4 Killed in Iraq Worked for N.C. Firm - Democratic Underground

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20040...

MOYOCK, N.C. - The four civilians who were killed and dragged through the streets of an Iraqi town Wednesday worked for a North Carolina subcontractor that is providing security in a hostile area of Iraq (news - web sites).

Blackwater Security Consulting provides security training and guard services to customers around the world. It is one of five subsidiaries of Blackwater USA, based in northeastern North Carolina about a half-hour's drive from the world's largest naval base in Norfolk, Va.

On a typical day, a Navy SEALs team practiced shooting in odd positions through doors and windows and cadets from the U.S. Coast Guard (news - web sites) Academy learned how to storm through doorways during a room-by-room search. Plainclothes operatives practiced how to escape from a disabled sport-utility vehicle while under fire from attackers

These guys are mercenaries.

Check out Bremer's body guard and the group of flak vested wearing wannabees protecting the Mayor of Kabul ----Kharzai.

They are all employed by this company.

What does this mean? What was their role? I'm not too good on this type of stuff.

I live only 20 miles from this place.

google the above logo

and I've never heard of the place. What's Moyock near? I'm in the Raleigh area.

Aerial view of their private grounds

is about 20 miles south of Norfolk, VA. It is a very small town.

We are soldiers in search of a war
Fight for no country but we die for good pay
Under the flag of the green back dollar...
(Mercenary Song by Steve Earle)

An Iraqi watches a vehicle burn after an attack in the restive town of Falluja, March 31, 2004. A crowd of cheering Iraqis dragged charred and mutilated bodies through the streets of Falluja on Wednesday after an attack on two vehicles that witnesses said killed at least three foreigners. The crowd set the two four-wheel-drive vehicles ablaze after the attack and threw stones into the burning wreckage. (Salman Amer/Reuters)

They sound like a kind of shadow ops place that trains mercenaries. IMHO we've been getting in to some dangerous shit with places like this. We're probably #1 in turning out mercenaries. And it scares the hell out of me when private firms are training our troops.

BTW, they also train civilians.

They have a website.

"Blackwater USA is comprised of five companies; Blackwater Training Center, Blackwater Target Systems, Blackwater Security Consulting, Blackwater Canine, and Blackwater Air (AWS). We have established a global presence and provide training and tactical solutions for the 21st century."

Our clients include federal law enforcement agencies, the Department of Defense, Department of State, and Department of Transportation, local and state entities from around the country, multi-national corporations, and friendly nations from all over the globe.

We customize and execute solutions for our clients to help keep them at the level of readiness required to meet today's law enforcement, homeland security, and defense challenges.
Any and all defense services supplied to foreign nationals will only be pursuant to proper authorization by the Department of State.

Come to Blackwater, where the professionals train."

http://www.blackwaterusa.com /

that way, there is no longer rule of law governing behavior.

You hit the nail squarely on the head!

In Support of Freedom and Democracy Nowhere...ah, I mean.....Everywhere.

it's hard to imagine, hard to believe.

I'm thinking it does not.

were treated.

But with private mercenaries and private firms providing them I think the U.S. is treading in to very dangerous and very shadowy territory.

and they get much bigger bucks than the soldiers, more advanced weapons and better armor (one of the reasons why our soldiers aren't getting it, production quantities).
A mercenary is a mercenary is a mercenary .... They are not roses.
Another reason why it should be the Dept. of Offense rather than Defense.
Sad, if I were the wife I would have said hell no you won't go; the wife must have said great pay-check and the hubby, yeah, can buy a Hummer when I get back.

Your likely to get burned.

Yes he of the national guard chickehawk type-what this says is how bad things are in Iraq - the bodies of fellow Americans were displayed for hours and the anti-American demonstrations lasted for hours with no response from our troops-lets face it we lost in Iraq-what did these guys die for? To put a fundamentalist Shia government with ties to a nuclear Iran-Bring the troops home now! We are safer now? What clown thought we could peacefully occupy an Islamic nation from a judeo-christian country-Bush what a moron-no more dead-Bush out the door in 04

your wife raped and your country invaded.

Nothing personal, just business.

At another point, Gravano boasts that each of his murders was coldblooded. It may seem repugnant to mainstream American values, but he adhered to the oath.
"I never killed anybody in a fit of rage," Gravano says. "Everybody I killed was planned. I'm a hit man, not a serial killer. . . .
"Some of these things, I didn't want to do. I felt I did the right thing in La Cosa Nostra. I was loyal to the life.
"I think I was even a good person within the mob. I was fair."
http://www.azcentral.com/news/specials/bull/071899sammy...

Pardon me, but we civilians DO TAKE IT PERSONALLY when someone murders our kith and kin.
The Geneva Conventions specifically EXCLUDE mercenaries.
Its hunting season folks, Annie git yo gun.

I've known some mercenaries. They generally love war (the ones I've known) and fantasize on a hero's death. I knew a very rich guy who whored in the Congo in the 1960s. He got shot down in a B-25 in that pointless, egotistical exercise.

"Roland the Thompson Gunner-- Talking about the Man!"

(You can still see his headless body walking through the night...)

Still mad at that SOB Van Owen.

These swine were MERCENARIES. Paid Hessians. Murderers for hire.
John
They're worse than Al-Queda. At least Al-Queda is fighting for a cause.
I say "too bad, so sad, bye-bye."

stomp on these people and "storm through doorways during a room-by-room search" like the thread says, there is no making amends with them. I've read numerous articles articles how US troops barge into peoples' homes at gunpoint, frisk women, stand on men with our boots on their heads. There is only one alternative for them: seek revenge.

They have already come to grips with their situation. They've formally kissed good-bye to their own lives, and are prepared to give it up for their culture. Death is OK with them, at this point.

And we've driven them to it.

And DEATH stalks its Victims

The Innocent, the Guilty, the Careless and the Unlucky

.. how many Americans, both military and civilian, don't get it.

If a foreign power were doing to us what we are doing to Iraq, believe me we'd make their "insurgency" look like a picnic.

And yet so many cannot understand why they don't roll over and play dead.

the current regime in OUR White House. What do you call what they've already done to this country? It's an invasion dressed up as partisan shift.

And what have we done in response?

Child soldiers wait in Bule for orders to move. When this photo was taken, they were the only defense forces in a 25-mile radius. Two days later they too pulled out, and Bule was attacked.

very long but very good.

http://www.zwnews.com/warbusiness.doc

one tiny snip:

In April 2001, an MPRI representative met with the Pentagon’s regional director for Central Africa to discuss the company’s hopes of winning the contract to train Equatorial Guinea’s forces. “They may need our help or moral support,” Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski wrote in a memo on the meeting, obtained by ICIJ under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act. She quoted the MPRI representative as saying that Equatorial Guinea was “the Kuwait of the Gulf of Guinea” and, in a briefing paper three months later, advanced that characterization to “a possible ‘Kuwait of Africa’ with huge oil reserves” that was “US-friendly for both investment and security reasons.” Kwiatkowski also noted in her April memo that the highest-ranking U.S. official to meet with Obiang when he visited Washington early in 2001 was an assistant secretary of agriculture – that after French President Jacques Chirac had spared time to meet with him.

Despite concerns about Equatorial Guinea’s human rights record, Obiang’s currency rose dramatically after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. When he visited the United States as it marked the first anniversary of the attacks, Obiang was among 10 African leaders to meet with President George Bush for talks on the prospect of war with Iraq and peace and development on the African continent.

ended up here because of this:

If you've been reading the news the last few days you may have noticed this odd and somewhat mysterious story of a US-registered cargo plane loaded with 64 "mercernaries" and various military equipment which was impounded

Sunday night at Harare International Airport in Zimbabwe "after its owners had made a false declaration of its cargo and crew."

When asked about it on Monday, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said "We have no indication this aircraft is connected to the U.S. government."

That seemed like a rather less than unequivocal response. And behind the scenes US government officials said they didn't believe the US government had any connection with this operation. But they wanted to make sure before saying anything definitive.

Now, if you look at the press accounts, what's caught people's attention is the US registry of the plane. Specifically, it's registered to a company called Dodson Aviation, which is based in Kansas.

Now, Dodson says they sold the plane to a "reputable" firm in South Africa about a week ago. "I think they were going to use it for charter flights," company director Robert Dodson told the Associated Press.

Now here's a little more detail.

Dodson Aviation of Kansas has a South African subsidiary, Dodson International Parts SA Ltd (According to their website, "Dodson International Parts SA (Pty) Ltd is the African division of United States based companies Dodson International Parts Inc. and Dodson Aviation. The company was established in 1998 and is based at Wonderboom Airport, Pretoria.") And it was from this subsidiary's hangar at an airport just north of Pretoria that the aforementioned mercenaries boarded the plane.

Now, here's where this gets a little murky.

I wanted to find out more about Dodson International Parts SA Ltd. What I found something out about was a company that sounded very similar: a South African company called Dodson Aviation Maintenance and Spare Parts.

They're also in the airplane business.

Not exactly the same name. But remember, the South African company is the subsidiary of two American companies, Dodson Aviation and Dodson International. If these aren't the same company, or closely related companies, I'd figure they often get confused for one another.

In any case, here's what I found about Dodson Aviation Maintenance and Spare Parts.

They come up in the December 2000 Report of the Panel of Experts to the United Nations on Sierra Leone, in the section of the report dealing with the arms trade.

Here's the section that caught my eye (italics added) ...

187. Fred Rindel a retired officer of the South African Defence Force and former Defence Attaché to the United States, has played a key role in the training of a Liberian anti-terrorist unit, consisting of Liberian soldiers and groups of foreigners, including citizens of Sierra Leone, Burkina Faso, Niger and The Gambia.
188. The panel interviewed Mr Rindel extensively. Rindel was contracted as a security consultant by President Charles Taylor in September 1998, and training started in November 1998. The contract included consultancy services and strategic advice to convert Charles Taylor's former rebel militia into a professional unit. The Anti-Terrorist Unit is used in Liberia to protect government buildings, the Executive Mansion and the international airport, and to provide VIP Security and the protection of foreign embassies. The numbers trained were approximately 1200. Because of negative media attention, Rindel cancelled his contract in Liberia in August 2000.

189. In 1998, ECOMOG identified a plane, registration number N71RD, owned by a South African company, Dodson Aviation Maintenance and Spare Parts, as having carried weapons to Robertsfield in September of that year. The plane is a Gulfstream 14-seater business jet that cannot be used for arms transport, but there are other relevant connections. Fred Rindel was the owner of Dodson. The company was closed on 31 December 1998, but during the period under investigation, the plane was leased to, and operated by, Greater Holdings (Liberia) Ltd., a company with gold and diamond concessions in Liberia. The plane was used for the transport of the Greater Holdings' staff to and from Liberia.

Mr. Rindel's name came up earlier in 2000 in testimony at the UN Security Council by then-UN Ambassador Richard C. Holbrooke in a discussion of Sierra Leone (italics added) ...

