Blackwater

[zero2056]

I've been reading up a little bit on Blackwater USA and some of the things the gov't is paying them to do, realizing just how naive and uninformed I am in regards to some gov't behavior and how they work with contractors.

I didn't realize the US had such a large "mercenary" force. Also, I find it odd that they use companies such as Blackwater to guard the upper echelon of gov't members. Blackwater is a corporation. "Corporation" makes me think you can be bought/hired by somebody other than the US Gov't.

Other than killing those innocent civilians recently, they've also been cited for disarming a humvee full of US Army personnel and holding them at gun point and other not so pleasant tactics.

Maybe I've watched too much TV, but doesn't that seem like it leaves the opportunity open for the "mercenaries" to turn on their original objective if somebody else is a higher bidder?

Anybody else following some of these stories? Whatcha think?

Here's one of the many articles I've read:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119240518691958669.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

[JVO]

On 60 Minutes last night they did an interview with the President of Blackwater USA and discussed the civilian killings and other concerns. I really didn't know too much about it, but I learned a little from the interview.

That was actually a very good 60 Minutes. They did a story on the SuperMax Prison in Florence, Colorado and did a bio on the Pastor of the Lakewood Church in Houston (Olmstead or something like that). The Pastor actually seemed like a really good guy. His sermons are always very positive and full of inspiration and he never asks for money from anybody. Interestingly all of the other pastors seem to hate this guy because he is so positive and upbeat and so incredibly popular among people of all Christian faiths (and even some athiests). I am generally biased against evangelical preachers, but this guy struck me as being very different from the others. I think a big part of it is that he doesn't care about politics in the least.

[slam]

it is frightening how little people know about blackwater and the other mercenaries we have running around in iraq. the documentary why we fight was a good intro to all of this.

if my understanding is correct, when cheney was secretary of defence under reagan, he undersaw the beginnings of the privatization of our military. suddenly, gigs our soldiers used to do, like cook and clean, were privatized. when cheney left that job, he quickly joined halliburton, winner of most of those contracts.

nowadays, we have around the same number of troops in the mid east as we do private contractors. and those contractors get paid WAY MORE than our soldiers?? and some times our military even has to protect them? wtf?

the most sickening thing i've heard is that some of these contractors get paid net + 5. so whatever it costs them to accomplish a task, they can reimbursed, +5%. it doesn't take an idiot to see that's a bad idea. the more you spend, the more you make?

[matty]

I didn't read this anywhere, but somebody told me that the Blackwater guys make a ridiculous amount of money. Like way more than our soldiers would ever earn in a lifetime of service. But I don't know how true that is.

[mrjohnchimpo]

They did a story on the SuperMax Prison in Florence, Colorado and did a bio on the Pastor of the Lakewood Church in Houston (Olmstead or something like that). The Pastor actually seemed like a really good guy. His sermons are always very positive and full of inspiration and he never asks for money from anybody. Interestingly all of the other pastors seem to hate this guy because he is so positive and upbeat and so incredibly popular among people of all Christian faiths (and even some athiests). I am generally biased against evangelical preachers, but this guy struck me as being very different from the others. I think a big part of it is that he doesn't care about politics in the least.

Joel Osteen. he's pretty good. conservatives hate him because he doesn't hate everyone as much as they do. (also causes he tends sometimes to preach something called the prosperity gospel, which says that Christians should become rich financially as well as spiritually or some weird American viewpoint like that).

[mrjohnchimpo]

as for Blackwater, that stuff is crazy.

i watch the show Jericho and they have this crazy mercenary corps hired by the government to help with getting stuff done...and then i come to find out it's based on real-life.

i had no idea how naive i was on the use of mercenaries during wartime.

[cuscus]

There are tons of blackwater videos on Youtube and other video sites. Its crazy cause they are private companies the videos get leaked pretty easy.
I actually know a guy here in madison who worked for another private company. He was a medic for the company. He doesn't talk about it very much, but he has made reference to making as much money in a six month contract in Iraq, as he could make in a couple of years here. I actaully saw some stuff online about applications and stuff, and most people are ex special forces who had relatively high security clearances and stuff. Crazy shit

[mrjohnchimpo]

their bear claw logo is ominous

http://www.blackwaterusa.com/

under products, it has "armored vehicles" and ... "airships" !!

i was gonna buy a hat, but they don't have the style i like with just the logo on it.

