Mercenaries are US

[welsh]

More here on the private military companies (aka mercenaries) who are currently at work in
Iraq-

See also the documentary and the website

Hey Elli- are you making this much money?

-

As the Army struggles to meet recruitment numbers, FRONTLINE takes a hard look at private contractors servicing U.S. military supply lines, running U.S. military bases, and protecting U.S. diplomats and generals. Between the logistics giant Halliburton and a myriad of armed security companies, private military contractors comprise the second largest "force" in Iraq, far outnumbering all non-U.S. forces combined. There are as many as 100,000 civilian contractors and approximately 20,000 private security forces.

In "Private Warriors," FRONTLINE correspondent Martin Smith travels throughout Kuwait and Iraq to give viewers an unprecedented behind-the-scenes look at companies like Kellogg, Brown & Root, a Halliburton subsidiary, and its civilian army. KBR has 50,000 employees in Iraq and Kuwait that run U.S. military supply lines and operate U.S. military bases. KBR is also the largest contractor in Iraq, providing the Army with $11.84 billion dollars in services since 2002.

Historically, there is nothing new about the military's use of private contractors, but the Iraq war has seen outsourcing on an unprecedented scale. The policy change came after the Cold War when the Pentagon was downsizing under then Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney. Cheney first hired Halliburton as a consultant and later became the company's president. Halliburton subsidiary KBR is now one of the largest recipients of government contracts.

FRONTLINE visits the biggest Halliburton/KBR run base, Camp Anaconda, in the Sunni triangle. Behind concrete walls 28,000 soldiers and 8,000 civilians live in bases that offer Taekwondo and Salsa lessons, movie theatres, fast food courts, and four meals a day. The amenities are impressive, but some argue that there is a price to pay. Says a former base commander Marine Colonel Thomas X. Hammes, "it's misguided luxury … somebody's risking their lives to deliver that luxury."

And while KBR was glad to provide Smith with a tour of the facilities, they weren't able or willing to answer some basic questions about how much certain services -- like feeding the troops -- cost. Smith eventually finds some answers from the Army base commander, but numerous audits are underway to determine just how the contracts are being fulfilled. In response to allegations of overcharging in the tens of millions of dollars, KBR's Vice President of Worldwide Military Affairs, Paul Cerjan says, "the only thing we can do is stand up and give a true and honest evaluation of what we've done. … And let whoever is making the assessment make the assessment. We are not afraid of that process."

"Private Warriors" also explores a very different kind of contractor -- the private world of security teams that work for firms like Blackwater, Aegis, and Erinys. They provide armed protection for U.S. government officials, government offices, military installations and even military commanders.

"The Pentagon's increasing reliance on outsourcing military functions raises important questions about accountability and the chain of command," says Smith. Through conversations with top military commanders, policy planners, military experts, and contractors, "Private Warriors" explores some of the dangers in bringing in the private sector to prosecute the war.

Warns George Washington University Professor Steve Schooner, an expert on military contracting, "We have tens of thousands of armed contractors in Iraq defending the Green Zone, defending the military, defending contractors… But they're not part of the military command structure." Schooner suggests there can be trouble when private contractors carry weapons and have tactical responsibilities yet aren't getting the same information or direction. Peter Singer, a fellow at the Brookings Institution and author of "Corporate Warriors" agrees: "There's a bubbling resentment … and you're starting to sense a backlash from the military."

Smith obtains unusual access to Erinys, a British private security company. They have been charged with protecting the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and are paid $50 million a year for the task. Erinys is staffed with an assortment of ex-Special Forces and policemen from around the world. A private security guard at Erinys makes approximately $400 dollars a day, twice what a soldier makes. Some guards make up to $1000 a day. While some see these men as hired guns, they do not view themselves that way. They say they are just men with more expertise than the military when it comes to protection. If Andy Melville, a project manager with Erinys in Iraq is correct, private warriors could become more prevalent in Iraq.

"Americans would like to withdraw troop members," says Melville. "And perhaps it is part of their policy to reduce troop members and replace them with private security contractors."

Given the recent difficulties in obtaining enough recruits for the Army, FRONTLINE asked the Pentagon for a high-ranking official to discuss if there are plans to place greater reliance on private warriors and to address other questions about accountability and costs. The Pentagon declined to provide anyone to be interviewed after acknowledging this was a sensitive issue.

Like regular soldiers, security contractors have a high profile, and increasingly, find themselves being targeted by insurgents and have suffered casualties as a result. Indeed, the dangers of this war come into sharp focus in the film. A security guard with another company, who accompanies Smith on a run to a reconstruction site north of Baghdad, was killed less than 24 hours later by a suicide car bomb. The next day, Blackwater lost six men when a helicopter carrying their employees was shot down by a rocket-propelled grenade. In a spike of violence, 18 private contractors were killed during the two-week period the FRONTLINE team was in Iraq.