In regard to arms trafficking to Sierra Leone, Mr. Chairman, we remain concerned and I would like to add a few more items to the record. The principal Africa countries involved in arms trafficking to the RUF - though they deny it - include Burkina Faso, Liberia and Libya.
In 1999, planes landed in Ouagadougou, allegedly coming from the Ukraine, with several tons of small arms and ammunition. This incident, which the Ukrainians say has stopped, is one that we believe should be brought to the attention of your committee.

In regard to trafficking, arms brokers have played a vital role in keeping the RUF supplied with weapons and other military materiel. A well-known arms and diamond dealer in Sierra Leone, Zief Morganstein, in July 1999 arranged for a Continental Aviation-based charter out of Dakar to fly a shipment of small arms from Bulgaria to Sierra Leone. Last year the RUF received 68 tons of weapons from Bulgaria, which Morganstein may have helped arrange. There have been other connections between former government officials from South Africa during its Apartheid regime who now operate as private individuals, including Fred Rindel, the South African Defense Attache in Washington, who now works as a security consultant in Liberia and trains Liberian troops and RUF insurgents. There are other charges about other businessmen who are reportedly helping the Sierra Leone government coming from various countries around the world.

Now, I've scanned the news coverage of this and I haven't seen any mention of this seeming connection. So perhaps these are two utterly unrelated companies?

As of Tuesday the situation in Zimbabwe seems to be calming down, though now there are apparently fears in Equatorial Guinea that these mercenaries were somehow intended to assist a coup in that country. (No, I can't keep up either.) "Some 15 mercenaries have been arrested here," the country's Information Minister Agustin Nse Nfumu told Reuters. "It was connected with that plane in Zimbabwe. They were the advance party of that group."

Equatorial Guinea is next door to Gabon. And Joe Wilson used to be the US Ambassador there back in the day. So maybe he can make some sense of this. I can't. But I'd be very interested to talk to the investigators who put together that UN report and see if there's any connection between Dodson International Parts SA Ltd and Dodson Aviation Maintenance and Spare Parts.

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com /

I just can not forget that Poppy's gold mining buddies Barrick
are in Congo
War is Golden for the Bush Administration
And the commodities connection? President Pretzel's relentless hissy-fit for war on Iraq has of course goosed the price of gold enormously--and that's set Bush Family coffers a-clinking. How so? In the waning days of his failed presidency, Bush I invoked an obscure 1872 statute to give a Canadian firm, Barrick Corporation, the right to mine $10 billion in gold from U.S. public lands. (U.S. taxpayers got a whopping $10,000 fee in return.) Bush then joined Barrick as a highly-paid "international consultant," brokering deals with various dictators of his close acquaintance. Barrick reciprocated with big bucks for Junior's presidential run. And in another quid for the old pro quo, last year Junior dutifully approved Barrick's controversial acquisition of a major rival. (Barrick is also one of the biggest polluters in America, by the way.)

http://www.counterpunch.org/floyd02152003.html

The money behind Barrick is from Saudi arms dealer and Bush family friend Adnan Khashoggi, who was identified as conduit in the Iran-Contra conspiracy. In 1986 he was arrested and charged with fraud but failed to be convicted. In one of his last acts as president Bush pardoned Khashoggi's alleged co-conspirators, who were key members of Bush's own cabinet. As a result, no case could be made against Khashoggi – or against Bush himself.

http://www.penfield-gill.com/presentations/bush_the_eld...

Where was flight N4610 heading?

March 10 2004 at 08:11AM

They were 64 "heavily built men", mostly white. No, they were all black. No, only 40 of them were black.

The plane left South Africa illegally from Wonderboom airport, strayed into Zimbabwe airspace and was ordered down. No, the plane left the country legally, having filed a flight plan to Harare and then on to Burundi. No, the plane was headed for the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

The men on board were suspected of being mercenaries hired to overthrow Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe. No, they were on their way to overthrow the government of Equatorial Guinea. No, they were going to the eastern DRC to carry out security duties.

These are just some of the stories surrounding the flight of N4610, a Boeing 727-100 cargo plane that has been impounded in Harare.

And 64 - though some reports say there are 67 - of those who were aboard, whether they were white, black or a mixture, and whether they were mercenaries or honest men, are in Harare cells facing intense interrogation.

On Tuesday, a company named in connection with the flight disputed all the speculation, saying the "mercenaries" were in fact security people "going to eastern DRC".

They were stopping in Zimbabwe to pick up mining equipment, "Zimbabwe being a vastly cheaper place for such".

Charles Burrow, a senior executive of Logo Logistics which had chartered the Boeing 727 freighter, said via telephone from London that most of the people on board were South African and had military experience, but were on contract to four mining companies in the DRC. He declined to name the companies.

http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?click_id=84&art_id=vn200... ...

Plane Did Stop At Grantley Adams - Thursday 11, March-2004

A UNITED STATES registered plane at the centre of controversy after being detained on Monday with 64 suspected mercenaries aboard by the Zimbabwean government did stop at Grantley Adams International Airport last Saturday morning.
Informed sources told the DAILY NATION yesterday that the aircraft, a Boeing 727 (100 series), with registration number N4610, landed in Barbados shortly after midnight for refuelling before leaving around 6:30 a.m.

Sources also indicated that the aircraft, which Zimbabwean officials alleged also carried military equipment, had arrived from the Hope Air Force Base in North Carolina, United States, before its stop-over in Barbados.

Further reports stated that the plane, originally a commercial PanAm Airways aircraft up until a week ago, was being operated by the American Air Force, but international Press reports stated it had been sold to a South African company.

http://www.nationnews.com/StoryView.cfm?Record=48033&Se... ...

Deep in the heart of Congo, millions struggle to survive after more than a century of instability brought on by brutal colonists, military dictatorships, and war.

Corporate Mercenaries - Executive Outcomes Leads to Bush

Executive Outcomes is the most infamous mercenary company in operation today. Unlike traditional mercenary companies, it operates as the heavy partner in a web of related companies. Sandline international is such a sister company: 170 elite South African dogs of war were hired to crush the Bougainville freedom Fighters for $22m. Just another job for the likes of Sandline international? Paul Vernon investigates...

Set up in 1993 by Tony Buckingham and Simon Mannl <1>, Executive outcomes (EO) has worked in Asia, Africa and South America. Most of it's personnel are hired from South Africa.

Buckingham is the chief executive of Heritage Oil and Gas, which is now registered in the (tax-free) Bahamas. When EO was hired by the Sierra Leone government to crush people's revolt, Heritage received much of the payment in the form of mining rights. Sir David Steel MP happens to be a director of Heritage as well as a close friend of Buckingham. Recently Sierra Leone was thrown back into chaos with another military coup.

Eeben Barlow, the present CEO of Executive Outcomes, is a veteran of the Civil Co-operation Bureau, which allegedly assassinated antiapartheid activists. Barlow is the frontman for the group he told Newsweek (2) in February: "I'm a professional soldier. It's not about politics. I have a job to do. I do it." EO is thought to have a annual turnover of more that £20 million.

The South African government, with help from officials from the United Nations, has begun to draft proposals of legislation aimed to counter what officials called "the increasing frequency with which our soldiers-of-fortune are operating overseas".(7)

http://www.corporatewatch.org.uk/magazine/issue4/cw4f8....

Executive Outcomes ties lead to London and Bush
Executive Intelligence Review January 31, 1997, pp. 42-43
by Roger Moore and Linda de Hoyos

Exposes appearing on both sides of the Atlantic on the mercenary group Executive Outcomes, threaten to blow the lid off the British intelligence nexus already identified as responsible for the February 1986 murder of Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme, and for the current cataclysmic destabilization of Africa on behalf of circles associated with the Queen of England's Privy Council and Sir George Bush.
The exposes appeared in the French daily {Le Figaro} on Jan. 16, the {London Observer} on Jan. 17, and the February issue of the American magazine {Harper's.}
Executive Outcomes is the mercenary arm of a vast
network of British-South African corporations dealing in gold, diamonds, and oil, primarily, but not exclusively, in Africa, that come under the umbrella of Strategic Resources Corporation, headquartered in Pretoria, South Africa. Described universally as an ``advance guard of a corporate network that includes mining, oil, and construction companies,'' Executive Outcomes is active in 13 African countries, including Uganda. For its services, it demands a lien or franchise on the exportable raw resources, particularly mineral wealth, of the client country--in the same fashion as the British East India Company of the 18th and 19th centuries, which in turn functioned as the ``advance guard'' of the British monarchy.
Executive Outcomes was incorporated offshore, on the Isle of Man, in 1993, by Anthony Buckingham, a British businessman, and Simon Mann, a former British officer, the {Observer} reported, based on a leak to it from British intelligence. Buckingham is also chief executive of Heritage Oil and Gas, which in turn is linked to the Canadian firm Ranger Oil. Other firms operating out of the same headquarters in Chelsea Plaza 107, London, include Branch International Ltd. and Branch Mining Ltd.
Preliminary investigation by {EIR} has further determined that Executive Outcomes lies at the heart of the British monarch's raw materials cartels and secret intelligence operations, in conjunction with Bush's rogue apparat:
Through Sir David Steel, a former leader of the Liberal Party, Executive Outcomes and, presumably, its deployment, is a subsumed operation of the Queen's Privy Council. Steel is a close friend of EO's Buckingham, and is on the board of directors of EO's sister firm, Heritage Oil and Gas, according to {Le Figaro.} In 1977, Steel was inducted into the Privy Council, making him the youngest member of Britain's highest-level policy-making body.
The links between Executive Outcomes and Ranger Oil point to operational ties with the Bronfman family of Canada, whose scion, Edgar Bronfman of Toronto Broncorp, sits on the board of directors of Ranger. Recently, the Bronfman family merged its mammoth real estate firm, Trizec, with Barrick Gold, whose senior advisory board includes Sir George Bush. Barrick Gold is deeply involved in northeastern Zaire, where it has purchased 83,000 square kilometers of land. Zairean sources report that the so-called Zairean rebel Laurent Kabila is no more than a mercenary for Barrick and Anglo American Corp., sponsored by the British Crown-backed Ugandan and Rwandan militaries. Executive Outcomes, {Le Figaro} and other sources further verify, is deeply entrenched in Uganda, the key British marcher-lord state in the region.

http://www.aboutsudan.com/action/geopolitical/executive...

Immaculate, 32, in Drodro hospital. She was attacked by Lendu forces and now waits for treatment from locals who have no medical supplies. Bandages were recovered from the ground after looting and are being rewashed to be reused.

Mercenaries aimed to topple oil-rich despot

The inside story of the ties that bind President Obiang and powerful American interests

By Paul Lashmar
14 March 2004

The tale of the 67 men of assorted nationalities now in a Zimbabwe jail accused of being mercenaries continued to unfurl yesterday like the plot of a lurid airport novel.

