With Blackwater in the news, I recalled a 3 year old article from Rolling Stone

[JohnnyRingo]

Rereading the story, I found new insight into how Blackwater ended up where they are now. Excellent read.

While It's not mentioned that he worked for Blackwater in particular, the subject of the article describes many such companies who operate there. (smell the money).

They attract mercs by upping the ante above what the pentagon offers for re-enlistment ($20k/month). The work is much more dangerous though, operating autonomously at times without official US support.
They've become yankee bedouins, freelance pirates in a land where firepower is trump.

(Wolf Weiss was killed 2 months after this article was written):

Heavy Metal Mercenary
On the road from Baghdad with Wolf Weiss, tattoo artist, rock musician and gun for hire
TISH DURKINPosted Sep 09, 2004

<excerpt>
"The wolf is obviously me," Weiss says. "The man in the eyeball is Evil." As he drives, Weiss keeps changing lanes abruptly, cutting off other drivers in a high-octane dash for the desert. "Speed is security," he likes to say. If anyone evil manages to get close enough to look in on us, the first thing he sees will not be faces but muzzles poised to fire. So when a car pulls alongside the Yukon, Weiss floors it and swerves away. "Kedar, get him!" he yells. "Get him!"

Kedar swings his weapon around and trains it on the car. The driver takes the hint and immediately peels off.

Other contractors, especially the British, view such shows of force as unnecessary and insanely provocative. Treating everyone as hostile, they say, helps make people hostile: The more you point your weapons at innocent civilians, the harder it is to convince them that you're only here to help. Then again, Wolf isn't violating any industry standards, because for all practical purposes there are no industry standards. Anyone willing to carry a gun in Iraq can have a job in Iraq -- and those hired as shooters know that no matter how crazy or dangerous they act, they can almost certainly get a job with another company. "They didn't check crap," one operator told me in disgust after a prospective employer didn't even bother to verify his credentials. "They hired me over the phone and had me on a plane the next day." As a Special Forces veteran, Weiss is considered a Tier One operator -- someone with extensive experience in combat and overseas deployments. But many private contractors are drawn from what some call the Bubba Tier, guys who have worked as small-town cops or prison guards. The demand for private security in Iraq is so high that the supply simply doesn't matter.

<snip>
Weiss takes me around to the second Yukon to have a look at the "rear security." Under Coalition regulations, the belt-fed machine gun perched in the back is supposed to be off-limits to private security companies. So are many of the other weapons in the SUV, including the shoulder-launched rockets and the fragmentation grenades. "I need to match the firepower that is out there," Weiss says with a shrug. He declines to tell me exactly where he gets his weapons, but it is not hard to guess. Many, if not most, security companies buy their weapons on the black market, providing cash to the same arms dealers who supply the Iraqi insurgents who are killing American soldiers, to say nothing of the mafias that are killing average Iraqis and the religious militias that are getting ready to kill one another.

Entire article:
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/6477829/heavy_metal_mercenary

[babylonsister]

1. Don't forget Jeremy Skahill; he's done so much to 'out' Blackwater. nt

[JohnnyRingo]

2. I'll Google that...Thanx

[druidity33]

3. for googling

i think his name is spelled Scahill...

[babylonsister]

4. Oops! Yes it is; thank you.nt