"Private Warriors" also reexamines one of the most shocking episodes of the war, when the charred remains of Scott Helvenston, Wes Batalona, Jerry Zovko, and Michael Teague -- killed while protecting a truck convoy headed to pick up kitchen equipment -- were desecrated and strung over a bridge in Fallujah in March 2004. FRONTLINE follows their story and speaks to close personal friends and family who claim that the four men were poorly equipped for the mission, lacking vehicle armor and sufficient manpower to fend off an attack.

In addition to lingering questions about accountability in the incident, Marine Colonel John A. Toolan, who was ordered into the city to find the killers, found himself forced to change his original plan for quelling hostilities. The private contractors had gone in unbeknownst to the Marines. Colonel Toolan tells FRONTLINE, "Certainly the next time … I'm sent some place with Marines, the amount of control that I need to establish up front is gonna be clear."

"Private Warriors" ends on the infamous Baghdad Airport Road. In the last four months there have been at least 150 attacks on this 5-mile stretch. So far the U.S. military and their partners in the private sector have been unable to secure this vital link. Smith has his own private security guards as he travels along what Iraqis call Death Road. He leaves behind a country where the fact that business for the private contractors is booming signals how difficult and dangerous the situation remains.

 

[Dapper Dan Man]

I always found the topic interesting. Last year, I actually had a professor who was a part of Blackwater USA teach my International Security class. I cannot deny at all that he was an excellent teacher in the field, given both his academic credentials (candidate at MIT) and that qualification.

As for my personal opinion on mercenaries? Interesting, but heavily romanticized. I think Executive Outcomes was a good outfit, as their work was both effective and enacted with a minimal number of casualties. Some people dont like to picture groups such as say, UNITA, raping villages and enlisting child soldiers in its armies. Much easier to condemn the big bad mercenaries then look at the facts that UN peacekeeping is FAILING in Africa.

So, what to do? Well, most people aren't exactly keen on American intervention in the region, including us. The UN peacekeeping troops are rather a joke at the moment, trying to perform an impossible job. If we are to look to them, the UN needs its own 'real' military budget and training standards, as well as less restrictions on its abilities to react to events around them. This, of course, would utterly terrify all the NWO theorists out there, heh heh.

Or, people turn to mercenaries. Ultimately, the business of war (and it is a business) is utterly dependent on the players. I think the phenomena is hardly served by merely banning the members; in their defense if they are trained as high skilled soldiers and lack transfer to civilian posts, they need SOME form of employment. While all this brings to mind horrid visions of Shadowrun in the near future, ultimately we must work to restrain the problem as much as possible. The creation of an international licensing board, investigation as to the activities of mercenary units, and so on. Registered mercenaries enlisted with governments, companies, and so forth with published contracts. Ultimately, most of these people pride themselves on honour. If one group decided to go around committing atrocities, what worse sort of group to piss off than ex-special forces worried you are ruining their image and profession? I mean, this seems like one of the few 'realistic' methods we have for working on the problem, short of investing the UN with much more power.

 

[welsh]

Fireblade- I think the notion of using private military services is a reflection of our international system. In a world in which capital is mobile, where tech companies can out-source to individuals in foreign countries, and where you have a surplus of trained military men (labor) that is willing to go anywhere and do anything, than PMCs are inevitable.

But don't forget, even Machiavelli was against mercenaries. There is a great book about the use of mercenaries in Seneca and about the problems of having a private military operate within our territory.

Consider for instance that mercenaries are not bound by the same issues of loyalty and obligation as do national forces. Likewise, using national troops is also a limit on the ability of the state to utilize coercive power.

 

[Dapper Dan Man]

Fireblade- I think the notion of using private military services is a reflection of our international system. In a world in which capital is mobile, where tech companies can out-source to individuals in foreign countries, and where you have a surplus of trained military men (labor) that is willing to go anywhere and do anything, than PMCs are inevitable.

But don't forget, even Machiavelli was against mercenaries. There is a great book about the use of mercenaries in Seneca and about the problems of having a private military operate within our territory.

Consider for instance that mercenaries are not bound by the same issues of loyalty and obligation as do national forces. Likewise, using national troops is also a limit on the ability of the state to utilize coercive power.

I udnerstand those points, yet I am merely commenting on the pragmatic difficulties. Ultimately, you must either register and oversee the actions of mercenaries or, yes, some will slip through and join groups counterproductive to law and society. The question I asked is whether you saw any VIABLE alternative to the three scenarios I listed above?

 

[welsh]

Your solution seems to let the market take over and trust to government to regulation. It's very liberal!

Ok, a few problems.