A bit too much like fiction, in fact, involving as it does a cast that includes the despotic leader of a little-known West African state, the Eton-educated son of an English cricket captain, fake passports, and a shadowy company registered in the Channel Islands that is linked to SAS old boys. All this, plus talk of CIA, MI6 and Spanish secret service activity, and a plane now impounded at Harare airport that contained equipment more suited to burglary than seizures of power.

SNIP...

But if who paid whom for what services has not yet been revealed, the intended target is not in doubt: President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, leader of a country whose lack of renown belies its strategic significance. And for "strategic" read oil. Not for nothing is this land known in US government circles as the "Kuwait of the Gulf of Guinea". Not without reason has President Bush welcomed President Obiang, a confirmed if not convicted corrupt despot, to the White House. He may be a despot, but as presider over an oil-rich state, he is their despot.

The sight and smell of oil is everywhere palpable in the port of Malabo. From here you can see the flames shooting into the night sky from the offshore oilrigs. Every day tens of thousands of barrels are extracted from huge crude oil reserves underneath the seabed off Equatorial Guinea.It is one of the oil-rich sub-Saharan countries that now supplies 15 per cent of American oil. Experts predict that the amount of oil the US receives from the prolific fields of Nigeria, Equatorial Guinea and Angola will double in the next five years. Hence the succour that American companies - and, since 9/11, the American government - have given to Obiang. Vice President Dick Cheney has said: "Along with Latin America, West Africa is expected to be one of the fastest-growing sources of oil and gas for the American market."

http://news.independent.co.uk/low_res/story.jsp?story=5... ...

Gravediggers at work in Kinshasa's largest cemetery, where there are more than 50 burials per day. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, more than 2 million people have died since 1996 as a result of violence, starvation, and lack of access to basic health care.

Plaza 107 and its links to Executive Outcomes

The Diamond Dogs

This commercial enterprise has given EO its nickname; 'the diamond dogs of war'. A recent United Nations report noted that once a firm like EO is able to establish security in an area 'it apparently begins to exploit the concessions it has received by setting up a number of associates and affiliates' which engage in 'legitimate' businesses. Such firms thus acquire 'a significant, if not hegemonic, presence in the economic life of the country in which it is operating'.

One of the Plaza 107 group firms is Branch Energy (BE), an English corporation which registered in the Isle of Man, a tax haven, in April 1994. EO is a major shareholder in BE, with 6o per cent of BE Angola, 40 per cent Of BE Uganda, and 40 per cent Of BE Sierra Leone. In June 1996 BE merged with Carson Gold, controlled by Canadian mining magnate Robert Friedland, to form Diamond Works Inc. This company, which has prospecting rights in Congo, Namibia, Botswana and Senegal, and is now the second largest concession holder in Angolait, was recently awarded the Alto Kwanza diamond exploration concession in Bie Province, covering an area of more than 18,ooo sq. km. In July 1996 the Sierra Leone government awarded the company a twenty-five-year lease to the Koidu diamond fields in the Kono region 'liberated' by EO. Diamond Works has contracted Lifeguard, another SRC subsidiary, at us$6o,ooo a month to protect its diamond fields in Sierra Leone.

Another line of analysis suggests that the prime mover in the employment of EO in Sierra Leone came from the South African mining house Gencor. In 1996 Gencor sold its controlling interest in the Australian company Cudgen RZ to another Australian firm, Renison Goldfields Consolidated (RGC). A subsidiary of RGC, Consolidated Rutile Ltd., in partnership with the us firm Nord Resources Group, controls half of Sierra Rutile Ltd, which with an annual production worth US$200 Million a year is the largest rutile mine in the world. The mine was the regional headquarters for Eo during their operations in West Africa and when they withdrew Sierra Rutile Ltd. took out a contract with Lifeguard.

http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/issues/sheppard.ht...

America's secret armies
A swarm of private contractors bedevils the U.S. military

BY LINDA ROBINSON
Those who recall the awful sight of the corpse of Sgt. 1st Class Randy Shughart being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu in 1993 also recall the American reaction–the prompt withdrawal of troops. Yet when four retired Special Forces operators were taken hostage and one of them tortured three years later in Liberia, no one knew. Brian Boquist, a former Special Forces officer and founder of International Charter Inc. of Oregon, told U.S. News how he and his small aviation company wound up on the firing line. ICI was hired by the State Department in December 1995 to provide air and logistics support to the regional peacekeeping group of West African states known as ECOMOG. As Liberia spiraled into bloody chaos, about two dozen ICI staffers snatched weapons off dead locals and defended the U.S. Embassy until U.S. Navy SEALs and Army Special Forces arrived on April 9, 1996. ICI stayed on to airlift about 40 tons of food for some 40,000 refugees and won the State Department's Contractor of the Year award for their actions.

There's much to investigate. For starters, the Pentagon does not even know how many contractors it uses. Last spring, Army Secretary Thomas E. White revived an effort to count all contractors under his purview. A preliminary report to Congress in April guessed that the Army contracted out the equivalent of between 124,000 and 605,000 person-work-years in 2001. Nor is there a reliable count of the contractors who provide "emergency essential" services on the battlefront and elsewhere, despite the urging of the Department of Defense (DOD) inspector general a decade ago. In an internal E-mail last fall, one colonel urged that the Army logistics chief review all field systems to see what contractor support they entail. It reads: "At the very least, he could count these little beggars in some fashion before they show up on the battlefield and surprise some poor commander with horrific support, real estate and security requirements."

http://www.sandline.com/hotlinks/4contractors.htm

Maria, a mother of three, lost her arm defending her children in Nizi, Eastern Congo. She says soldiers ate flesh from the arm after they had amputated it.

US Quest for Oil

US Quest for Oil in Africa Worries Analysts, Activists

The Bush administration's search for more secure sources of oil is leading it to the doorsteps of some of the world's most troubled and repressive regimes: the petroleum-rich countries of West Africa.

The national energy plan drafted by Vice President Dick Cheney's task force spotlighted West Africa as "the fastest-growing source of oil and gas for the American market," and the administration has promised industry officials to do what it can to promote development. The first African head of state to visit President Bush in the White House was President Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria, the continent's leading producer. In September, Bush huddled privately in New York with leaders of 11 African nations, most of them current or prospective oil suppliers. Although the talks involved more than petroleum, participants said Bush discussed a $3.5-billion Chad-Cameroon pipeline project, whose partners include U.S.-basedExxonMobil Corp. and ChevronTexaco Corp.

A number of administration officials have traveled to the region in recent months. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell paid visits to Gabon and Angola, where he broke ground for a new U.S. Embassy. Bush plans to visit Africa later this year. The administration is paying unaccustomed attention to Sao Tome and Principe, a tiny island nation of 170,000 sitting atop an estimated 4 billion barrels of newly discovered oil reserves. President Fradique de Menezes has offered to let the U.S. build a naval base in Sao Tome, and a U.S. general went there last year to discuss security issues.

The State Department, which closed its embassy in Equatorial Guinea eight years ago because of human rights concerns and budget constraints, will open a new one there this year, in part because of oil discoveries. Meanwhile, it has authorized a firm run by retired Pentagon officials to train Equatorial Guinea's coast guard. The administration has also increased the authority of the U.S. Export-Import Bank to underwrite foreign projects, and bank officials say energy diversification is part of the reason. In October, the bank announced a $135-million loan guarantee to help finance construction of a petroleum plant in Nigeria.

http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/natres/oil/2003/01...

Cheney's Dirty Business by Wayne Madsen

(AR) WASHINGTON -- The Bush camp touts Cheney as an icon of statesmanship, but after serving as Secretary of Defense in Bush the Elder's administration and rescuing Kuwait's oil from the clutches of Sadaam Hussein, Cheney went on to become Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of Halliburton, Inc., an oil drilling firm based in Houston. Halliburton owns the construction firm Brown & Root Services (BRS), a company involved in U.S. intelligence operations in Africa and elsewhere.
Considering the fact that Bush the Elder lives in Houston and was involved with both the oil business and the CIA, the Bush, Jr.-Cheney ticket must be a dream team for him, his friends in the oil industry, and the folks who work at the George Bush Center for Intelligence in Langley, Va. (formerly known as CIA headquarters).

The GOP has a knack for reaching into the past to find candidates to lead the nation into the future. In 1996, the party anointed Bob Dole, a veteran of WWII, to preside over a nation entering the 21st Century. Now Gov. Bush has not only reached back to the Bush administration but to the gloomy post-Watergate era, to pick Cheney, who was President Gerald Ford's chief of staff.

Cheney's links to defense contractors and the intelligence community are suspect because of the roles played by Halliburton and Brown & Root in some of the world's most volatile trouble spots. In 1998, while conducting research in Rwanda for my book, "Genocide and Covert Operations in Africa 1993-1999," a member of a U.S. military team reported that the latter was "into some real bad shit" in that beleaguered nation.

http://www.monitor.net/monitor/0008a/cheneycompany.html

Africa and African Oil

U.S. Military Shows Interest in Africa
By: Ellen Knickmeyer
Associated Press Date: 02/24/2004

DAKAR, Senegal - Top U.S. generals are touching down across Africa in unusual back-to-back trips, U.S. European Command confirmed Tuesday, part of a change in military planning as U.S. interest grows in African terror links and African oil.
Trips by two top European Command generals follow last week's similarly low-profile Africa visit by the U.S. commander in Europe, Marine Gen. James L. Jones.

The generals are leaders in U.S. military proposals to shift from Cold War-era troop buildups in western Europe to smaller concentrations closer to the world's trouble spots.

Jones' trip included stops in Morocco and Cameroon and talks with leaders of the sub-Sahara's military giants, Nigeria and South Africa, European Command spokesmen in Stuttgart, Germany said.

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/world/8028821...

Oil found off the coast of Gambia
By: Jeevan Vasagar
Guardian, The Date: 02/18/2004

The president of Gambia has announced the discovery of "large quantities" of oil in his tiny West African country, the latest revelation of petrochemical riches in sub-Saharan Africa. In a national broadcast Yahya Jammeh, who seized control of the former British colony in a military coup 10 years ago, said the offshore discovery by a western company would result in "a harvest of prosperity".
West Africa already supplies the US with 15% of its oil imports, and the share is expected to grow as the Bush administration seeks to reduce dependence on the Gulf.

The Gambian find follows the discovery of viable deposits of crude oil off São Tomé, in the Gulf of Guinea, where billions of barrels are believed to lie offshore.

Mr Jammeh did not name the company responsible for the study, but an Australian company, Fusion Oil and Gas, holds a licence to carry out deep-water exploration off the Gambian coast.

The Perth-based firm, which was unavailable for comment last night, describes itself as "a holding company for a group of companies whose business is oil and gas exploration in Africa".

http://www.guardian.co.uk/oil/story/0,11319,1150369,00....

U.S. Considers Building Port at Sao Tome to Protect Oil
By: Staff
Associated Press Date: 02/18/2004

DAKAR, Senegal - The United States is studying whether to build a deep-water port and new airport at Sao Tome, an island nation touted as a possible Navy base to protect growing Western oil interests in West Africa.

