http://knotmag.com/?article=1145The U.S. is hunting mercenaries -- so we can put them to work. Some of the most dangerous jobs in Iraq, formerly carried out by American and British service people, have been handed over to soldiers of fortune.
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The use of commercial forces to bolster U.S. military action is nothing new. Increasingly over the last ten years, the U.S. has relied on private military companies to provide additional personnel when the Pentagon finds itself short. Hiring help is cheaper than maintaining a standing army -- even if it will cost the defense department an estimated $30 billion this year alone. In practice, however, the ethical ramifications of paying for war sometimes outweigh the economic benefits. Private soldiers aren't held to as many regulations, and their actions rarely end up in Defense department reports open to the prying eyes of FOIA. In Bosnia, for instance, the U.N. discovered that the private military personnel provided by a company called DynCorp, were buying and selling prostitutes on the side. One of their victims was a 12-year-old girl.
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India, which is not officially involved in the "Coalition of the Willing" is now trying to determine whether or not the U.S. violated international law when it attempted to recruit 500 Indian mercenaries in early January. South Africans, also not members of the coalition, have been surprised in recent months to learn that as many as 1,500 of their countrymen are fighting in Iraq. In fact, by some estimates, private soldiers outnumber British troops, making up the second largest fighting force behind the U.S.
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So why hire help? The Bush Administration doesn't want dead U.S. soldiers in the press.
Take this into consideration. According to the Washington Post Planeloads of injured soldiers return to the U.S. via Andrews Air Force Base nearly every day. Hundreds of soldiers have been killed in Iraq, and their bodies are all handled by the Pentagon's morgue in at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware-in fact, morticians are said to be in high demand by the National Guard across the country. How often do you hear about these stories? Almost never. The military has blocked press access to these locations because dead soldiers don't help election-year politics. Analysts, like Duke University Political Science professor Peter D. Feaver, predict that the death toll could eventually reach a tipping point. Public sentiments will turn against the war, and the current administration. More dead U.S. service people push us closer to the tipping point. No news about casualties in Iraq is good news.
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the article ends by saying this:
"Death trumps outsourcing when it comes to losing votes. Otherwise, we wouldn't pay mercenaries to die for our country in our frivolous wars -- we'd be willing to do it ourselves."
and it's OUR money paying these foreign troops. did we agree to this?
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