So... who gets to decide whether you live or die?
Well... I guess it depends upon where you live.
If you live in Pakistan...
Or, Afghanistan...
And, what about Michael D. Furlong?
U.S. Is Still Using Private Spy Ring, Despite Doubts
By MARK MAZZETTI
Published: May 15, 2010
WASHINGTON — Top military officials have continued to rely on a secret network of private spies who have produced hundreds of reports from deep inside Afghanistan and Pakistan, according to American officials and businessmen, despite concerns among some in the military about the legality of the operation.
Earlier this year, government officials admitted that the military had sent a group of former Central Intelligence Agency officers and retired Special Operations troops into the region to collect information — some of which was used to track and kill people suspected of being militants. Many portrayed it as a rogue operation that had been hastily shut down once an investigation began.... the supervisor who set up the contractor network, Michael D. Furlong, was now under investigation....
http://www.nytimes.com/...
Who is Michael D. Furlong?:
Michael D. Furlong, a Defense Department official and retired Army officer, set up a network of private contractors in Afghanistan and Pakistan to help track and kill suspected militants under the cover of a benign government information-gathering program, according to an article that appeared in The New York Times on March 15, 2010.
Military officials and businessmen in Afghanistan and the United States told The Times that Mr. Furlong hired contractors from private security companies that employed former C.I.A. and Special Forces operatives.
The contractors, in turn, gathered intelligence on the whereabouts of suspected militants and the location of insurgent camps, and the information was then sent to military units and intelligence officials for possible lethal action in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
It was unclear exactly when Mr. Furlong's operations began, but officials said they seemed to accelerate in the summer of 2009. Some officials said it was unclear whether these operations actually resulted in the deaths of militants, though others involved in the operation said that they did.
http://topics.nytimes.com/...
Let it also be noted about Mr. Furlong:
Mr. Furlong has extensive experience in "psychological operations" — the military term for the use of information in warfare — and he plied his trade in a number of places, including Iraq and the Balkans.
http://www.nytimes.com/...
And the summer of 2009? I don't remember it at all...
But something deep and dark and dank was occurring that summer, something as deep and dark and dank as the heart of British Petroleum PLC, as dark and dank as those deep plumes of toxic oil which brood beneath the orange-freckled Gulf of Mexico.
And lethal. Very lethal.
Ah, Michael D. Furlong... And his band of merry mercenaries -- Robert Young Pelton, Duane Clarridge and Eason Jordan.
Robert Young Pelton pleads that his information was misused:
Robert Young Pelton, an author who writes extensively about war zones, said that ... Mr. Furlong improperly used his work. "We were providing information so they could better understand the situation in Afghanistan, and it was being used to kill people," Mr. Pelton said.
http://www.nytimes.com/...
Mr. Pelton and former CNN news director Eason Jordan are a bit of a media team, Mr. Pelton having written books with such interesting titles as: The World’s Most Dangerous Places; Licensed to Kill: Hired Guns in the War on Terror..., which sounds a bit like Mr. Pelton doth protest too much.
Of course, there are the usual innocuous sounding cover organizations:
International Media Ventures, a private "strategic communication" firm run by several former Special Operations officers. Another was American International Security Corporation, a Boston-based company run by Mike Taylor, a former Green Beret. In a phone interview, Mr. Taylor said that at one point he had employed Duane Clarridge, known as Dewey, a former top C.I.A. official who has been linked to a generation of C.I.A. adventures, including the Iran-Contra scandal.
Organizations who use innocent-sounding phrases as reporting and research networks, news gathering operations, "... all open-source[d]..."
Gee, we just want to get to know you folks better...
KaBLAM!! KABOOM! OBLIVION!
USA! USA!