Special Forces Cannibals
Special Forces Cannibals
The Pentagon is planning to offer $150,000 bonuses in an expensive attempt to keep members of its elite Special Forces — Navy Seals, Green Berets and specially trained Air Force squads — from jumping ship to take more lucrative civilian jobs with U.S. contractors. The number of Special Forces soldiers, pivotal to “hunt the insurgent leadership, train Iraqi forces and guard senior members of the emerging government in Baghdad,” has greatly fallen off since May 2003.
It’s all part of a vicious circle of inefficiency that ultimately leaves Uncle Sam broke, the military facing a shortage of trained personnel and contractors laughing all the way to the bank.
Here’s how it works. First, the military uses taxpayer money — and it’s not cheap — to train these special forces. With their special skills, these troops are currently in high demand in places like Kabul and Baghdad.
At the same time, the U.S. government also spends billions of dollars every year to hire big, for-profit companies like Halliburton’s KBR or CACI to take over a lot of the duties traditionally performed by the military.
These companies promptly hire the elite soldiers away from the military for much higher salaries. The average senior special ops officer, for example, makes about $50,000 a year from the U.S. government; contractors quadruple that salary to about $200,000. The corporations charge the U.S. government for the salary and expenses (and tack on a nice profit for themselves on top of that.)
In effect, the United States is paying corporations to cannibalize the best and brightest from America’s military.
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This is a truly disgusting practice.
February 7th, 2005 at 10:06 pmThe ugly truth is that the Corporations (like the Carlyle Group) that want to run everything view Iraq as a training ground for their own private armies.
February 7th, 2005 at 10:13 pm“God Bless Free Markets” …. isn’t that their attitude? I used to believe that too …. until I grew up.
February 8th, 2005 at 2:02 pmYeah, exactly… someone want to explain again the “efficiencies of the market” where “competition” is supposed to drive down cost and save the taxpayers?
Hard to have competition with no-bid contracts designed to help the profiteering of a company that the VP still draws a paycheck from.
This practice makes Nixon look like a shoplifter at a convenience store. What was impeachable a generation ago now gets rewarded with re-election. How do they get away with this?! I’m sick with disgust.
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January 16th, 2006 at 8:32 pm[...] In Aug. 2003, the Bush administration awarded Blackwater a $21.3 million contract to guard then Amb. Paul Bremer. The average senior special operations officer makes $50,000 a year from the U.S. government. Employees in private security firms in Iraq often make more than $1,000 a day from government contracts. This arrangement is “depleting the ranks of the special forces,” luring them into lucrative private jobs. [...]
March 30th, 2006 at 3:51 pmI sit here resding your strings and it makes me pitty some of you people. 1st all of you that served as an Special Ops. soldier please stand up. Oh, sorry you can’t because that require getting off your asses and do something besides bitch. Here is a quick education.
Here is what you do and what you get for 20 years in special Ops. Basic Training 10wks, Combat Communications School 6mn, Airborne School 3wks, Ranger Schools 4mn, PLDC 5wks, Special Forces Qualifications Course 4wks, SERE School 4wks (where they beat the hell out fo you so you have an idea what will happen if captured), BNOC 5-6wks, Special Forces School 8mns to 2 yrs (depending on your job), Arabic Language School 8mns, Persian Language School 8mns, Freefall Parachute School 2mns, Scuba School 8wks, ANOC 3mns, Assorted Shooting schools 3 mns. An there is about another 24 mns of assorted schools to attend along the way.
Now we stayed deployed on average on my team for about 320 days out of the year. Could be gone 6 months, 3 months, 3 weeks, or maybe just one week. Then come home clean your gear and be ready to deploy in another few days. There are no family plains, birthdays. or vacation to schedule. On top of this our divorce rate is about 90%.
Next lets talk about physical issues. Most of us because of working in 3rd World for most of our young adult life get a chance to catch many exotic illnesses. Most of my team had Malaria, exposed to TB and had to go through treatment, contracted an assortment of fungus and rashes. Ok now where on to the broken bones, bullet wounds and assorted fragmentation. Then there is the natural wear and tear after you do this for 16 to 20 years.
After the end of twenty years if all goes well, your take home pay is about $2,700.00 a month. Now don’t forget your broken, worn out, divorced and your only friends are the people you have been working with that are still alive. So now you go hey its time to retire if uncle sam will let you. Lets say he says ok. After taxes you take home if lucky about $1000.00 bucks a month.
As you sit there wondering what will I do now. So as most do you ask yourself what do I know how to do. At his point thank goodness for companies like blackwater that will hire you if you can still do your job in a proficent manner. So some youg Special Ops. guys see this going on and think. They ask themselves. You know I love this job with all my heart and want to help the greater good, but damn at the end of 20 years no money and no life is that for me or should I take the $150,000 to $200,000 to do the same job.
Well my friends there is the issues. If you have not done this job please do not comment because you have no grounds or right. You have no idea what it takes or what is sacraficed along the way. Those of us and damn few of us do this job because we want to do more and volunteer for this additional work. Not one of us ever asked, questioned or told you live a different or for that fact get a life. So how about you just sit home bang your girl or boyfriend, tap on your keyboard and leave us, and the next generation of Special Ops. soldiers to do the work. The worst thing of all is you make comments and judgements about things you know not. Once again if you do not live the life you have no idea. One last word of caution. Every place I go you hear somebody say my cousion, my brother, my daddy or I was in a Special Ops unit. Hell if that was the case there would be no shortage of people in the units. Unless you were a Seal, Green Beret, a Ranger in a Ranger BN, in Delta, very specific Air Force unit, very specific Marine unit and handful of other units that most of you never have or will hear of, YOU OR WHO YOU NEW WAS NOT IN SPECIAL OPS.
So either stop talking about things you do not know or get off your ass take the years to go through it all and then tell us what you think.
Frank
April 27th, 2006 at 3:20 amU.S. Army Special Forces Retired
my husband is a seal and they dont pay him enough money for the dangerous job that he does. Yes the government spends all this money on the training to make him the best of the best but for all of that and the crazy stuff he has to do the money he could get working for blackwater or another contracted is insane. although it is more dangerous because he will not have the backing of the military if something happens. I dont blame the other seals for getting out for the money they should be payed more.
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