Ambassador Kenneth Moorefield and Sao Tome ministers signed the $800,000 study agreement at Sao Tome's current international airport, the U.S. Trade and Development Agency said in a statement.

Sao Tome, off oil-rich Nigeria, is one of the lead nations in an oil boom in West Africa as the United States, Asia and Europe look for alternatives to Mideast oil.

West Africa's Gulf of Guinea supplies the United States with 15 percent of its oil, a figure projected to grow to 25 percent by 2015.

The study on expanding Sao Tome's port and airport is in line with a U.S. agreement to "evaluate opportunities for technical assistance" to Sao Tome, the U.S. statement said.

http://www.independent-media.tv/item.cfm?fmedia_id=5769... ...

US opens new front in war on terror beefing up border in Sahara
By: Rory Carroll
Guardian, The Date: 01/14/2004

The US is sending troops and defence contractors to the Sahara desert of west Africa to open what it calls a new front in the war on terror. A small vanguard force arrived this week in Mauritania to pave the way for a $100m (£54m) plan to bolster the security forces and border controls of Mauritania, Mali, Chad and Niger.
The US Pan-Sahel Initiative, as it is named, will provide 60 days of training to military units, including tips on desert navigation and infantry tactics, and furnish equipment such as Toyota Land Cruisers, radios and uniforms.

The reinforcement of America's defences in a remote, poorly patrolled region came on a day when US police forces gained important powers in the homeland to conduct searches.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1122704,00....

Repost: African Black Gold
By: Simon Robinson
Time Magazine Date: 10/28/2002

The sleepy tropical island city of Malabo had hardly changed in years. The capital of Equatorial Guinea, a tiny West African nation of fewer than 500,000 people, consisted of little more than some moldering Spanish colonial buildings, a few palm-lined plazas and the tightly packed shanty towns which encircle most African settlements. Its one claim to fame was that novelist Frederick Forsyth lived there while he wrote his military thriller The Dogs of War. But over the past three years, Malabo has been transformed. Office buildings have shot up, hotels and banks have opened, and foreigners — once a novelty in Malabo — now cram the town's fancy new restaurants. There's so much construction, joke the locals, that if you open your mouth and stick out your tongue someone is likely to build on it.
The source of this economic boom can be found buried beneath the nearby ocean floor. Over the past decade, foreign oil companies have found at least 500 million barrels of high-grade crude oil in the country's waters. Production has jumped from just 17,000 barrels per day in 1996 to more than 220,000 and could grow another 50% within three years. The oil boom has fueled fantastic economic growth — 65% last year, down to an estimated 25% this year — and pushed annual per capita GDP from $800 seven years ago to more than $2,000 today. The bonanza in Equatorial Guinea is being repeated across the region. Chad, one of the poorest countries in the world, will soon start pumping more than 200,000 barrels of oil a day through a $3.7 billion, 1,070-km pipeline — Africa's biggest-ever infrastructure project — that transverses Cameroon.

The island nation of São Tomé and Príncipe, which sits on perhaps 4 billion barrels of crude, is also attracting foreign oilmen. These upstart countries join such established giants as Nigeria, which plans to increase its output from its current 1.9 million barrels per day to more than 3 million; Angola, which wants to double its almost 1 million daily output; and Gabon, which is encouraging more deepwater exploration to prop up declining production. All the action makes the waters off West Africa one of the hottest places for oil exploration in the world. On a global scale, the numbers may seem modest; total proven reserves in the Gulf of Guinea sit at 40 billion barrels, less than one-sixth of Saudi Arabia's 261 billion. But Africa is just getting started. Says Al Stanton, an Edinburgh-based oil analyst with Deutsche Bank: "The opportunities for expansion are tremendous."

http://www.time.com/time/europe/magazine/article/0,1300... ...

Hunt for 'new' oil
By: Timothy Burn
Washington Times Date: 09/28/2003

U.S. oil companies have been drilling off the west coast of Africa for years, but as major players like ChevronTexaco and ExxonMobil continue to strike massive oil deposits in these deep waters, the Bush administration has taken notice.
The United States has been scouring the planet for new sources of oil beyond the Middle East. The September 11 terrorist attacks and the war in Iraq convinced the administration that the United States must move quickly to find new foreign oil partners.

What better place to look than an oil-rich region that lies just 4,500 miles from the East Coast, with an unobstructed sea route to U.S. ports, a region that could supply as much as a quarter of U.S. oil imports?

West Africa is rapidly emerging as a key strategic outpost for President Bush's twin policy goals of taking the war on terror far away from U.S. borders and breaking the Arab stranglehold on world oil prices.

http://washingtontimes.com/specialreport/20030928-12343...

Sept. 2003: U.S. donates ships to protect Nigeria oil
By: Dulue Mbachu
Associated Press Date: 09/05/2003

LAGOS, Nigeria -- The United States is donating several ships to Nigeria to help the West African nation protect its massive oil assets from gangs who steal an estimated 10 percent of oil profits daily, authorities said Friday.
The third of seven former U.S. Coast Guard ships to be delivered by year's end arrived at the port in Lagos on Thursday, a U.S. Embassy official told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity. The first ship arrived in March.

Nigerian authorities plan to deploy the vessels in the troubled southern Niger Delta region, which produces almost all of Nigeria's oil output.

"Our national assets in the sea are worth billions of dollars and the arrival (of the ships) would help safeguard them," a Nigerian navy statement quoted Vice Adm. Samuel Afolayan as saying.

http://www.independent-media.tv/item.cfm?fmedia_id=2376... ...

Aug 2002: US naval base to protect Sao Tome oil
By: Staff
BBC Date: 08/22/2002

The tiny island nation of Sao Tome and Principe, off the West African coast, has agreed to host a US naval base to protect its oil interests. The country holds a strategic position in the oil rich Gulf of Guinea from which the US could monitor the movement of oil tankers and guard oil platforms.
"Last week I received a call from the Pentagon to tell me that the issue is being studied," President Fradique De Menezes told Portugal's RTP Internacional TV.

"This will be good for Sao Tome as it will ensure the future of the country in relation to those that are ambitious and are looking to come to the country when oil is extracted from our waters," he said.

The former Portuguese colony has a very small army on which it spends only $1m a year.

The president was responding to rumours that the US planned to build a air force and naval base after a visit in July by a US General Carlton Fulford, deputy commander-in-chief, US European Command.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/2210571.stm

Americans muscle in as 'big whities' flock to new El Dorado

Rory Carroll, Africa correspondent
Tuesday June 17, 2003
The Guardian

Step inside the air-conditioned lounge of the Viking Club and Luanda's squalor could be another universe. Here the oil executives and engineers sip beer and discuss geological reports, deals and money.
Beyond the shattered skyline of Angola's capital, buried beneath the Atlantic, is a vast store of oil, and their job is to extract it. The accents are British, Australian, French and, increasingly, American.

The "big whities", as the taxi drivers call them, have been coming for years but now the flights are fuller than ever: new offshore discoveries are expected to double output to 2 million barrels per day, prompting talk of a drilling El Dorado.

Angola's government, adept at playing off rival oil companies to maximise its revenue, expects an investment boom of $50bn (£30bn) in the next decade.

A US contractor will help build an oil refinery in Lobito harbour, 250 miles south of Luanda, to process the light crude suitable for American cars. Now that Washington wants west African oil to cut US dependency on the Gulf, its envoys are beating a path to the capital.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/oil/story/0,11319,979101,00.h...

Scramble for Africa

Fear of corruption and chaos in oil rush

Charlotte Denny, economics correspondent
Tuesday June 17, 2003
The Guardian

Washington's determination to find an alternative energy source to the Middle East is leading to a new oil rush in sub-Saharan Africa which threatens to launch a fresh cycle of conflict, corruption and environmental degradation in the region, campaigners warn today.
The new scramble for Africa risks bringing more misery to the continent's impoverished citizens as western oil companies pour billions of dollars in secret payments into government coffers throughout the continent. Much of the money ends up in the hands of ruling elites or is squandered on grandiose projects and the military.

Tony Blair will today urge the oil industry to be more transparent in its dealings with Africa. Openness and accountability are essentials for stability and prosperity in the developing world, he will tell oil company executives and oil exporting countries at a meeting in Lancaster House in central London.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/oil/story/0,11319,979053,00.h...

Oil shocked

A desire to loosen Opec's stranglehold on petroleum prices lies behind Bush's interest in Africa and his plans for Iraq, writes Randeep Ramesh

Friday July 11, 2003

America's new world order appears founded on a declaration of independence. George Bush, an oil man from an oil state, wants America to wean itself off a dangerous addiction to faraway hydrocarbons.
As the president's national energy plan puts it, this is "a condition of increased dependency on foreign powers that do not always have American interests at heart".

Although admirably blunt, this statement has haunted the Bush administration since it was made in May 2001 - months before the attacks of September 11. America's war on terrorism is often viewed as a scramble for black gold.

There is a logic to this. Getting gas out of the Caspian is a lot easier if you are faced with a pliant Afghanistan. If Iraq is not run by a dictator determined to use oil as a weapon of war - as Dick Cheney said " seek domination of the entire Middle East" - then Americans could sleep easier.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/oil/story/0,11319,996305,00.h...

Oil and terrorism drive the presidential tour

Julian Borger in Washington
Monday July 7, 2003
The Guardian

President Bush's trip to Africa this week signals a recent strategic decision to increase America's military presence to bolster what Washington now sees as two important national interests on the continent - the supply of oil and the struggle against terrorism.
On the eve of departure, General James Jones, the commander of the US European command with responsibility for African operations, said the US was trying to negotiate the long-term use of a "family" of military bases across the continent.

This would include big installations for up to 5,000-strong brigades "that could be robustly used for a significant military presence," Gen Jones told the New York Times. It would also involve smaller, lightly equipped bases available in times of crisis to special forces or marines.

The bases would not only be established in north African states such as Algeria, where Islamic extremism is already a potent force, but also in sub-Saharan African nations such as Mali.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,993022,00.h...

US military wants to increase its presence in Africa
By Eric Schmitt in Washington
July 7 2003

The United States military is seeking to expand its presence in Africa through new basing agreements and training exercises aimed at combating a growing terrorist threat.

Even as military planners prepare options for US troops to join an international peacekeeping force to oversee a ceasefire in Liberia, the Pentagon wants to enhance military ties with allies such as Morocco and Tunisia.

It is also seeking to gain long-term access to bases in countries such as Mali and Algeria, which US forces could use for periodic training or to strike terrorists. And it aims to build on aircraft refuelling agreements in Senegal and Uganda, two countries that President George Bush is to visit on the five-nation swing through Africa that he begins tomorrow.

There were no plans to build permanent US bases in Africa, Pentagon officials said. Instead, the US European Command, which oversees military operations in most of Africa, wants troops now in Europe to rotate more often into bare-bones camps or airfields in Africa. Marines may spend more time sailing off West Africa.