[mrjohnchimpo]

look at this shirt? is this a mercenary joke?

http://proshop.blackwaterusa.com/images/items/PHX104%5E1.jpg


PS sorry for taking this off topic, but i think the fact that Blackwater has merch is hilariously ridiculous.

[zero2056]

[QUOTE=slam;31240]it is frightening how little people know about blackwater and the other mercenaries we have running around in iraq. the documentary why we fight was a good intro to all of this.

QUOTE]

Is why we fight a book or television program?

I'm interested in looking into more of this if anybody has any interesting reads/programs they've seen.

[slam]

why we fight is a movie. i'm pretty sure that's the one i was thinking of. talks a lot about the military industrial complex in general.

[larryhead]

PS sorry for taking this off topic, but i think the fact that Blackwater has merch is hilariously ridiculous.


agreed. :drumfingers:

[larryhead]

the most sickening thing i've heard is that some of these contractors get paid net + 5. so whatever it costs them to accomplish a task, they can reimbursed, +5%. it doesn't take an idiot to see that's a bad idea. the more you spend, the more you make?

WTF :mad:

[Soul Queen]

It is typical of most subcontracts through the government that you would be reimbursed on your expenses. This is not unusual. I bet within the subcontract they have set an amount they will pay them. Just as there is a set of Contract clauses typical of the military within the text.

Most contracts (non Military) that I see are based this way.

The problem arises when no one goes back to Blackwater to monitor what they are doing. I bet that is hard as hell to monitor while they are in Iraq and we are here. If Blackwater doesn't have systems set up for monitoring and we don't either, than its impossible to keep an eye on whats going on over there. Every man for themselves.

I've read some disturbing articles about Blackwater.
I'm sure there is more disturbing shit going on than we really know or want to know about.

I also read that there are more than 2 million people who have been displaced by the conflict. We focus alot on the millions of people who are displaced in Darfur, but never can comment on the fact that WE are making refugees out of millions of people.

[slam]

It is typical of most subcontracts through the government that you would be reimbursed on your expenses. This is not unusual.

yeah, but to get paid a percentage of what you spend? if you spend a million dollars, you get 50k, but if you spent ten million dollars, you get 500k. wtf?

[JVO]

The founder of Blackwater was on PBS's Charlie Rose last night. He must be making the rounds. I only saw bits and pieces becauses I was watching baseball all night.

I have very mixed feelings about the entire thing. I think Haliburton and other companies supplying catering, laundry and such is a very good idea. Why waste valuable military personnel on jobs that can happily be done (and done better!) by private business? Of course the connection between these contracts and the Vice President is obviously not good, but in general I am in favor of the idea.

As far as Blackwater goes, I am still up in the air. Whatever is the best way to secure the safety of Americans, while at the same time not instituting the draft, is ok with me.

Soul Queen made a good point about monitoring. Here in the last few months, the US has changed a lot of their policies about private contractors like Blackwater. From now on, every Blackwater vehicle carries cameras that have a direct link to the American miliary so that they can see exactly what they are doing. Also all Blackwater operations from now on will have to include an American uniformed military person who is there to observe and report to his superiors. So it seems they are trying to keep a closer eye on things now.

[Soul Queen]

yeah, but to get paid a percentage of what you spend? if you spend a million dollars, you get 50k, but if you spent ten million dollars, you get 500k. wtf?

The contract could have been negotiated because there was no way to estimate the cost of what their particular type of operation would run in Iraq. How do you estimate how much its really going to cost to reconstruct a whole country? I'm sure there is a cap amount or a renegotiation after a certain time period.

This runs into the realm of issues concerning why we (Americans) are outsourcing so many items of our government.

I read an interesting article the other day about Libraries are now hiring private firms to run the institutions. Individuals who went to school to get a masters in library science are now finding that they can't find a job, because the corporatioon who is now in charge, has cut costs. The libraries operation hours are cut in half.

