Private security firms call for more firepower in combat zone

[seemslikeadream]

Coalition forces do little to help as bodyguards protecting foreign workers are targeted by deadly insurgents

Jamie Wilson
Saturday April 17, 2004
The Guardian

Private military companies guarding foreign contractors in Iraq are demanding the right to carry more powerful weapons after the deaths of a number of bodyguards during a series of major battles with Iraqi insurgents.
At least six former special forces soldiers have been killed in Iraq since the beginning of the month, and there has been mounting concern within the industry that coalition forces have been unable or unwilling to come to their aid when they have been under fire.

The proposed move is likely to add to concerns about the accountability and regulation of private military companies in Iraq as well as illustrating the "grey zone" between their formal role as bodyguards and the realities of operating during an insurgency, when the whole country can become a combat zone.

The Guardian has obtained details of a firefight in the town of Kut, 100 miles south-east of Baghdad, between Iraqi insurgents and five security personnel of the Hart Group, a Bermuda-registered security consultancy run by former SAS and Scots Guards officer Richard Bethell, the son of Lord Westbury.


more
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1193871,00.html

[stevedeshazer]

1. What the hell did they expect?

Sweets and flowers?

[TexasMexican]

2. What do they want?

Apaches and Abrahms?

[alittlelark]

3. What do they need?

They need to quit. They have that option - unlike the US Army and Nat. Guardsmen - they can, and should quit.

End of story.

[Eye and Monkey]

14. What will they get?

The answer to that will determine whether big-time private armies crash and burn in Iraq, or - - - - - -

[Name removed]

4. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[TexasMexican]

10. I dont agree with you there.

[mobuto]

12. Shame on you

[DulceDecorum]

5. Better and better

The number of mercenaries is diminishing daily.
Why should ANYONE come their aid?
THEY are the problem, never the solution.
The humans take care of the humans as the jackals perish for the paycheck of their CEO.


Take me to the power
Take me to the heat
Take me to the cleaners
If it's open to the street

Something's got to pay off
Something's got to break
Someone's got a fortune that they're begging
Me to take

-- Billy Joel,
Easy Money.

[seemslikeadream]

7. Masters of War

Come you masters of war
You that build all the guns
You that build the death planes
You that build the big bombs
You that hide behind walls
You that hide behind desks
I just want you to know
I can see through your masks

You that never done nothin'
But build to destroy
You play with my world
Like it's your little toy
You put a gun in my hand
And you hide from my eyes
And you turn and run farther
When the fast bullets fly

Like Judas of old
You lie and deceive
A world war can be won
You want me to believe
But I see through your eyes
And I see through your brain
Like I see through the water
That runs down my drain

You fasten the triggers
For the others to fire
Then you set back and watch
When the death count gets higher
You hide in your mansion
As young people's blood
Flows out of their bodies
And is buried in the mud

You've thrown the worst fear
That can ever be hurled
Fear to bring children
Into the world
For threatening my baby
Unborn and unnamed
You ain't worth the blood
That runs in your veins

How much do I know
To talk out of turn
You might say that I'm young
You might say I'm unlearned
But there's one thing I know
Though I'm younger than you
Even Jesus would never
Forgive what you do

Let me ask you one question
Is your money that good
Will it buy you forgiveness
Do you think that it could
I think you will find
When your death takes its toll
All the money you made
Will never buy back your soul

And I hope that you die
And your death'll come soon
I will follow your casket
In the pale afternoon
And I'll watch while you're lowered
Down to your deathbed
And I'll stand o'er your grave
'Til I'm sure that you're dead

Dylan

[DulceDecorum]

6. What happens to wounded mercenaries?

Do they have an HMO that covers combat wounds?
Do they have life insurance?
What are the premiums?
Are those extra payments built into the contracts that the Pentagon is so generously handing out?

Or do the US taxpayers have to pay extra for this guy to lie up in the Mayo Clinic
while the grunts sit it out in the latrines of Fort Stewart?

[DemoTex]

8. War profiteers doing what the UN would be doing ...

... were it not for the vapid, lesser Bu$h and his PNAC cabal. Hell, this is one reason we are there, to enrich the buddies and sugar-daddies of these insane warmongers. And to teach the UN a lesson.

Oh, hell. Capitulate. Give them F-16s armed with tactical nukes. There are plenty of out-of-work pilots who would love to join the mercenary forces in Iraq.

[seemslikeadream]

9. Soldiers And Fortune

.......

For instance, two of the most violent actions in recent days in Iraq were not what we thought they were. A bloody attack by hundreds of Iraqi militia on the U.S. government's headquarters in Najaf last week was defeated not by valiant U.S. soldiers—as the press first was led to believe—but by eight mercenaries from a private American security firm.

One such private contractor—we'll call him Jerry—just recently returned from a stint in Iraq. He was paid $174,000 a year, he said, more than four times the officer's salary he was pulling down after 27 years with the military. But he was just one small part of the food chain of private contractors who are making billions of dollars a year in Iraq, supporting the Coalition military.

Jerry was hired by a private security company in Louisiana to provide protection for another private company, U.S.A. Environmental, which has been contracted by the Army Corps of Engineers to get rid of captured Iraqi military supplies at a place called Taji, the largest ammunition dump in Iraq. It's a dangerous place, and to do their job in Iraq, the folks at U.S.A. Environmental have to be protected. That's where the company that hired Jerry and scores of other former troops like him comes in.