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/07/06/1057430078697...

Is anyone able to make a distinction between actual soldiers for hire, i.e. men hired to conduct combat operations, and hired security? These folks weren't going out and knocking down doors and handcuffing people, or patrolling the street or doing anything of that sort. They're just providing security, in this case for some sort of food shipment. It's just like when those Dyncorp guys got killed in Gaza escorting State Department folks to interview Palestinian students for study in the US; DU was all over those "mercenaries".

I know a couple of people that do that kind of work, and they don't "love to kill for the highest bidder" or any nonsense like that. They're just regular folks who have a certain skill set that pays well at the moment. Contract security folks are guarding government facilities, NGOs, UN personnel...anybody that has a need for security but no organic security service. Feel free to disagree with the circumstances that brought them over there, but private security contractors are going to be whereever those conditions exist. These folks are no different from contract security at power plants and airports or private bodyguards or even, really, the cops at the mall. They go over there to protect lives, and they do it both because they are extremely well compensated and they want to serve their country in some capacity (at least the guys I know). They're real people with families, not some evil construct.

Do you trust the Bush adminstration?

And what do YOU think Blackwater is doing in Iraq?

You seem to know for sure. Please share your info and sources.

But I've no reason to suspect otherwise. I haven't, for example, seen any information whatsoever that contradicts the description of their activities put out by the government, the military, the press and the companies themselves. Have you? I would suspect that if they were being used in some other capacity, word would have gotten out by now.

I also have two buddies that do similar contract security work overseas and have put my resume in to do the same. From talking to them and the hiring staff of the companies that I've applied with, I don't get the impression that I'll be burning down villages or torturing suspected Iraqi insurgents. From what I gather, those guys play a lot of Playstation until it's time to go run an escort.

Of course, I know that's hearsay and doesn't stand up in the court of DU.

global unrest are contributing to the problem and if you read the tactics they are trained in above, you would acknowledge that while some people go into this business with boy scout intentions that is not their mission. They leach money out of the government that could be being spent on our own troops...operate often outside Geneva convention rules and are in fact often there to skirt them.

But basically that's a wheels within wheels argument. I don't think that Blackwater, for example, is a force on the global geopolitical stage advocating endless war. They're just providing a service. Even DynCorp isn't that big of a player as far as big, politically active companies go. The real money is with firms like Halliburton and Bechtel, and the security component of KBR is pretty small compared to the rest of the beast.

I think "Boy Scout intentions" unduly minimizes these folks. Many of them are long serving US military vets, and they didn't stay in the military for the money.

I also haven't seen any examples of these companies operating outside of the GC and in fact can't recall any situations where the GC would apply to their ops had they been military.

the Geneva Conventions and the US laws of War.
http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/avalon.htm

Oh, silly me,
how can those dry old documents compete with the silky shiny brochures from the School of the Americas.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/waronterror/story/0,1361,5832...
http://www.soawne.org/SOAManuals.html

and they were big in Kosovo..in Columbia one o their employees got busted bringing heroin back and in Kosovo, can't remember which firms employees got busted in the sex trade.

No they weren't in the military for moeny but when they left and went to DYNCORP, they were.

It's certainly true that NGOs NEED security assistance, but MOST can't afford it. Otherwise, far fewer aid workers would be killed. Tell me, who contracts security for MSF? For Oxfam?

Peace corps my butt.

I actually do feel for the friends and families of the guys who died, but I hardly feel as much of a sense that these guys sacrificed themselves for humanity as you seem to think we all should. Way to rationalize profiting on death.

guys that "buy" child sex slaves, deal dope, loot and rob, and take on contracted killings from local mobs. There are some pathological racists and sadists employed by these PMC's too. That is not just my opinion, it is fact.

When Mary Robinson refused to back off her pursuit of these monsters (in Dyn Corp) as UNHRC chief, some entity had enough juice to get her fired.

Here are just a few links to the activities of some Dyn Corp employees, for example.

http://truthout.com/02.24C.DynCorp.Disgrace.htm

http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/VAR207A.html

http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/GUA108A.html

http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/ROB108A.html

BTW, nobody ever wants to talk about the anthrax investigation now. Dyn Corp is heavily involved in smallpox and anthrax vaccine production.

Anyone interested in joining the Dyn Corp team can learn about possible career paths in biological WMD defense at their website.
http://www.dyncorp.com/DynPort/index.htm

There are rotten apples in every organization. I remember something about some UN employees trading food and medical care for sex in Africa, but I don't damn the whole UN. The misbehavior of some DynCorp employees in Bosnia also doesn't lend too much credence to the description of the entire industries as mercencaries who deserve to die. Many of the people in Bosnia, for example, were contracted thru the UN to provide police support in a situation that was wholly lacking it. Who else was going to provide it?

There's also a big difference between PMCs, like Sandline and Executive Outcomes, and security companies like Blackwater. Some of DynCorps stuff is borderline, but they're not on the same level as the well-known PMCs. MPRI maybe.

Very glad to find out this year!

What a shame, after all. Thanks a lot.

who richly deserve a taste of their own medicine.

When the enterprising burglar's not a-burgling (not a-burgling)
When the cutthroat isn't occupied in crime ('pied in crime)
He loves to hear the little brook a-gurgling (brook a-gurgling)
And listen to the merry village chime (village chime)

When the 'coster's finished jumping on his mother (on his mother)
He loves to lie a-basking in the sun (in the sun)
Take one consideration with another (with another)
A policeman's lot is not a happy one.
http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~rlos/parody/when_a_felons_not....

THAT type of attitude
is the reason why we have guys like Sammy (the Bull) Gravano running around loose while some poor Innocent sap gets to take the fall and spend 32 years in prison courtesy of the FBI.
Tell your friends to stop killing other people.
And you yourself should stop hanging out with butchers like that.

Can you provide me with an example of an employee of a US based private company killing someone in a situation other than self defense?

You, like many other people on DU regarding many other subjects in this genre, are completely unfamiliar with the issue about which you speak. It's laughable to refer to my buddies as "butchers" or "hitmen". It's a completely ridiculous description, so far out of the realm of reality that I'm immediately aware that you haven't the first glimmering of an idea of the truth of the matter regarding these folks and this type of work. You might have referred to them as "nuns" or "lumberjacks" and made an equally relevant and accurate statement.

Mazen's scoop began when he realized that that the U.S. troops were burying human bodies wrapped in plastic in the desert. Initially, he thought that these were the bodies of Iraqi people. He kept watching and investigating the activities of the U.S. troops. He kept developing his scoop, working around different U.S. units and military jails, trying to figure out where the bodies had come from, and whether they were Iraqi or not.

Ultimately he found a source, a U.S. mercenary, who told him that those buried were not Iraqis, but mercenaries who had been promised green cards and U.S. citizenship in return for serving in the U.S. Army. Besides, according to this source, not few of those interred were Americans who had been killed in combat. Mazen had been able to film the activities of the U.S. army, and their secret mass graves.
http://members.aon.at/hpkr/kawther/K20030819A.html

Bye the bye,
I am far more familiar with this topic than you imagine,
and I still say that your buddies DESERVE to die like the dogs they are.
(my apologies to Fido)

Mazen Dana was killed by an armored vehicle crewman, active US Army. No bearing whatsoever on the conversation. Unfortunate incident, completely understandable under the circumstances. War sucks.

I think your familiarity with this subject is confined to the information that has managed to penetrate your tinfoil helmet.

And as for you hoping my friends are killed, well, um...I guess I hope all your friends die too. So there!

will probably be the ones doing the killing of MY friends.
I do hope you get paid well.

I guess I win. My friends are gonna kill all of yooouuur friends, na-na-na-na-naaaa!

when you get back to that "Police Academy"
give my regards to Ann Coulter, and my condolences to the Lindh family.

"We need to execute people like John Walker in order to physically intimidate liberals, by making them realize that they can be killed too. Otherwise they will turn out to be outright traitors."
-- Ann Coulter, February 2002, addressing the National Conservative Political Action Committee -- as shown on CSPAN

are going to do VERY well in your new-found career.
http://www.mindspring.com/~boba4-a/Oftquote.htm#LIVEFAS...

Everyone,
welcome to the Bush economy.

The Bush economy will be a nasty historical footnote a few months after I get back, should I end up going.

And this isn't a career, just a two month summer job. I'm a full time student at the moment, and will be for the next several years.

ANOTHER ONE who won't put himself where his mouth is!!!
Too "fragile" to enlist
and too many feathers to do anything else.

We cannot use the term "chickenhawk" here,
since that is an honorable term
reserved for those whose "cluck cluck" affects the REAL military,
so we will be taking suggestions from the board.

caponhawk? (a gelded rooster-hawk)
pulletzy? (too lazy to be pullet)

I spent four years active and three National Guard. I've been all over the Middle East and have seen my share. The only reason I'm out right now is so I can get this damn degree. After that I plan on going right back to work for the gov, and not in a fragile capacity. So fuck off with that chickenhawk bullshit. It's another blinking neon sign that points out the fact that you have a tendency to pontificate on things you don't know or even begin to understand.

Except that I really don't -- so na-na-na-na-naaa to you, too, and especially to them. I suppose we'll all see each other in hell.
John
I got paid $361/mo to serve in the US Army in 1974. How much are your mercenary, blood-sucking pals getting?

to offer the conversation either.

That okay by you, chief?
John
They, of all people, should know what opinions are like.

Asinine, but not constructive. If it helps any, I don't wish to see any of Dulce's friends get killed. The "na-na-na" comment was supposed to be a rather tongue-in-cheek response to his initial wish to see my friends did. I hoped to demonstrate the immaturity and lack of decent respect for human life that his comments demonstrated. I can see that humor was lost on some.

You are free, however, to present yourself in any fashion you wish.

Love and kisses...

That's a laugh, considering your dirtbag buddies.
John
Love and kisses back at ya. Let's always be friends.

Whatcha buildin' over there, a library of vulgar, stupid inanities?

You must be a paid propagandist, since you don't possibly fail to see the connection between Mazen's work and the evident circumstances of his execution.

Who are you trying to fool?

You'd be with Team Zion if I'm not mistaken.

says that the "mercenaries" were "promised green cards and US citizenship in return for serving in the US Army."

Which is it? Were they mercenaries, or were they US Army? Because those two things are mutually exclusive. If they were in the US Army, why were they not brought back to the US? There have been several publicized cases where immigrants who were not yet citizens and were serving in the US Army were killed in combat, and they were brought back to the US.

Where are the photographs he supposedly took? Or did they disappear in some huge Zionist conspiracy? :tinfoilhat:

The story at the link you give has holes big enough to drive a deuce and a half through without scratching the paint.

does not cover such things.
http://www.najaco.com/travel/news/saudi_arabia/2003/sep...

