I’m comfortable calling a truck driver or food service worker in Iraq a contractor and by the narrowest of definitions even the security personnel could be classified this way also. Reference any dictionary and the term mercenary is more appropriate for the service the armed personnel are providing and to call them anything but that is intellectually disingenuous.

So think about it this way for a second – 180K + security contractors (assuming truck drivers and dishwashers are included) 160K+ members of the US Armed Forces….hmm more contractors them regulation troops. So if we see the Iraqi government successfully expel Blackwater, that’s yet to happen, then who takes up the security of the Green Zone and all the phony diplomats being guarded by the mercenaries?

Is this the straw the breaks the American Politicians back? How do we fill the gap of what we have and what we need to have in Iraqi?

Re-instituting the Draft is the most obvious answer. Getting hundred’s of thousands of new recruits into the service, maybe even millions of them if we really need that many. I sure would make the man power issue of invading and then occupying Iran and Syria easier to solve. We couldn’t possible float the economic debt of running both of those invasions on the back of contractors.

If I read my resent history accurately and I’m sure any of you will correct me, Blackwater or Dyncorp, or Triple Canopy have all been committing these types of transgressions since the beginning of the invasion. Go check YouTube, DailyMotion, or any other video uploading site to watch your fill of them shooting and hooting on the streets of Iraq.

Why are we seeing this towards the end of the Republican ownership of this Middle Eastern Strategy? Give it to a Democratic President so he/she can call up the draft? Let the chattering heads scream look what the Dems did!

Anyway its painted and from every angle I look at it Intellectually Disengenous is what it says to me.

Unless of course the Bushies will come up with some kind of BA to keep them on.

But my point is that for Congress to know this from dealing with him over the years and give him the benefit of defining “progress” when he’s never clearly even defined the “purpose of the mission” (or he did and then kept moving the goalposts when he’d become outed) is clear derelection of duty on the part of Congress. Why would they trust this man with the lives of our military when he’s never honestly complied with or fulfilled any request they’ve asked of him for documents, emails, etc.?? I fault Congress here equally for engaging themselves in another one of Bush’s diabolical board games. I fault Congress equally for continuing this charade for oil call Iraq. I fault Congress equally for endangering the lives of our military when they know that there can be no military victory. I fault Congress as much for the “war crimes” being committed in Iraq each and every day.

It’s time to hold this Congress accountable and guilty for the blood of nearly 4,000 of our fallen heroes as well as the blood of hundreds of thousands of innocent iraqis who have lost their lives (and their country) for Bush’s OIL.

We’re outsourcing our military, folks. And, at the same time. politicizing it.

Indeed. And that’s worked out really well throughout history…. </snark>

Cheers,

I was thinking about that “slogan”, and I figured out why it bothers me so much. Besides sounding too stupid, what with shades of “return on investment” to appeal to the rich people who think in no other terms, if it means what Bush implies it means, then bring the troops home now. He claimed that it means that our troops will come home when they have success in their missions. Well, as everybody, both war-lover and critic alike, has said, our troops have done everything asked of them. So if our troops have successfully done “everything asked of them”, then they should start returning home now. Or does this depend on some new definition of the word “success” with which we were previously unfamiliar?

I need a Bush-to-English dictionary to figure out whether or not it is….

U.S. Suspends ‘Land Travel’ Outside The Green Zone For Civilian And Diplomatic Officials

Smell the progress. (sigh)

Dorthy, we ain’t in Kansas anymore.

All’s I can say with this Blackwater deal is, I’m glad to see the Iraqis standing up to rogue malitias by throwing them out.

I can see only two basic positions on this “war”:

1. You support this “war” and therefore support a draft (and should be signing your butt up if you are military age and able) OR

2. You don’t support this occupation and you want a responsible redeployment of our troops.

Can any “war” supporter tell me why a draft is not being sought after? Everyone agrees that, because of Iraq, we are currently in a situation where we can not support action on ANY other threat. Not to mention our military is at a breaking point at the current status.

Why wouldn’t the draft be an option? — Because the war supporters would have to go to war and that will change quite a few minds. This occupation would be over in a before the draft got started. Why else would we pay a Blackwater employee over $30,000 a month for the same job the many of the military do for $30,000 a YEAR? — And at least they would be accountable to someone.