Kill the contracts
David Price has an excellent guest column in the Miami Herald today (hat-tip to the Dome). The column summarizes the legislation he's championed to make sure Blackwater and other contractors are subject to the rule of law. Along the way, he covers important facts that make this column worth bookmarking:
During the first Gulf War, an estimated 9,200 contractors accompanied 500,000 American troops into the theater of operation. We had about one contractor for every 50 troops. In the current Iraq war, contractors actually outnumber troops. A recent analysis by the Associated Press showed that our government employs more than 180,000 contractors -- many of them armed -- and just 163,000 military personnel.
That's right kiddies. There are more contractors in Iraq than there are military personnel, and their average salary ranges from three to ten times more than the average military salary, depending on which set of facts you want to believe. Congressman Price makes a compelling case for his legislation, please go read the whole column. I support the legislation (and the Congressman) and I hope it soon becomes law.
But I also hope Congressman Price doesn't stop there because the illegal actions of paid mercenaries is only the tip of a gigantic iceberg of a problem. The larger issue is the existence of mercenary armies in the first place.
Rogue contractors have been accused of acting like cowboys in the Wild West. But should we be surprised, when neither U.S. nor Iraqi law can hold them to account? If this administration chooses to replace military personnel with private contractors, it has a clear responsibility to ensure that such contractors operate under the rule of law. If it cannot uphold this basic duty, then the contractors must come home. (Emphasis added.)
This is where I part company with my friend the Congressman. Indeed, it is Congress who decided that military personnel could be replaced by private contractors. By giving George Bush blank check after blank check. By refusing to use the power of the purse to restrict certain expenditures by the administration. By failing to expand and fund higher troop levels. By backing down from the worst president in history because they're worried about being accused of not supporting the troops.
I know Congressman Price disagrees with my view. I'm just an impractical hot-head who doesn't understand all the realities of politics in Washington today. And he's right. I'm just like 200 million other Americans who just don't get it.
Kill the contracts.
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I'd like to hear Marshall Adame weigh in on this.
Since he was there - as a contractor, and seems to know how things should have been, I'd like to have his thoughts on this.
Be the change you wish to see in the world. --Gandhi
Great information Speech and Video on Blackwater
Best in-depth speech about Blackwater, includes Congressman Price, dots connecting the money to the religious right by Blackwater. Great video, great source of information,,,,Nails it....Big time....About 47 minutes in length.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8353942004369311258
Very nice, A
Our congresscritters shouldn't whine and moan about the contractors when they wrote the freaking checks that made them possible.
Anyone stopped to think WHY military recruiters are having trouble making quotas? Who would go into the military when they can get a job with Blackwater doing the same thing for more money.
Robin Hayes lied. Nobody died, but thousands of folks lost their jobs.
Or stay in the military.
n/t
Be the change you wish to see in the world. --Gandhi
The people joining contractors can and are making more money
than the average military personnel and that is exactly how our current administration wants things to be. Privatize, privatize, privatize, and when they are done they own the loyalty (via paycheck) of the groups that they have put into place. It's cynical and wrong, just like the administration that put this reality into place.
North Carolina. Turning the South Blue!
George Bush's private army
feel safe yet?
Robin Hayes lied. Nobody died, but thousands of folks lost their jobs.
Oh, yes!
I used to quake in my boots worrying about terrahists and boogyislamofacists, but now that the macho Shrub has his own personal army, paid for with your and my tax money, I feel like part of the team against muslimomeanies. What a weight off MY shoulders.
North Carolina. Turning the South Blue!
What I want to know is,
how over a billion dollars for Blackwater made it through Appropriations?
In light of this administration's apparent contempt for diplomacy, you would think throwing an extra billion at the State Department would raise a few eyebrows. It should have. :(
What I want to know is:
Are we too late? Is it already too late to do anything about this?
Be the change you wish to see in the world. --Gandhi
it's not just the military
Our federal government is turning to private enterprise for many services that the government was once responsible for. There are whole communities in the DC suburbs of MD and VA whose economy is based around federal contracts. Hell, a big chunk of RTP exists off of federal contract work that was handled in house 20 years ago. And it's not just the military industrial complex. It's every part of the government and it's a stated policy of the Bush administration. No wonder of deficit is balooning.
Loss of oversight
Urgh
Robin Hayes lied. Nobody died, but thousands of folks lost their jobs.
Here in NC, I call it the "Fred Smith Syndrome"
Mr. Smith, a candidate for governor in the Party of Greed, wants to crush government in the fine tradition of Grover Norquist. Except in one area - he wants the state to spend more and more money on highway construction (it is the centerpiece of his environmental program!).
And guess what business Fred is in? Surprise surprise . . . he's in the highway construction business!
Slopping at the government trough is bad, sez Fred, unless he's the one with his belly up to the bar.
Care to expand upon this? Just curios.
One of the pitfalls of childhood is that one doesn't have to understand something to feel it. - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
The Blackwater stench spreads to the State Department
And now it turns out that the freakin' state department apparently gave the mercenaries immunity?
Kill the contracts.
Now I really want to know what Roy Cooper can do to shut down
Blackwater in NC.
If we can't shut them down in Iraq, and we can't prosecute them, can we at least get them out of our state?
Be the change you wish to see in the world. --Gandhi
Don't ever believe that the State Department didn't know
how wild and wreakless Blackwater has been from the very beginning. Many Diplomats and others in the Emabassy , including myself, have submitted written and oral reports of Blackwater misconduct and disregard for Human life. A Marine Commander in Ramadi even removed them permanently from his Base without a single Department of State inquiry as to how it came to that.
The State Department reaction of surprize and unbelief is a all an act. I could say so much more, but I dont want anyone knocking at my door quite yet telling me I have violated some confidentiality agreement I may have made as a Fed. Ambassador Kailizad and Ambassador Satterfield, his deputy, stood by for over two years and allowed it all to happen like so many other things that went on there.
Someone should investigate project Daytona in Iraq in 2005. Wow! What a mess!