With Army management/oversight spread thin, and TONS of money to be made from a commodity that that country is now fairly awash in, can anyone doubt that many k’s of the shit are being packed into cannon barrels, boots, gascans, and every other commonplace item that’s being ferried back and forth daily between here and there?

Maybe it’s not such a bad thing, for those shocked and wounded soldiers who won’t receive any care from the de-budgeted VA – at least they’ll have something to fight the pain with.

I’d also be interested to know who among the neocons has hefty investments in the Pharma that produces methadone – a fair number of the addicts produced will no doubt end up on maintenance, and that’s got to be good news for those companies and their shareholders. Remember Rummy and his flu vaccine stocks??? Is the principle really any different?

When will Americans realize that we maintain a huge force of mercenary thugs — Blackwater “security agents” — who terrorize and kill Iraqi civilians without fear of legal action? Nice work if you can get it. Not so great for the rest of us.

Media??? Where are you????

Pat Tillman for one. No one has ever answered the question as to whose gun was responsible for Pat Tillman’s death. I wonder why.

The hypocracy of our current government is just stunning to me.

1) They dont wear uniforms

2) They arent regulated by any form of military justice.

Ergo, by the united states own logic, they are unlawful combatants. They have no more rights than any insurgent or terrorist who doesnt wear a uniform.

This article talks about the over-all number of mercenary soldiers in Iraq counting all the companies involved, not just blackwater.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-scahill25jan25,0,4485578.story?coll=la-news-comment-opinions

Already, private contractors constitute the second-largest “force” in Iraq. At last count, there were about 100,000 contractors in Iraq, of which 48,000 work as private soldiers, according to a Government Accountability Office report. These soldiers have operated with almost no oversight or effective legal constraints and are an undeclared expansion of the scope of the occupation. Many of these contractors make up to $1,000 a day, far more than active-duty soldiers. What’s more, these forces are politically expedient, as contractor deaths go uncounted in the official toll.

48,000!

It seems to have removed my link to the Democracy Now article.
I’ll try it again

Here’s the link again:
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/01/26/1559232

Well, here we are a decade later, and it’s the most powerful mercenary firm in the world. It has 20,000 soldiers on the ready, the world’s largest private military base, a fleet of twenty aircraft, including helicopter gunships. It’s become nothing short of the Praetorian Guard for the Bush administration’s so-called global war on terror. And it’s headed by a very rightwing Christian activist, ex-Navy Seal named Erik Prince, whose family was one of the major bankrollers of the Republican Revolution of the 1990s. He, himself, is a significant funder of President Bush and his allies.

And what they’ve done is they have built a very frightening empire near the Great Dismal Swamp in North Carolina. They’ve got about 2,300 men actively deployed around the world.

Is it, but also, this subject is completely indefensible. So instead of discussing it and how it effects the overall situation in Iraq, they scamper away. The best thing they could come up with is “innocent until proven guilty”.. but come to think of it, this involves someone giving assistance to a terrorist group.. SOOOOOO
to the bush cultists, these Blackwater people (who MIGHT be selling guns to terror groups, POSSIBLY knowingly), dont even deserve due process…..because if the united states thinks your aiding terrorists, you are.

As per the cool aid cultists dogma, “we’re at war” so no need to get judges involved in waging war against terror…

LOCK EM UP!

Maybe the new TP registration system is working!

Comment by Veritas — September 22, 2007 @ 5:16 pm

Probably safe to start w/ Pat Tillman.