This stems from Taxpayers not wanting to give more money for these types of institutions. I think sometimes as taxpayers we forget that the government run institutions are for the best interest of the people. Corporation interests are in the best interest of the company.

I'm sure that someone will give the arguement for that private industry may be more effecient. However not every institution should be run on efficiency alone, but also quality of service.

I guess the above is a separate issue that is tied in to Blackwater.

[JVO]

I think the problem with funding for Blackwater is that almost all of the contracts were done on a non bid agreement. This basically means that the contractor, in this case Blackwater, can charge whatever they want, and there is no accountability. This is a similar arrangement that many government institutions have which is why the Federal, State and Local governments are so notorious for wasting vast sums of money. But like SQ said, it is not really realistic to expect a company (or anybody) to be able to quote how much money it is going to cost to offer protection for U.S personnel in 2 distinct war zones. Seems like the problem is that Blackwater really has a monopoly on the protection gig.

[JVO]

This runs into the realm of issues concerning why we (Americans) are outsourcing so many items of our government.



In the case of Blackwater, there simply is no way the American military could perform these services. A majority of the cases handled by Blackwater used to be done by a combination of the State Department and the Treasury Department, but there is simply no way that they have the personnel or training to do these jobs in our dual wars. The only way they could handle the case load would be to transfere tens of thousands of military personnel away from fighting the war and securing the country, spend months training them, then redeploy them into their protection details. This would mean increasing the number of U.S. troops in both wars substancially, which I think we can all agree, would do nothing but piss most American's off. Now I am not saying this is a good thing, but that is the justification that the government uses for the hiring of Blackwater.

[slam]

I think Haliburton and other companies supplying catering, laundry and such is a very good idea. Why waste valuable military personnel on jobs that can happily be done (and done better!) by private business?

on the one hand, that does make sense. why train people to shoot guns and run for miles with gear on their backs just to do laundry all day?

but these people aren't just catering the troops and then hopping on the train back to their suburban home at 5. these are services being done inside an occupied country; a war zone. every single person we have there better either be a diplomat or military, in my opinion. why the hell should we pay private contractors ten times what we're paying our soldiers, and then have our soldiers stand around and protect them while they do it?

As far as Blackwater goes, I am still up in the air. Whatever is the best way to secure the safety of Americans, while at the same time not instituting the draft, is ok with me.

look, the simple truth is that we're spending WAY MORE for contractors to be doing what the military could do itself. how the hell can it be more financially efficient to award no-bid contracts? how do we save money by paying contractors six figures to drive a truck that a soldier could do?

the beauty of the contractors is that it lets us hide our numbers. no one wants to, say, send another quarter million troops into iraq. but if bush asks for 45 billion dollars to pay contractors to import labor from other countries into the war zone to do our job, that's just peachy.

today, a brigadier general in our military was injured by an IED. he's the highest ranking soldier to be a casualty. at the time, he was in a convoy, being guarded by private contractors! we can't even find enough soldiers to protect a brigadier general? worse yet, the private contractors were british, which i believe is the very definition of the word 'mercenary'.

companies like blackwater are just milking this government for everything it's worth. if we don't have the troops for a war, and aren't able to convince enough americans to join the military for said war, maybe we shouldn't fucking be at war.

[Soul Queen]

I don't think we would ever publicly say America doesn't have enough troops to man a war.

Its true if we don't have enough, we shouldn't spread ourselves thin. But its not something any nation is going to say publicly and keep international respect.

[slam]

years later, we start getting more details of the bush-era mess:

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090817/scahill

To that end, Mr. Prince intentionally deployed to Iraq certain men who shared his vision of Christian supremacy, knowing and wanting these men to take every available opportunity to murder Iraqis. Many of these men used call signs based on the Knights of the Templar, the warriors who fought the Crusades.

Mr. Prince operated his companies in a manner that encouraged and rewarded the destruction of Iraqi life. For example, Mr. Prince's executives would openly speak about going over to Iraq to "lay Hajiis out on cardboard." Going to Iraq to shoot and kill Iraqis was viewed as a sport or game. Mr. Prince's employees openly and consistently used racist and derogatory terms for Iraqis and other Arabs, such as "ragheads" or "hajiis."