(1) while I would think that fellow spec-forces types would frown on others doing dirty deeds, the truth is that a lot of spec forces types do other dirty deeds too. How would they regulate each other- by reputation?

In the past we've had lawyers and doctors try to regulate themselves- again highly professional individuals who provide a fundamental service. It hasn't worked. In the end you need an outside force to regulate.

Why, because industries protect their own. Like cops have "the code of silence" so to soldiers would prefer to protect their own.

(2) You suggest that there might be a super-national organization that can regulate such use. But there isn't one. The US, England, and other countries have rules that allow for their nationals to go abroad as hire for other countries. Gurkha International, Saladine- are English companies. MPRI and Blackwell are US companies. These major players have no interest in regulating their troops since often PMCs work through government contracts- they serve the national interest.

No surprise there. THe CIA used to hire out for some of its dirty deeds, to people often referred to as "cowboys".

Then you get a company like EO. Ok, so maybe EO was working for Sierra Leone or Angola, but really it got the job and services Heritage Oil. This was a case of a country hiring a contractor that was a subsidiary of a major investor within those countries.

I am not saying EO wasn't effective. I think it was a victim of its own success- that and the mess that tool place in New Guinea.

(3) there is a third problem. National militaries require a corp of seasoned and experienced professionals. It needs to try to keep its best troops. But if all the best troops are going to PMC, all the country can do is raise the salaries of its own national forces.

That's great for those who want to go into the military. But the problem for the rest of us (taxpayers) is that generally speaking putting money into the military is wasteful. Positive externalities are limited and the money could be spent in better areas.

I am not saying that there isn't a need, nor that these industries don't have a future. They do. But that's a consequence of different trends in the international system in which capital and labor are mobile and land is fixed.

Is this a good trend? No. Not really. Is it inevitable?

It's also ironic how the rise of PMCs serve different functions towards different states depending on the hierarchy of power in the international system.

(Let's be fair, the Waltz notion of billard balls (all states are equal in the international system) is bullshit when some balls are bigger than others- Kharn relax!- I can see Mr. Nudge loving this).

Big democracies can pay for this, don't put their citizens to risk, and the states have plausible deniability or at least distance if shit goes bad.

Poor states live the lives of poor states- they are at the mercy of the international system in which big companies can hire militaries that they can't afford.

And you expect these countries to have the ability to control these PMCs? You do recall that mercenaries tried to overthrow the government of Maldives (or was it Seychelles) not so long ago?

 

[welsh]

More news about mercenaries!

In Iraq, Bush's Rent-an-Army
By Jeremy Scahill
The Los Angeles Times

Monday 29 January 2007

As President Bush took the podium to deliver his State of the Union address last week, there were five American families receiving news that has become all too common: Their loved ones had been killed in Iraq. But in this case, the slain were neither "civilians," as the news reports proclaimed, nor were they U.S. soldiers. They were highly trained mercenaries deployed to Iraq by a secretive private military company based in North Carolina - Blackwater USA.

The company made headlines in early 2004 when four of its troops were ambushed and burned in the Sunni hotbed of Falluja - two charred, lifeless bodies left to dangle for hours from a bridge. That incident marked a turning point in the war, sparked multiple U.S. sieges of Falluja and helped fuel the Iraqi resistance that haunts the occupation to this day.

I understand that there were allegations that the guys who were killed in Falluja went in understrengthed and vulnerable.

Now, Blackwater is back in the news, providing a reminder of just how privatized the war has become. Last week, one of the company's helicopters was brought down in one of Baghdad's most violent areas. The men who were killed were providing diplomatic security under Blackwater's $300 million State Department contract, which dates to 2003 and the company's initial no-bid contract to guard administrator L. Paul Bremer III in Iraq. Current U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, who is also protected by Blackwater, said he had gone to the morgue to view the men's bodies, asserting the circumstances of their deaths were unclear because of "the fog of war."

Bush made no mention of the downing of the helicopter during his State of the Union speech. But he did address the very issue that has made the war's privatization a linchpin of his Iraq policy - the need for more troops. The president called on Congress to authorize an increase of about 92,000 active-duty troops over the next five years. He then slipped in a mention of a major initiative that would represent a significant development in the U.S. disaster response/reconstruction/war machine: a Civilian Reserve Corps.

"Such a corps would function much like our military Reserve. It would ease the burden on the armed forces by allowing us to hire civilians with critical skills to serve on missions abroad when America needs them," Bush declared. This is precisely what the administration has already done, largely behind the backs of the American people and with little congressional input, with its revolution in military affairs. Bush and his political allies are using taxpayer dollars to run an outsourcing laboratory. Iraq is its Frankenstein monster.