BAGHDAD, March 25 (Reuters) - A U.S. Army officer who killed Reuters cameraman Mazen Dana in Iraq could have had his vision impaired by sweat in his goggles, according to three soldiers in his unit who testified to an official inquiry.
A statement from a sentry who saw the incident from a watchtower also raises questions about the inquiry's conclusion that the shooter was justified in mistaking Dana's camera for a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) launcher and opening fire on August 17 last year.
Some soldiers from the armoured combat patrol Dana was filming at the time told the investigation they were nervous and on edge. Two said they disliked Iraqis and another reported several cases of soldiers accidentally discharging their weapons.
The report, which was released on Monday with names and other sensitive material deleted, identifies the man who shot Dana, a 41-year-old Palestinian, as the U.S. troop commander.
It concludes that the officer, who was mounted on the lead Abrams tank, had a "reasonable certainty" that Dana was about to launch an RPG when he fired four rifle shots at him without warning from a distance of 75 to 100 metres (yards).
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/B452624.htm

Wanna see just how many convoys of tanks you can drive through those holes without scratching the paint.

If you aren't too busy,
you could try googling MAZEN REUTERS GRAVES to see what comes up.

Oh and I have one question:
If they killed Mazen to get the film would they then turn around and leave it where we could find it?

And as for those foreigners who think that the guns of opression are plated with gold:

On July 26, 1941, President Roosevelt signed an order that conscripted Filipino soldiers to fight side by side with U.S. troops in the Far East. The payoff came in 1944, when GI benefits and eligibility for American citizenship were promised.
The valor of Filipinos has never been in question. But the integrity of the U.S. has. In 1946, Congress passed the Rescission Act, which took back all the promises made and deemed Filipino veterans ineligible for benefits.
Two hundred thousand Filipino veterans, many of whom marched with Americans in the historic Bataan Death March, were suddenly left in the lurch. For their service, for their war injuries, they were entitled to nothing.
http://www.mindfully.org/Reform/2002/Filipino-American-...
http://usfilvets.tripod.com /

Hot lead is cheaper than cold gold or 30 pieces of silver.

involves the fact that he'd been working on the story for at least 10 days, according to the article. He supposedly had pictures of the original "burial", which started the "investigation", well before he was shot. So where is the film? Are you suggesting that he was so stupid as to be carrying it with him, more than 10 days later? If he was so concerned that the story he was investigating was going to get him killed, wouldn't he have gotten the old film out, or at the absolute very least, cached it somplace safe?

Remember the deaths of the missionaries in Peru?

Here's a little more about these mercenary corporations:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,419702...

DynCorp and Sex Slavery in Bosnia:
http://www.insightmag.com/main.cfm/include/detail/story...
http://www.guerrillanews.com/corporate_crime/doc1590.ht...
http://www.citizenworks.org/corp/dyncorp.php

Hired killers -- this ain't the damn boy scouts:
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2001/apr2001/peru-a24.shtm...
http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0513-06.htm
http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?sf=2813&art_id=vn2004033...
http://www.againstbombing.org/mercenaries.htm
http://www.counterpunch.org/fisk03292004.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,4815701-103681,0...

DynCorp around the globe and its human rights violations:
http://electroniciraq.net/news/638.shtml
http://www.laborrights.org/projects/corporate /
http://www.business-humanrights.org/Search/SearchResult...
http://www.earthrights.org/dyncorp/amicus.shtml

There's a LOT MORE where that came from. The question is, why aren't YOU doing this kind of research before you think it would be cool to pick up a gun for money? If you're so bored get on the internet and do a little digging about these guns for hire.
In fact, you're not alone in this regard -- perhaps some others here at DU who are so puzzled and outraged at the Iraqi rage at these mercenaries might want to do a little reading of their own.

If, however, you really want to help people and do some traveling, here's a good place to start looking: http://www.worldvolunteerweb.org / But if all you want to do is make money by packing a gun, then call it for what it is -- you want to be a gun for hire to the highest bidder.

the part about US contractors killing someone? The closest you can come is with US anti-drug ops in Columbia, and that's still far from meeting the standard. C'mon, these guys are mercenaries, killers, butchers, deserving of no less than death! Surely you can come up with something better than some wayward employees and some pilots providing air control for Peruvians. There has to be some juicy slaying in there somewhere. Let's see it.

... to read through all the sources I provided, but I shouldn't be all that surprised.

I didn't see anything which backed up your claim. You don't have to cut and paste, just let me know to which incident you are referring. I don't think you can provide an example of an American contractor killing someone, so I don't expect you to do it, but don't tell me you can't be bothered.

Perhaps you're taking speed reading classes at school? Or is reading comprehension the unfortunate problem, because I didn't say I couldn't be bothered to provide examples, for I surely provided them. Must be you simply "read thru them"? I can't do ALL your homework for you.

Murder, sex slavery, rape, ecoterrrorism, all manner of human rights violations... it's all there, shooter. Have a happy career!

http://www.counterpunch.org/floyd0703.html
http://www.guerrillanews.com/human_rights/doc358.html see: El salvador, Nicaragua, Columbia, et al
http://www.counterpunch.org/gordon09062003.html
http://www.reliefweb.int/w/rwb.nsf/0/08bd40273a401cc8c1...
http://www.pcusa.org/washington/issuenet/latin-001100.h...

More DynCorp:
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0413-05.htm
http://www.narconews.com/dyncorpterrorism1.html
archive.aclu.org/library/iclr/2001/iclr2001_14.pdf
http://colhrnet.igc.org/newitems/sept01/dyncorpsuit.918...
http://www.cfr.org/pub5207/jonathan_d_tepperman/can_mer...
http://www.radgeek.com/gt/2001/07/31/dyncorp_mercenarie...
http://www.dyncorp-sucks.com/pmc/news.htm
http://www.corpwatch.org/issues/PID.jsp?articleid=672
http://www.corpwatch.org/issues/PID.jsp?articleid=6328
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml%3Fi=20020715&s=corn

Also, a full list of Blackwater's clientele would be interesting.

These two facts would add context and perspective to the situation. Like any capitalist entity they probably are involved in activities both laudable and unsavory. The key thing, is it is a capitalist entity and is probably willing to work for anyone and for any purpose, with (perhaps) some constraint imposed by law. It is questionable whether the goals of the state (such as the U.S. in Iraq) should be advanced by contracting to such organizations. In their day, the Hessians were no different, and they do not enjoy warm feelings in the American memory.

can range up to 20k a month for security contractors in high risk areas. Even the food service contractors in places like Iraq earn 7-8k a month.

The clientele runs the full gamut, from US government agencies to individual corporations to IGOs and NGOs...like I said, any organization which requires security and doesn't have an organic security force.

As far as the anytime anywhere anyone theory, I wouldn't be so sure. I believe these contracts have to be cleared by State, in order to prevent any real mercenary companies like Executive Outcomes from opening up shop in the US.

I know it is not my place to give advice, but if your resume gets a response, you should think hard about this. It hardly seems worth the risk, to me.

Understandable. My mother and my girlfriend agree with you. Most of the sites aren't nearly as hot as Fallujah, tho, and I doubt I'd have the experience to get sent to someplace like that anyhow. Those guys in Fallujah, etc. are mostly prior Special Forces and SEAL types, while I have been but a lowly infantryman and cop. But I could use the money, I'm itchin' to travel, and I'm bored as hell at school. I need to go and be somewhere real for a while. Besides...well, it's hard to describe, but it's really painful seeing all my buddies in the military/security community going back in harm's way for the last two years while I sit here on my ass. Hell of a summer job, tho, if I get it.

Do something really worthwhile -- put down the damn gun and join the Peace Corps.

But I was born a shooter. That's my calling.

... for your God-given talents.

Top of the morning to you.

Don't you ever sleep? It seems as though someone has turned this thread into a flammer. Too bad, I really would have loved to have seen more informative posts, like yours, regarding this mercenary shit our taxdollars are paying for. What a mess!

A lot of retired mercs and spooks living in Fl on the taxpayers dime after spending years working for companies like Bilgewater Industries. Air America, Continental Air Services, Kellogg Brown (they built Cam Ranh Bay)

I guess these 4 won't get that opportunity

I don't have any complaints.

UNLESS they have REGISTERED with the US State Department.
I understand that Britain also maintains a registry of recognized "Private Military Companies."

No registration = no government contract = no work for the mercenaries.

Mind you, it is not as if these killers are allowed to do their stuff in Britain or the US.
Noooo, they have to go OUTSIDE Britain and the US and do their killing in Other People's Countries.

Think I am kidding?
See for yourself.

Private military companies have to be registered with the U.S. government and must apply for a license with the U.S State Department in order to export their services abroad, under the International Traffic in Arms Regulation (ITAR) Law. However, as the ICIJ report points out, PMCs can sell their services abroad through the Defense Department's Foreign Military Sales (FMS) program, under which the Pentagon pays the contractor for services offered to a foreign government. Companies often use FMS in order to avoid the lengthy ITAR licensing process.
http://www.corp-research.org/dec02.htm

The Brits.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-...

Like Blackwater or MVM fall under the description of PMCs. I can imagine that some of Dyncorp's activities do, and certainly MPRIs. But I should think that PMCs are defined by providing actual military training and support to foreign militaries. This still does not, of course, make them "mercenaries". Contracting to perform actual military operations, actually acting as soldiers for a government or private interest, is illegal for any US company or individual.

By the way, you seem awfully insistant that PMCs are composed of "killers". I was wondering if you could point out any instance of a US company's employees actually killing someone in circumstances other than self defense.

WTF are they doing there in the first place????
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=18193
WHY the F*** do you think they spend all that time learning to shoot guns at HUMAN TARGETS?

You said that you are planning to go out there yourself
and so I do NOT expect you have ANY human connection with those people out there.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,11...

To you they mean less than figures flitting across a Play Station.
To you, there are merely objects standing between you and and paycheck.

But those of us who have SEEN death falling out of a sky,
those of us who know the sickly sweet smell of fermenting blood,
those of us who have held the hands of the dying,

WE tell you that those who you are going to murder
"in self defense"
are human beings,
unlike those that go willingly to kill them.

The boom has led to two worries. The first is lack of regulation. Stressed and sometimes ill-trained mercenaries operate in Iraq's mayhem with apparent impunity, erecting checkpoints without authorisation, and claiming powers to detain and confiscate identity cards. A South African company guarding a Baghdad hotel put guns to the heads of this correspondent's guests. According to the CPA, non-Iraqi private-security personnel contracted to the coalition or its partners are not subject to Iraqi law. Even the industry is concerned. Regulation is vital, says ArmorGroup's Christopher Beese, if Iraq is not to descend into the law of the jungle.
http://economist.com/world/europe/displayStory.cfm?stor...

However, 500 mercenaries returning to Fiji offer a cautionary tale for soldiers of fortune trusting their livelihood to private companies. In a suit against employer Global Risk Strategies, the men are alleging the UK-based company shortchanged their pay by a collective $12.5 million.
http://www.yellowtimes.org/article.php?sid=1832

Seeing as how the value of the dollar is going down every day,
how about I give you 31 silver coins NOT to go there?

