highest recorded percentage of contractors used by the Defense Department in any conflict in the history of the United States," according to the study.
As many as 56,000 private contractors could accompany the 30,000 additional U.S. troops being sent to Afghanistan, according to a congressional study. The Congressional Research Service report says that would bring the number of contractors in the country to about 160,000.
http://www.politicsdaily.com/...
As we've reported, many questions about the army of contractors, which outnumbers the size of the U.S. troop force, remain unanswered and underexamined. We don't have up to date numbers on how much the United States spends on private contracts, and the DOD does not break down the services done by contractors in Afghanistan
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmem...
Not only is the CIA signing new contracts with Blackwater in 2009, but also the State Department, as well as various other governmental agencies.
The Iraqi war fired the starting gun for the mass privatisation of war – the burgeoning of private security companies staffed by ex-soldiers from armies across the world parodied in the John Cusack film War, Inc.
It was the killing of contractors that sparked the twin battles of Fallujah, the most deadly single battles of the occupation to date. Foreign Affairs reported that contractors were involved in 36% of cases in the Abu Ghraib incidents; and the recent release of Peter Moore was linked to the discovery by the Guardian that his four contractor guards were killed because they were seen as legitimate combatants. Much of the hatred of contractors is blamed on the perception of them as trigger-happy, especially when they are guarding convoys. This view was reinforced by multiple video clips, some on companies' own websites, showing what appear to be contractors firing indiscriminately at cars
Blackwater case casts more doubt on the ability of the Obama administration to live up to the rhetoric the president outlined in Cairo when he spoke of mutual "principles of justice and progress; tolerance and the dignity of all human beings". There is a shameful irony that the "new Iraq" is now criticising America on the basis of human rights and justice
http://www.guardian.co.uk/...