Koppel Admits -- no, BOASTS -- We're Using Mercenaries

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Monday May 22, 2006 · 6:16 AM PDT

2006/05/22 · 06:16

Atrios noted this, um, interesting news item:

NEW YORK -- Little known to the American public, there are some 50,000 private contractors in Iraq, providing support for the U.S. military, amongs other activities. So why not go all the way, argues Ted Koppel in a New York Times op-ed on Monday, and form a real "mercenary army"?
Such a move involving what he calls "latter-day Hessians" would represent, he writes, "the inevitable response of a market economy to a host of seemingly intractable public policy and security problems."

Why is this of particular interest to Kossacks? Let me take you back to those thrilling days of 2004... after the jump.

The article continues:

It is make necessary by our "over-extended military" and inability of the United Nations to form adequate peace forces. Meanwhile, Americans business interests grow ever more active abroad in dangerous spots.
"Just as the all-volunteer military relieved the government of much of the political pressure that had accompanied the draft, so a rent-a-force, harnessing the privilege of every putative warrior to hire himself out for more than he could ever make in the direct service of Uncle Sam, might relieve us of an array of current political pressures," Koppel explains.

Now, back in 2004, the Cons and their media allies attacked Markos for daring to call the contractors in Iraq "mercenaries" -- and for noting that the mercs tended to be a) better-paid than regular troops, b) less skilled than regular troops, and c) constantly getting into bad situations and then needing to be rescued by regular troops.

But now, Ted Koppel's inadvertently (?) going one better -- he's calling 'em HESSIANS.

You know -- the BAD guys who fought for the British in the Revolutionary War. Not for Honor and Duty and Country, but for pay, and promises of land. The guys whose names are mud in our high-school history textbooks.

Thanks for giving the game away, Ted!

(Also posted at Mercury Rising.)
[UPDATE: Yeah, a lot of people think that perhaps Ted Koppel was being facetious. Atrios and I, well, we're not so sure. Koppel wrote the piece in a very slippery, fence-straddling way, so as to avoid actually taking a side and expressing an opinion, the way good satire does.]

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