I guess that's a "no" you don't have any examples of any US contractor killing anyone.

Again, by your characterizations of the work and the people doing it you've displayed a total ignorance of the subject at hand.

I don't feel the need to discuss my BTDT credentials, but suffice it to say I'm not a knave in the woods. I have not, however, had the misfortune to smell any "fermenting blood". Were they making wine? Blood in large amounts smells more coppery to me than anything.

Seems to me that the hiring of this firm to provide security is proof of how out of control things are in Iraq, and the horrible deaths proof that our going in there was a needless, tragic, and misguided mistake, as many millions of us predicted --

People here tend to dehumanize those who are over there to help put Iraq back on its feet and to provide for their families while doing so. The folks I know in that line of work cite both the money and a sense of duty as reasons for risking so much. It's a terrible situation, and it will require the deaths of more good men before it's resolved.

logic. These people work for companies that LOBBY FOR war so that they can exist at all. This is not a charitable organization,...this is NOT the boy scouts...this IS NOT the US military...this is a company of WAR PROFITEERS.
I am sorry the individuals dies but THEY are not US servicepeople anymore...they are contract security and in many cases contract killers.

They may have been good to you..that does not make them good people in the scheme of things.

Privatising SO MANY military functions insures war and interference in other nations. Mercinaries and miltary security contract companies are the PRIVATE arm of business and are ANETHEMA to a democracy...

who would provide security for non-military ops, i.e. NGOs/corps/IGOs etc, in dangerous areas other than private contractors? Somebody has to do it.

Again, there's no evidence that these companies have been involved in any sort of contract killing. Those companies that come closest to fitting that description (and providing intel, training and support are still pretty far from "contract killing") aren't doing it with the same employees that are providing contract security in Iraq, Afghanistan, Bosnia and every other war zone in the world where non-governmental entities must operate and need protection.

there is no money for these vultures.
It is in the interests of mercenaries and Halliburton
to have a never-ending war.
THIS is how they intend to drain us all of our livelihood, because most of us work in industries which are BADLY affected by war.

Finally, these people, and I use the term loosely,
will be our jailers in those concentration camps we have heard FEMA has lying around somewhere.

Leanings,
answer me this:
Has the CIA EVER, even once,
been involved in any killings or "contract killings?"

End war entirely, all over the world. Show me a plan to make that happen and I'll jump right on your boat. Until then, somebody has to provide security for NGOs in war zones. I see by your lack of an alternative suggestion that one does not occur to you.

FEMA concentration camps? OK, buddy, you and I come from different sides of the nut. If you believe in FEMA concentration camps and black helicopters and mind control satellites, we're going to have trouble finding common ground. We should probably just leave this discussion where it is.

The CIA has killed people, sure. I don't see where that has any bearing on the conversation, but I'll stipulate to it. Contract killings, where presumably the CIA is engaged by some outside party (Paraguay? John Birch Society?) to kill someone (Jimmy Hoffa? River Pheonix?) for money (an extra 50 billion in the budget and a gross of that stuff they were going to put in Casto's toothpaste to make his beard fall off?) I can't see happening.

But I'm going to get off of here regardless. Make your point and I'll check it out tomorrow. And is Dulce Decorum a take off on Wilfred Owen, Dulce est Decorum es Pro Patria Mori? Bent double, like old beggars under sacks and such? Excellent poet, Owen.

cropped up which WAS the US military combined with other nation's military..this is a relatively new phenomena since the late 80's..it has NOT always been the case on this scale.

Again you aren't acurate..there is plenty of evidence that they WERE in fact used for such purposes in Columbia and Panama....

this was ONE BIG reason people wanted Cynthia McKinney gone was that she raised this issue in the US congress as did Paul Wellstone.

Your quote" it will require the deaths of more good men before it's resolved."

My quote " not if a lot of good people expose it, for what it is, "

Please define a sense of duty

To whom? To Halliburton, to KBR, to Shrub, to BlackBilgewater or whatever they call it tommorrow?

when they get to their own personal Nuremburg each one will prove to be his own
WEAKEST LINK.

And don't think that the actions of George Dubya Bush are going to save ONE SINGLE MERCENARY.
http://www.hrw.org/campaigns/icc/us.htm
The Pentagon will disavow all knowledge
and you will be left to swing in the wind.
Ain't nobody other than another highly paid mercenary
who is going to go invade the Hague to spring a stinking butcher
so that he can continue with his career in carnage.
And who is DUMB enough to suppose that
the PMC CEO is going to side with his carcase over a buck?

What is the International Criminal Court (ICC)?

A permanent international criminal tribunal that will try individuals responsible for the most serious international crimes: war crimes, crimes against humanity (torture, enforced disappearance, rape) and genocide.

Why was the ICC created?

After a century that witnessed the Holocaust, Pol Pot's mass slaughter in Cambodia, genocide in Rwanda, ethnic cleansing in the Balkans, and countless other terrible crimes against civilians, nations came together to create a court where victims of future crimes could find some measure of justice. If leaders know there is a place where they can be held accountable for such atrocities, they may be less likely to commit them.
http://www.hrw.org/campaigns/icc/usqna.htm

Incidenally, sneering at the ICC is anti-semitic since it was established in part, to ensure such events do not occur again and also that those participating will be punished.

How much did you say a mercenary earns per day?
In prison?
If he survives the indignation of his victims?
DAMNED VAMPIRES.
Don't even let the blood ferment in pools on the ground.

but in order to get hired, you have to have a valid US Security Clearance. No clearance? No job. Those don't grow on trees.

Seventy suspected mercenaries walk to their first court appearance in Chikurubi maximum security prison in the Zimbabwean capital Harare on Tuesday. Photo: Reuters

Mercenaries were after Taylor: report

Alleged mercenaries facing charges of trying to topple the president of oil-rich Equatorial Guinea were actually on a mission to abduct former Liberian president Charles Taylor from Nigeria, a newspaper has reported.

This Day, quoting sources close to some of the South African nationals among the 70 presumed soldiers of fortune detained in Zimbabwe, said their objective was not to topple Equatorial Guinea's long-serving President Teodoro Obiang Nguema but to deliver Taylor to a special war crimes court in Sierra Leone.

Fifteen other presumed soldiers of fortune have been detained in Equatorial Guinea on charges of trying to oust Mr Nguema. One of the men has since died of cerebral malaria.

"Sources close to some of the men suggest there was never a plan to oust President Nguema ... They say the west African state was merely to be the springboard for a seaborne expedition to Calabar, the port city in south-eastern Nigeria, where Taylor found asylum," the newspaper said.

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/03/24/1079939716746...

From The Center for Public Integrity, 28 October 2002

By the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists

The Business of War: Making a Killing

An area of vital interest

In April 2001, an MPRI representative met with the Pentagon’s regional director for Central Africa to discuss the company’s hopes of winning the contract to train Equatorial Guinea’s forces. “They may need our help or moral support,” Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski wrote in a memo on the meeting, obtained by ICIJ under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act. She quoted the MPRI representative as saying that Equatorial Guinea was “the Kuwait of the Gulf of Guinea” and, in a briefing paper three months later, advanced that characterization to “a possible ‘Kuwait of Africa’ with huge oil reserves” that was “US-friendly for both investment and security reasons.” Kwiatkowski also noted in her April memo that the highest-ranking U.S. official to meet with Obiang when he visited Washington early in 2001 was an assistant secretary of agriculture – that after French President Jacques Chirac had spared time to meet with him.

Despite concerns about Equatorial Guinea’s human rights record, Obiang’s currency rose dramatically after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. When he visited the United States as it marked the first anniversary of the attacks, Obiang was among 10 African leaders to meet with President George Bush for talks on the prospect of war with Iraq and peace and development on the African continent.

His visit was preceded by a report from the African Oil Policy Initiative Group – an ad-hoc coalition of Africa consultants, energy executives and staff from a U.S. congressional subcommittee on Africa. Titled “African Oil: A Priority for U.S. National Security and African Development,” the report recommended that Congress and the White House declare the Gulf of Guinea an “area of vital interest” to the United States – a designation never before extended to any region of Africa – giving it strategic and military priority. The Africa Oil Policy Initiative Group is led by Robert Heiler and Paul Michael Wihbey of the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies, a conservative Jerusalem-based think tank which maintains that West African oil “can help stabilize the Middle East, end Muslim terror and secure a measure of energy security.”

