Rob from the mercenaries and give to the troops

I teach writing at community college, and had a conservative student who was a Marine who had served in Iraq, and he seemed to hate Blackwater and the rest of the mercenaries as much as any lefty does.

Their presence is seriously demoralizing to our troops.

It occurred to me that even conservatives would support eliminating mercenaries from a ''support the troops'' angle.

Simply pledge to take the money from the mercenaries and give it to the troops.

And if we canceled the mercenary contracts and used every penny that had gone to them to raise the pay of our troops, especially those most at risk of being poached by mercenary companies, we would still end up saving money.

How?

Every former special forces, pilot, or other badass who leaves the military early to join a mercenary outfit cost a lot to train, and training their replacement will cost a lot. We would prevent that loss by retaining them in the regular military. (We would also cut off the gift of that taxpayer funded training to those companies).

Save money, support the troops, look like the good guys on the international stage...that would be tough for even the corrupt politicians who set up the contracts and get the kickbacks to argue against.

War Profiteers angry over Wall Street Bailout

No bid contract recipients, mercenaries, and those who profited from the Bush/Cheney War on Terror and invasion of Iraq were silent last fall when the Wall Street bailout of hundreds of billions of dollars was rushed through Congress, but now they are speaking out.

"We didn't want to say anything before the election when there was still a chance that McCain might win, or before the inauguration when there was still a chance a 'national emergency' might prevent the inauguration of this new president," said Griffin Thorpe, spokesman for the Defense & Rebuilding Industries lobby, "but now we simply cannot hide the sense of betrayal we felt and continue to feel."

Thorpe said his various member corporations appreciated the no-bid contracts, lack of oversight, and various cost-inflation tricks allowed in "cost-plus" contracts like setting trucks on fire that got flat tires so they could call the whole truck a loss. But he says the money they got actually required some token amount of work unlike the Wall Street bailout.

"Arms manufacturers may overcharge for their products, but they do work hard to make depleted uranium shells that melt tank armor like butter, white phosphorus shells that burn people from the inside out and outside in at the same time, and cluster bombs that keep on working for years after they are dropped, as kids mistake unexploded submunitions for toys," said Thorpe.

One rebuilding contractor sent Thorpe a tearful letter saying that if he knew Washington was going to give Wall Street money for absolutely nothing, he would have done an even shoddier job of building a hospital in Iraq, so he could have kept more of the money for himself. His letter said, "Sure, the floor of our operating room was cracked so ants could get in, and when the toilets flushed, sewage rained down on the maternity ward, but we could have made so much more money if we just put in a dirt floor and no plumbing at all."

Thorpe arranged for me to meet some of his clients at L'Auberge Provencale outside of Washington.

A burly mercenary contractor CEO's eyes welled up with tears as he stared at his sauteed escargot. "Bush & Cheney made me rich, but it cost me something. Sometimes the mothers of one of our dead mercs will show up at our office or some damn reporter will catch me at the mall and ask why my guys throw grenades in every daycare center they see. You can't imagine the torment I feel until one of my guys cuts their brake lines or smothers them with their own pillow in their sleep. It puts me and my company at a legal risk that we never have to face overseas."

The mercenary executive said he is having his men trade in their body armor and AK-47s for Armani suits and briefcases, and converting his company to a hedge fund.

"I didn't get this rich to put up with actually working when I don't have to," he said.

Most upset was an unexpected guest: an oil company executive. He said Cheney made his industry go through elaborate secret meetings to plan the invasion of Iraq and install a puppet government that would in turn give American companies most of the tens of trillions of dollars in profits from pumping their oil. "All that work has pretty much fallen apart and we're not going to end up with a much better deal than we would have with Saddam. Sure WE didn't pay for the war, but we had to wait and wait for the Iraqis to pass the oil law that would show us the money, and now they probably never will. "

Even without the deals on their terms, oil companies are still reaping the greatest profits of any corporations in history, but the executive was despondent nonetheless.

"To think of all those years looking for oil in the burning sand, bribing dictators, snuffing democratically elected leaders, dealing with the goddamn environmentalists, and telling the Congress which tax breaks and subsidies to give us," he said. "We could have made more if we just opened an investment bank on Wall Street, fucked up everything we touched, then asked Washington for a handout."