But they aren't the only ones. Another of the companies supplying security guards was set up by a former Iraqi army colonel, also cashing in on the Coalition bonanza. He's hired 240 Iraqis, all former soldiers, to help patrol the huge ammunition dump. "Each of them makes $300 a month," says Jerry. "If they got paid $60 a month before they were lucky."

more
http://www.tompaine.com/feature2.cfm/ID/10243

[seemslikeadream]

11. Kuwaiti firm hires Indian ex-servicemen as mercenaries for Iraq

KOCHI, JAN 16: Around 500 ex-servicemen, who had served in various fighting units of the Indian Army, have been recruited from the central districts of Kerala for deployment in Iraq to guard US interests in the Saddam land.

Termed as the first ever 'Indian regiment' to work as a mercenary force for the US, the recruitment was done by a Kuwaiti company working for the US Army without the knowledge of the Central Government and other bodies responsible for the welfare of ex-servicemen.

It may be recalled that the Vajpayee Government had virtually turned down a US request to send a peace-keeping force to Iraq.

The first batch of 300 ex-soldiers has already left for Kuwait, from where they will be sent to Iraq. The recruitment in Kerala was done through a firm at Karikkamuri in Kochi, under the guise of selecting security guards for a Kuwaiti firm which supplies manpower to US forces in the Gulf.


more
http://www.despardes.com/Diaspora/jan04/indians-as-mercineries-iraq-jan15.htm

[Aidoneus]

13. like it's 1920 again..

Many of the forces that the British used to invade and hold Iraq with were in fact mercenaries from British-occupied India. Kuwait, again, acting as the willing launchpad invaders use to rape Iraq.. the more things stay the same the more ridiculous they look.

Where does this source get off calling the occupation forces in Iraq a "peace-keeping force"?!

[bobthedrummer]

15. The mercenaries are condemned by most of the world

but not by the war president:grr:

Campaign Against Arms Trade
http://www.caat.org.uk/information/issues/mercenaries.php

Some mercenaries are neo-nazi racists, not the dogs of war:puke:
http://www.thegrenadarevolutiononline.com/page17a.html

[anarchy1999]

16. What more do these guys want and or need?

November 24, 2003

1-shot killer
This 5.56mm round has all the stopping power you need — but you can’t use it. Here’s why:

By John G. Roos
Special to the Times
Ben Thomas and three colleagues were driving north out of Baghdad in an SUV on a clear mid-September morning, headed down a dirt road into a rural village, when gunmen in several surrounding buildings opened fire on them.
In a brief but intense firefight, Thomas hit one of the attackers with a single shot from his M4 carbine at a distance he estimates was 100 to 110 yards.
He hit the man in the buttocks, a wound that typically is not fatal. But this round appeared to kill the assailant instantly.
“It entered his butt and completely destroyed everything in the lower left section of his stomach ... everything was torn apart,” Thomas said.
Thomas, a security consultant with a private company contracted by the government, recorded the first known enemy kill using a new — and controversial — bullet.
The bullet is so controversial that if Thomas, a former SEAL, had been on active duty, he would have been court-martialed for using it. The ammunition is “nonstandard” and hasn’t passed the military’s approval process.

snip to the end:
“The politics, that’s above my pay grade,” he said. “All I really care about is that I have the best-performing weapon, optics, communications, medical equipment, etc. I’m taking Le Mas ammo with me when I return to Iraq, and I’ve already promised lots of this ammo to my buddies who were there that day and to their friends.”
When military officials in the United States got wind that Thomas had used the round, he quickly found himself in the midst of an online debate in which an unnamed officer, who mistakenly assumed Thomas was in the service, threatened him with a court martial for using the nonstandard ammo.
Although Thomas was impressed by RBCD ammo’s performance, he feels it should not be the standard ammunition issued to all U.S. forces.
“The first thing I say when I talk to people about Le Mas’ ammo is, make sure that 22-year-old infantrymen don’t get a hold of this, because if they have an accident ... if they have a negligent discharge, that person is dead. It doesn’t matter how much body armor you have on.
“This is purely for putting into bad guys. For general inventory, absolutely not. For special operations, I wouldn’t carry anything else.”
A video clip on RBCD ammo that was shot at the annual Armed Forces Journal Shootout at Blackwater is online at www.armedforcesjournal.com/bullets.
John G. Roos is editor of Armed Forces Journal.

http://www.armytimes.com/story.php?f=1-292925-2426405.php

Now, does that report just not make you feel warm and cozy all over.......?

We have to make the profiteering from the corporations closely connected to this administration and people serving within (said administration) that are tied to these corporations, along with Bush I's ties to the Carlyle Group and the profits they are making, be the main focus of the coming month.

We as citizens, must hold them accountable and subject to criminal charges for treason and high crimes.

Along with the aforementioned, BlackBoxVoting issues, which are once again tightly tied in to companies, donors and elected (?) officials tied into the Republican Party and this administration (Hagel ring any bells?), must be front and center as well. Over anything else that may arise we, the citizens/voters, can not let them get away with winning the election/selection in 2004. If something like that should happen, what then?

Wish you all peace for the night.

Oh yes, please note the date of above article, we are six months too late on reporting the real role of our "contractors'". If I were serving and I knew someone was making four times my salary doing my job, I just honestly don't know for sure what I would do, but QUIT!
WALK OUT JUST LIKE THE BATTALION OF IRAQI'S DID THIS LAST WEEK. I do not care one whit what they might do to me, I would never participate, no matter how many of my "buds" may have been killed, in the wholesale slaughter of civilains for revenge. I would have already been thrown in the brig, because I would have started a mutiny within my ranks and myself, with our without my fellow soldiers, would have been breaking down Bremer's door and raising hell with anyone I could reach!

This administration is criminal. Our politicians, our employees, need to be reminded of their responsibilities and the oaths they took to serve our Constitution when they were elected and accepted their positions.