Interesting. Because from what I've read, there's a dispute in regard to the one incident as to whether Backwater came under fire or not. But don't let that stand in the way of a nice little soundbite. ymmv.

aV

I've heard a lot more than that, including the piece I posted. (Not that anyone but Blackwater is saying they were shot at. The Army personnel who arrived said that people were shot while running away.)

The bigger problem is with the reliance on security guards whose incentives -- as you note -- run contrary to counterinsurgency strategy.

But without Blackwater, we'll have to rely on CIA renditions when we decide to engage in wanton acts of violence contrary to local law. Granted, the CIA tends to be more disciplined about having at least some evidence that a guy named Akmed did something bad somewhere before they pick up someone named Ahmad, but they're already pretty busy.

Rudy: Earth safe from alien attack
 

Time sez:

• (EXETER, N.H.) — Presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani on Sunday said preparedness will be key for all crises, even an attack from outer space.
  
  During a town hall meeting in Exeter, a young questioner asked the former New York mayor about his plan to protect Earth.
  
  "If (there's) something living on another planet and it's bad and it comes over here, what would you do?" the boy asked.
  
  Giuliani, grin on his face, said it was the first time he's been asked about an intergalactic attack.
  
  "Of all the things that can happen in this world, we'll be prepared for that, yes we will. We'll be prepared for anything that happens," said Giuliani, who spent the day campaigning in key early voting state.
  
  Being prepared is a theme that runs through the campaign of Giuliani, the mayor during the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in New York.

Giuliani then effortlessly wove together his experiences as NYC mayor and his neoconservative foreign policy impulses by explaining to the youngster that a Giuliani Administration would wipe out aliens much much as, years ago, NYPD officers gunned down street windshield wipers in Manhattan, and would use tactical nukes to blow up approaching spacecraft much in the way that his circle of advisors suggest be detonated in the Tehran suburbs in January of 2009.

Gattigap

And if that were fact I'd agree with you.

But it's not, because our information is all:

(a) Poor and internally contradictory;
(b) Second hand; and
(c) Biased from either side of the debate, depending what you are reading.

You know nothing about what's going on over there. Nor do I. All judgments should be offered from the perspective of "If we are to believe this news story, which appears to be mingled with editorial, then I think [insert conclusion here]."

"Where there's smoke there's fire" is no longer accurate, considering the polarization of the media into two distinct camps.

Blackwater has probably killed a few innocent Iraqis. So have our soldiers. I am sure there is culpability in some instances and excusable behavior in others. It is a war.

Without Blackwater, we'd need a bigger Army, or international help. We're using Blackwater to avoid incurring the costs (esp. political costs) for either of those things, but it comes with its own costs.

That. Is incorrect. Blackwater's main purpose is to guard high level targets because we don't trust the Army to do so. That's a criticism of the Army. But the charge that Blackwater's forces make up for lack of soldiers is just not true.

This is all concluded based on my review of media sources, so its probably got some flwed info in it, I'd say about the same percentage as your response to it will.

I'm not interested in arguing about culpability for individual incidents -- that's not the point. Blackwater gets hired to provide security for, e.g., diplomats. They don't report to the same command structure. Their mission is not to support our counter-insurgency effort, so why would they? Their mission is to (e.g.) protect diplomats, and so they will err on the side of shooting up innocent Iraqis, even though that frustrates what the military is trying to do. It is a war, and using contractors is not the best of fighting it. When the Iraqi government wants to kick Blackwater out of the country for a pattern of conduct, it's clear they're not helping us win hearts and minds.

That's not so. We use Blackwater as a force multiplier, because the Army is overstretched. If we had enough troops to do the job, we wouldn't be augmenting them with contractors.

Compare this with your post immediately preceding it.

Blackwater has a limited role. And no, they don't fight the war. That's what soldiers do. Soldiers are not bodyguards.

What's your point? We're not desperate enough to be hiring mercenaries yet? Granted. The government is paying Blackwater a lot of money. It wouldn't be doing this if there were enough soldiers to go around.

No, that's not my point at all.

My point is your conclusions are too broad and often rooted in more bias than fact. Which is fine. This is a chat board.

It is necessary, however, for that to be pointed out from time to time lest others here wander into the ludicrous notion your beliefs about what's going on over there are unadultereated fact. They are not. I'm just 'checking' you.

We hire the Blackwater mercenaries (they are a variety of that) to perform a limited service, and from what I've read, they are not filling in traditional soldiers roles. They are trained in security, not to advance military interests.

But you're right. Only a fool would argue they don;t step over the line. That point I concede. But whether they're hired to step over the line and act as soldiers? No. I don't agree. I think you want that to be the case because of your political views, but it isn't.

Protection of State Department officials traditionally has been a function of the Marines, as I understand it.

I get your point that we're not asking Blackwater to retake Fallujah, but that doesn't really counter Ty's point that we wouldn't have to hire these dudes in the first place if we weren't so overstretched with our traditional forces, and if the Administration weren't so enamored generally speaking with the idea of privatizing big chunks of what Marines and soldiers have done for decades.

I'm not sure we disagree on any of this. We agree that they're hired for a limited role, and that they sometimes use too much force. My point is that they're incented to use too much force. They're paid to protect, and there's no check on them (e.g., a real threat of prosecution). For this reason, hiring a firm like them is counterproductive to the larger war effort, because we're trying to win hearts and minds. If the diplomats were guarded by regular Army, they would do a better job of balancing the conflicting goals that situation requires. Maybe not a great job, but surely a better job. Hiring contractors takes the larger aims right out of the equation.

Fact: The number of Blackwater and other mercenaries we have hired exceeds the total troop commitment of all other countries, including England, in Iraq. The numbers are close, but with the in progress British withdrawal, Blackwater wins. A coalition of the willing, indeed.

As to security, give me marines any day - they are young and green enough to be willing to die for the mission, and they are likely to be motivated by patriotism more than money. Paid merceneries are just that - mercenary. In terms of security, merceneries have always been questionable security risks - if they'll kill for hire for you, they'll do it for someone else, too.

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.

An Inconvenient Truth, indeed.

so you're saying it's gold-plated toilet seats all over again?

Damn. I thought it was China. OTOH, perhaps the Yellow Horde is simply a good fallback in case the Swarthy Horde doesn't keep voters going to the polls.

There's no traction in that for the GOP. China and India are the bogeymen for the Lou Dobbs protectionists.

And the cure's the same one people have been offering for 100 years - term limits. This is why Democrats who advocate higher taxes drive me nuts. For what? To route the money into the system you describe?

Why is term limits the cure for a problem we didn't have ten years ago?

eta: If the problem is a combination of political patronage and trying to fight a war without an Army, why do you think term limits will fix anything? Won't it just prompt legislators to cash in quicker?

we have term limits here. a few weeks ago the state almost shut down because there were so few people in the legislature that knew how to get deals done. so they are a bad idea.

i'm counting this. Hank 334-21

Actually, when you add up all costs, it would not surprise me in the slightest to learn that the USA pays well over $500K per year per GI on active duty. The only difference is that Blackwater pays cash in the current FY, and piggybacks off the uniformed services for infrastructure and probably some benefits.

2. Kind of like how in-house counsel seem underpaid compared to their billable-equivalents in a law firm.

I suspect the NPV of benefits to an enlisted soldier are quite a bit higher than the $40k they nominally get to start.

I waited too long to get out of the private sector because I had been taught to compare apples to apples, and law firm life offered a lot of apples. Which is all well and good, except when you're deciding which pile of fruit is bigger and one pile has a big fucking orange in it.