“For too long official

Contractors wear hardhats and carry lunch pails	pinkpops	Mar-31-04 08:38 PM	#1
You got that right	saigon68	Mar-31-04 08:40 PM	#2
UH OH	sweettater	Mar-31-04 08:51 PM	#3
do the math	saigon68	Mar-31-04 08:56 PM	#4
I live in NC	Mel	Mar-31-04 08:58 PM	#5
Their website says they're just south of Virginia border	rmpalmer	Mar-31-04 09:05 PM	#8
Outer Banks area n/t	dweller	Mar-31-04 09:06 PM	#9
Moyock, NC	sweettater	Mar-31-04 09:07 PM	#11
thanks!	Mel	Mar-31-04 09:16 PM	#14
Means they're paid guns. nt	BullGooseLoony	Apr-01-04 04:19 AM	#98
they read too many Soldier of Fortune magazines	riverwalker	Mar-31-04 08:59 PM	#6
Burning up the town	saigon68	Mar-31-04 09:46 PM	#17
I've always been intrigued by these places	rmpalmer	Mar-31-04 08:59 PM	#7
Just more proof that there are no countries anymore, only corporations	havocmom	Mar-31-04 10:02 PM	#20
Yes!	burrowowl	Apr-01-04 12:20 AM	#36
Wow nice slogan.........	liberalnproud	Apr-01-04 02:11 AM	#56
my sympathy to their families and friends	Skittles	Mar-31-04 09:07 PM	#10
Death to ALL mercenaries	DulceDecorum	Apr-01-04 01:13 AM	#44
Does this justify their bodies being dragged in the streets?	Posinegativeman	Mar-31-04 09:08 PM	#12
No it does not justify how they died or how their corpses	rmpalmer	Mar-31-04 09:16 PM	#13
Occupational hazard	DemsUnite	Mar-31-04 09:17 PM	#15
Yes	burrowowl	Apr-01-04 12:32 AM	#38
Play with fire	liberalnproud	Apr-01-04 02:13 AM	#58
Not Dragged certainly	saigon68	Mar-31-04 09:18 PM	#16
Of course not-they were put there by King George	rfkrocks	Mar-31-04 10:28 PM	#23
What justifies them being there in the first place? WMD's?	JanMichael	Mar-31-04 10:38 PM	#24
Maybe you'd change your mind if your family had been wiped out	0007	Mar-31-04 10:46 PM	#26
By someone who said I'm only doing my job	DulceDecorum	Apr-01-04 01:21 AM	#47
Sorry. Bad shit. Too bad for them.	DemoTex	Mar-31-04 09:48 PM	#18
B-25 hell of a plane	saigon68	Mar-31-04 09:50 PM	#19
"They Killed to Earn Their Living... And to Help Out the Congolese..."	Mayberry Machiavelli	Apr-01-04 12:59 AM	#42
Norway's finest son!	King of New Orleans	Apr-01-04 01:15 AM	#45
Regular Army here. I wore a uniform and followed Geneva conventions	5thGenDemocrat	Apr-01-04 01:55 AM	#52
As long as we continue to	cliss	Mar-31-04 10:15 PM	#21
Its Iraq-Nam an evil place where only despair reigns	saigon68	Mar-31-04 10:22 PM	#22
bush children killer	seemslikeadream	Apr-01-04 12:04 AM	#33
And it astounds me...	deseo	Mar-31-04 10:40 PM	#25
But Bushco IS "doing it" to us too. What do you call the coup that led to	Dover	Apr-01-04 02:05 AM	#55
WarBusiness - African Black Gold	seemslikeadream	Mar-31-04 10:48 PM	#27
"Mercenaries"	leanings	Mar-31-04 11:37 PM	#28
How do you know what Blackwater is doing in Iraq?	yardwork	Mar-31-04 11:44 PM	#29
(sigh)	leanings	Mar-31-04 11:48 PM	#31
I don't know. That's why I asked you.	yardwork	Mar-31-04 11:58 PM	#32
Well, I can't say I know anything for sure.	leanings	Apr-01-04 12:24 AM	#37
Sorry but companies that have decided there is a big profit in	nothingshocksmeanymore	Apr-01-04 03:12 AM	#72
Yeah, I agree with you to some extent.	leanings	Apr-01-04 03:43 AM	#86
You better go read	DulceDecorum	Apr-01-04 04:36 AM	#106
Not accurate. Dyncorp was BIG in Columbia	nothingshocksmeanymore	Apr-01-04 12:29 PM	#133
Oh please	lordwhorfin	Apr-01-04 02:45 PM	#142
There are some rotten apples among them of course	bobthedrummer	Apr-01-04 12:06 AM	#34
Yes, that's true.	leanings	Apr-01-04 12:19 AM	#35
I never knew what someone's problem was with Mary Robinson	JudiLyn	Apr-01-04 03:02 AM	#69
Like hitmen are murdering scum	DulceDecorum	Apr-01-04 01:48 AM	#51
Again.	leanings	Apr-01-04 02:03 AM	#54
The Palestinian Reuters cameraman, Mazen Dana.	DulceDecorum	Apr-01-04 02:29 AM	#62
Setting aside the fact that this article is complete BS.	leanings	Apr-01-04 02:40 AM	#63
And YOUR friends	DulceDecorum	Apr-01-04 02:52 AM	#66
Well then, in that case.	leanings	Apr-01-04 03:18 AM	#76
Hey Tackleberry,	DulceDecorum	Apr-01-04 03:29 AM	#78
OK, buddy, whatever. n/t	leanings	Apr-01-04 03:34 AM	#
I am sure that you	DulceDecorum	Apr-01-04 04:02 AM	#93
God willing and the creek don't rise.	leanings	Apr-01-04 04:10 AM	#95
DAMN	DulceDecorum	Apr-01-04 04:28 AM	#100
Hey there, kiddo.	leanings	Apr-01-04 04:36 AM	#104
kick	saigon68	Apr-01-04 12:29 PM	#134
Well, I'd like to say I hope your friends come home safely	5thGenDemocrat	Apr-01-04 03:34 AM	#81
I don't guess you have anything constructive	leanings	Apr-01-04 03:37 AM	#84
Hey, I just said I don't care if your blood-sucking pals get wasted	5thGenDemocrat	Apr-01-04 03:39 AM	#85
Still nothing constructive.	leanings	Apr-01-04 03:47 AM	#87
Decent respect for human life	5thGenDemocrat	Apr-01-04 03:54 AM	#88
Damn, SO many constructive comments on your part!	leanings	Apr-01-04 03:58 AM	#91
Re: paid players	mallard	Apr-01-04 08:08 AM	#132
Ummmm...your link.....	DoNotRefill	Apr-01-04 03:04 AM	#70
The US media	DulceDecorum	Apr-01-04 03:54 AM	#89
The truck....	DoNotRefill	Apr-01-04 12:32 PM	#136
How about these examples for starters?	theHandpuppet	Apr-01-04 04:37 AM	#107
Why don't you cut and paste	leanings	Apr-01-04 05:07 AM	#119
Sorry if it's really too much bother...	theHandpuppet	Apr-01-04 05:18 AM	#123
I read thru them.	leanings	Apr-01-04 05:37 AM	#126
Or read over them with blinders on...	theHandpuppet	Apr-01-04 07:01 AM	#131
"how to escape from a disabled sport-utility vehicle while under fire"	Eye and Monkey	Mar-31-04 11:48 PM	#30
Oh come on. nt	BullGooseLoony	Apr-01-04 04:23 AM	#99
Apparently these 4 failed that class	RetroLounge	Apr-01-04 01:21 PM	#139
One can't help wondering what they get paid	daleo	Apr-01-04 12:39 AM	#39
Compensation	leanings	Apr-01-04 12:53 AM	#41
Thanks for the information	daleo	Apr-01-04 01:10 AM	#43
Thanks...lol	leanings	Apr-01-04 01:29 AM	#48
Bored and itchin' to travel?	theHandpuppet	Apr-01-04 03:30 AM	#79
Thought about it.	leanings	Apr-01-04 03:36 AM	#83
My condolences....	theHandpuppet	Apr-01-04 04:49 AM	#109
"born shooter"?	leftchick	Apr-01-04 05:22 AM	#124
Hi LC	saigon68	Apr-01-04 05:30 AM	#125
Good Morning saigon!	leftchick	Apr-01-04 05:42 AM	#129
Ya Payback is a bitch	saigon68	Apr-01-04 05:47 AM	#130
Not particularly.	leanings	Apr-01-04 05:38 AM	#127
But I was born a shooter?	RetroLounge	Apr-01-04 01:22 PM	#140
Mercenaries are NOT permitted to operate	DulceDecorum	Apr-01-04 01:30 AM	#49
I'm not sure that security contractors	leanings	Apr-01-04 01:44 AM	#50
SELF DEFENSE!!!!	DulceDecorum	Apr-01-04 02:13 AM	#57
So	leanings	Apr-01-04 02:21 AM	#60
Thanks for your posts, leanings --	DeepModem Mom	Apr-01-04 02:43 AM	#64
No problem	leanings	Apr-01-04 02:54 AM	#67
There would be no duty but for the money..that is the problem with your	nothingshocksmeanymore	Apr-01-04 03:17 AM	#75
In your ideal world	leanings	Apr-01-04 03:33 AM	#80
Without war,	DulceDecorum	Apr-01-04 04:15 AM	#97
OK, great idea.	leanings	Apr-01-04 04:33 AM	#103
The same people who provided them before these companies	nothingshocksmeanymore	Apr-01-04 12:32 PM	#135
It will never be solved it is a ----religious War	saigon68	Apr-01-04 04:28 AM	#101
Defend the "poor wickle boys" all you want	DulceDecorum	Apr-01-04 03:15 AM	#74
Not only that....	DoNotRefill	Apr-01-04 03:07 AM	#71
Mercenaries were after Taylor	seemslikeadream	Apr-01-04 12:47 AM	#40
Send them mercs to Devil's Island.	sfg25	Apr-01-04 01:15 AM	#46
The Business of War: Making a Killing	seemslikeadream	Apr-01-04 01:55 AM	#53
The Blackwater gateway to careers in butchery	DulceDecorum	Apr-01-04 02:20 AM	#59
Oops!	leanings	Apr-01-04 02:25 AM	#61
Where do I begin......	DulceDecorum	Apr-01-04 02:50 AM	#65
Well, were you going to begin?	leanings	Apr-01-04 03:13 AM	#73
And what should you do?	DulceDecorum	Apr-01-04 03:19 AM	#77
Ya got nuthin'. Nada. n/t	leanings	Apr-01-04 03:35 AM	#82
And mercenaries are holier than saints	DulceDecorum	Apr-01-04 03:56 AM	#90
No, but I bet if you	leanings	Apr-01-04 04:00 AM	#92
Then WHAT are we paying them for?	DulceDecorum	Apr-01-04 04:08 AM	#94
Aha, perhaps a path to the root of the cognitive dissonance.	leanings	Apr-01-04 04:14 AM	#96
Sorry --They are Mercenaries	saigon68	Apr-01-04 04:54 AM	#110
First of all, are you able to attribute that picture?	leanings	Apr-01-04 05:11 AM	#121
sorry	saigon68	Apr-01-04 05:14 AM	#122
Yeah, sure.	leanings	Apr-01-04 05:42 AM	#128
Dey were da terminators!	tedthebear	Apr-01-04 03:01 AM	#68
LOL - leanings - The "Born Shooter"	phrenzy	Apr-01-04 04:30 AM	#102
Yeah, OK,	leanings	Apr-01-04 04:46 AM	#108
Please see post #107	theHandpuppet	Apr-01-04 05:01 AM	#115
Anyone	lordwhorfin	Apr-01-04 03:01 PM	#143
Nah...	theHandpuppet	Apr-01-04 04:54 AM	#111
This kind of attitude is prevalent in the underground military	saigon68	Apr-01-04 04:59 AM	#113
I see, Herr Doktor	leanings	Apr-01-04 05:01 AM	#116
They are Mercenaries	saigon68	Apr-01-04 05:06 AM	#118
War is Hell---Audie Murphy	saigon68	Apr-01-04 04:21 PM	#147
War is Hell	seemslikeadream	Apr-06-04 09:55 AM	#150
So	lordwhorfin	Apr-01-04 02:41 PM	#141
Questions	atreides1	Apr-01-04 04:17 PM	#146
Deleted message	Name removed	Apr-01-04 05:00 AM	#114
adios	saigon68	Apr-02-04 10:12 AM	#149
Check out this BS from our state department:	tedthebear	Apr-01-04 04:36 AM	#105
They were thugs and mercenaries	saigon68	Apr-01-04 04:57 AM	#112
this is most interesting..	dudeness	Apr-01-04 05:05 AM	#117
mercenaries	cleofus1	Apr-01-04 05:10 AM	#120
The situation is so "in control" that not only are "Blackwater"	The_Casual_Observer	Apr-01-04 01:03 PM	#137
Security firms and mercenaries coining it in Iraq	seemslikeadream	Apr-01-04 01:10 PM	#138
How much are these mercenaries insured for, and who pays?	SodoffBush	Apr-01-04 03:32 PM	#144
I imagine it would be the US Taxpayers...	leftchick	Apr-01-04 03:43 PM	#145
They have outsatanding health, dental, retirement plans	saigon68	Apr-01-04 07:54 PM	#148