Already, private contractors constitute the second-largest "force" in Iraq. At last count, there were about 100,000 contractors in Iraq, of which 48,000 work as private soldiers, according to a Government Accountability Office report. These soldiers have operated with almost no oversight or effective legal constraints and are an undeclared expansion of the scope of the occupation. Many of these contractors make up to $1,000 a day, far more than active-duty soldiers. What's more, these forces are politically expedient, as contractor deaths go uncounted in the official toll.

48,000 private soldiers = a bigger army than a lot of countries.

At $1000 a day- hell, I think the army would have fewer recruitment problems.

The president's proposed Civilian Reserve Corps was not his idea alone. A privatized version of it was floated two years ago by Erik Prince, the secretive, mega-millionaire, conservative owner of Blackwater USA and a man who for years has served as the Pied Piper of a campaign to repackage mercenaries as legitimate forces. In early 2005, Prince - a major bankroller of the president and his allies - pitched the idea at a military conference of a "contractor brigade" to supplement the official military. "There's consternation in the [Pentagon] about increasing the permanent size of the Army," Prince declared. Officials "want to add 30,000 people, and they talked about costs of anywhere from $3.6 billion to $4 billion to do that. Well, by my math, that comes out to about $135,000 per soldier." He added: "We could do it certainly cheaper."

But at $1,000 a day = little more than 1/3 a year.
As if wars could be timed so easily!

And Prince is not just a man with an idea; he is a man with his own army. Blackwater began in 1996 with a private military training camp "to fulfill the anticipated demand for government outsourcing." Today, its contacts run from deep inside the military and intelligence agencies to the upper echelons of the White House. It has secured a status as the elite Praetorian Guard for the global war on terror, with the largest private military base in the world, a fleet of 20 aircraft and 20,000 soldiers at the ready.

A private corporate praetorian guard.
That doesn't sound very good. Remember, it was the Praetorians that, for awhile, ran Rome.

From Iraq and Afghanistan to the hurricane-ravaged streets of New Orleans to meetings with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger about responding to disasters in California, Blackwater now envisions itself as the FedEx of defense and homeland-security operations. Such power in the hands of one company, run by a neo-crusader bankroller of the president, embodies the "military-industrial complex" President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned against in 1961.

Further privatizing the country's war machine - or inventing new back doors for military expansion with fancy names like the Civilian Reserve Corps - will represent a devastating blow to the future of American democracy.

A bit alarmist, but what do you think?

 

[SuAside]

blackwater? secretive? where have you been the past 10 years?

as for the problems with Darkwater (iirc), was that their contract said they'd never leave the base without a rear gunner with a support weapon (most commonly an M249 SAW) and without a decent convoy-like motorpool. they went out alone in an unarmored SUV, without support and without a rear gunner. they died. now the families are pissed off.

the real problem with Darkwater imo is that they pay a lot and get paid a lot. why would a regular grunt die for a few measly bucks of hazard pay, while he could go private and earn 30x more for the same work?

many soldiers 'pig out'. they get fat and get a (honorary) discharge. then they go private, work off the fat & get deployed back.

as for further opinions? for a long time a Belgian miningconglomerate had the world's largest private mercenary force under Union Minière (now Umicore). they mostly provided security for mining activity in instable regions. (it is however certain sometimes they got employed to turn around african wars in exchange for mining rights and such)

now, that's all not "so bad". thinking that corporations don't finance wars is naive at best. however, using mercs in statefought wars? that's a bad thing... i'm pretty sure mercs arent recognised as legal by the geneva convention btw... should do some research on that.

 

[DirtyDreamDesigner]

Secretive ?

 

[welsh]

I see little desire to be secretive as to their existence, but perhaps a bit secretive in the contracts they keep.

Lovin the soundtrac on that video.

Here's the problem-
If the war and Iraq was being fought by conscripts then there would be a lot more protest to the war in the US.

But its being fought by professionals who have volunteered to fight- so the general public is not so motivated to resist.

What if the army were completely mercenary? Paid for by a small share of tax dollars and fought by a bunch of soldiers that were getting very well paid to fight in wars that were unpopular? Would the public care?

Doubtful.
But then what role would such organizations have in a democratic society. I don't think its a coincidence that Machiavelli did not favor mercenary troops.

 

[Bradylama]

Machiavelli also wrote for despots.

Claiming that Mercenaries are a part of the "Military Industrial Complex" that Eisenhower warned about is so incredibly naive I don't know where to start. The "MIC" has been with us for decades already. It expanded during the Cold War due to the threat of communism, and now it's expanding due to The War on Terror.

Mercenaries are only a symptom of a problem that we've faced for decades, that the government is using our money in order to finance special interests (the military) in order to create a false sense of security, and enforce our whims on the world.

The difference now is that Blackwater is making the security market competitive.