Blackwater mercenary logo contest: my entries

Blackwater, the Republican mercenary company, recently changed their logo, removing crosshairs to make it look less violent.

This inspired Wired to run a contest to design a better logo. Here's my efforts followed by my favorites of other people's:


MINE:






OTHER PEOPLE'S EFFORTS:

This is a reference to a SOUTH PARK reference to COOL HAND LUKE. Cartman is saying, "Respect mah authoritay!!!!"

Order early for this holiday season:

click to see full-sized album cover

More entries in the wired contest

WONKETTE: hooker going to Iraq Green Zone says NO troops--private contractors ONLY

Wonkette did a generally snarky piece on sending escorts over to entertain the hired guns, but one part of the escorts post stood out:

My apologies but at this time I am unable to plan any meetings w/active duty military. (*The members of PMC community has an exclusive arrangement during this visit*) Kisses ~Tori

http://wonkette.com/politics/sex-on-the-breach-dept\'/i...

I would not necessarily advocate sending hookers over to Iraq, but if some were going anyway, they should offer their services to every soldier before a single mercenary or dickless ass weasel from Liberty University cowering in the Green Zone while he privatizes Iraq's water or something.

Maybe that's how Democrats could end the war--simply stop funding escorts being flown into the Green Zone until it turns into one big blue ball on the map with the righties begging for the helicopter on the roof to take them home.

Almost as many CONTRACTORS in IRAQ as TROOPS.

There are about 140,000 US troops in Iraq and 100,000 private contractors.

Congressman Dennis Kucinich has said the fastest way to end the war would be to defund it, as was finally done with Vietnam.

Unlike Nixon and Ford though, Bush might be tempted to leave the troops in place without bullets and supplies as hostages protecting what he thinks he has rightfully stolen.

A better approach would be to defund the private contractors, return support functions to the military and give rebuilding money directly to the Iraqis.

Even if this didn't bring an immediate end to the war, a lot of the torture and abuses of Iraqis have been done by private contractors, and seeing those guys pack up and leave might earn our troops some good will with the locals.

Althought the primary reason the Bushies love to use them is to fill their friends pockets, a secondary benefit is these guys aren't accountable under the UCMJ.

We should have a law that these parasites can be tried here for crimes they commit overseas on the taxpayer dime or if they don't work directly for the government for crimes they commit in our war zone or occuppied territory.

We need to cut off the blood flow to that tumor before the next war, preferably before this one is even over.


Here's a video of what are tax dollars are buying--assholes shooting at random Iraqis on the road (they shot this video themselves):



KEY EXCERPTS:

Census Counts 100,000 Contractors in Iraq
Civilian Number, Duties Are Issues

By Renae Merle
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, December 5, 2006; D01

There are about 100,000 government contractors operating in Iraq, not counting subcontractors, a total that is approaching the size of the U.S. military force there, according to the military's first census of the growing population of civilians operating in the battlefield.

It is also 10 times the estimated number of contractors that deployed during the Persian Gulf War in 1991, reflecting the Pentagon's growing post-Cold War reliance on contractors for such jobs as providing security, interrogating prisoners, cooking meals, fixing equipment and constructing bases that were once reserved for soldiers. [note: we had three times as many troops there then]

In addition to about 140,000 U.S. troops, Iraq is now filled with a hodgepodge of contractors. DynCorp International has about 1,500 employees in Iraq, including about 700 helping train the police force. Blackwater USA has more than 1,000 employees in the country, most of them providing private security. Kellogg, Brown and Root, one of the largest contractors in Iraq, said it does not delineate its workforce by country but that it has more than 50,000 employees and subcontractors working in Iraq, Afghanistan and Kuwait. MPRI, a unit of L-3 Communications, has about 500 employees working on 12 contracts, including providing mentors to the Iraqi Defense Ministry for strategic planning, budgeting and establishing its public affairs office. Titan, another L-3 division, has 6,500 linguists in the country.

The Pentagon's latest estimate "further demonstrates the need for Congress to finally engage in responsible, serious and aggressive oversight over the questionable and growing U.S. practice of private military contracting," said Rep. Janice D. Schakowsky (D-Ill.), who has been critical of the military's reliance on contractors.

FULL TEXT:

Census Counts 100,000 Contractors in Iraq





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