I don't think it's trust. I think it's we don't have the personnel to do it.

I'm dating a former marine. He has the skills necessary to do what we need over there, but none of the "please come back" letters from the Marines had any effect on him. He had to think long and hard about finally saying no to the $500K that Blackwater offered up for a six month gig.

Why can we pay Blackwater enough for them to offer someone $500k (and Blackwater earns a profit on top of what they are paying him, and also pays benefits etc. for him) but we can't keep people in the armed services? Is it that private industries are better at maintaining military services than the government? It seems like even the most libertarian of libertarians says that the military should be a function of the federal government.

For fucking fuckity fuck's sake.

And Sebby, it's the fucking Marines who do the guard duty stuff, not the goddamned army. Get your service branches straight before spouting off.

Seems to me extremely inefficient to outsource like this, especially when the military dropped so much money to train most of the Blackwater personnel in the first place.

The guy I'm dating isn't the only person I know who has gotten letters. Some of the guys who used to run the military style boot camp that I went to a few years ago ended up going into the private security business. I haven't heard what happened to them since they took off for Iraq. Almost all of them were special forces and all of them were ex military.

I think they called it "pump priming" way back when. Fear did a song about it - "Let's Have a War."

Fact: Your first point sounds significant. But it isn't. We all know there was never any coalition, so why cite the fact there are more BW than "coalition" soldiers in Iraq?

Your second point suggests sacrificing Marines. I'd rather sacrifice mercenaries.

And are you suggesting in your last line that BW employees might switch sides?

I think BW is an opportunist company, and the govt is pump priming the defense sector. But I don't buy them being a replacement for Army or Marines. This is about $$$.

It's too bad that rewarding Blackwater's opportunism and priming the defense sector -- I assume we've all noticed that Blackwater's owner is a big-time GOP activist -- took precedence over winning a war.

I don't think BW is a factor in us winning or losing. They're just a profiteer.

But as to winning or losing, this will sound cynical, but I don't think there was ever a goal of leaving Iraq. I think Bush and Cheney viewed the war as an opportunity to put us into the Middle East permanently, with no chance of subsequent administrations taking a more isolationist approach.

The Cheney Doctrine is an offensive one, and the only way to ensure some form of that posture remains no matter who is in office is by putting us in a quagmire we can't leave. They had every intention of taking over Iraq and keeping forces there, and in charge, indefinitely. It just hasn't worked out as easily as expected.

Hussein's warning that the war would never end is coming true. And who knew the country and "insurgents" better.*

*Most of the people branded insurgents are not.

That sonofabitch Van Owen, he blew off Roland's head.

Could you find us a security-related firm that has a Democrat at the helm? When a ex-mil guy starts a military like company, it's probably not going to have a bunch of peaceful liberals.

I think you're right. I have yet to hear a definition of "winning" in Iraq.

There's a big divide between GOP activist and run-of-the-mill Democrat. Not all of the people running security companies are politically active, or even huge donors. Because they are aware of the smell factor.

Though, my experience is more with the behemoths.

For the neocons who ran this thing through, we "won" the minute our soldiers landed.

And from a political perspective, the war is a huge gift for the GOP going forward. It's losing its bread and butter "Southern Strategy" due to economic issues at home. The fallback position is to have a nation perpetually involved in some conflict, so it can run on the defense issue. Giuliani is already doing that. You hear him offering one coherent economic policy?

Islam's the new USSR. No news there, I know...

So they set off for Fallujah, to join the bloody fray.
 

W p, p.

what "economic issues" are impacting the South? isn't the south taking the jobs?

Doesn't it seem likely that firms like Blackwater are the combination of the unholy marriage of the Bush Administration and the Iraq War? I'll go out on a limb and suggest this without going and doing a little research. The Bush Administration has had a particular propensity towards crony capitalism, letting policy be trumped by the need for political favors. Outsourcing government functions is a particularly good way to do this, since government spending gets routed to private companies (which then give money to politicians to keep the spigot open) instead of government workers, who vote Democratic. Until '06, you had a GOP Congress making concerted efforts not share the spoils. Trying to fight wars at the same time in Afghanistan and Iraq stretched the military. The Rumsfeld Doctrine and domestic poltical calculations left Bush trying to wages these wars without expandign the military. This meant they needed to hire lots of private contractors. Look at the way the CPA was run -- do you imagine for a second they would have contracted from a firm run by a Democratic donor? People with non-partisan experience were passed over for CPA jobs in favor of well-connected hacks from conservative think tanks.

There actually are lots of people in the military who are Democrats. But if they're selling to the government, there's been good reason for them not to reveal this.