Other mercenaries have been recruited from the Iraqi population itself. Sociologist James Petras, in his "Rulers and Ruled in the U.S. Empire,"(Clarity Press) writes, "The use of local mercenaries creates the illusion that Washington is gradually handing over power to the local puppet regime. It gives the impression that the puppet regime is capable of ruling, and propagandizes the myth that a stable and reliable locally-based army exists. The presence of these local mercenaries creates the myth that the internal conflict is a civil war instead of a national liberation struggle against a colonial power."
Petras also writes, "the failure of the US policy of using Iraqi mercenaries to defeat the resistance is evident in the escalation of US combat military forces in Iraq in the spring of 2007, after five years of colonial warfare---from 140,000 to 170,000 troops, not counting the presence of some 100,000 mercenaries from American firms such as Blackwater." He said the Iraqi mercenary force is plagued by high levels of desertion.
In "The Sorrows of Empire"(Metropolitan/Owl), Chalmers Johnson wrote, "The use of private contractors is assumed to be more cost-effective, but even that is open to question when contracts go only to a few well-connected companies and the bidding is not particularly competitive." Blackwater Security got a $27 million no-bid contract to guard L. Paul Bremer III, the administrator of the Coalition Provisional authority in 2003. According to Joseph Stiglitz in "The Three Trillion Dollar War" (W.W. Norton), that was expanded to $100 million a year later and by 2007, Blackwater held a $1.2 billion contract for Iraq, where it employed 845 private security contractors.
Stiglitz notes that in 2007 private security guards working for firms like Blackwater and Dyncorp were earning up to $1,222 a day or $445,000 a year. By contrast, an Army sergeant earned $140 to $190 a day in pay and benefits, a total of $51,100 to $69,350 a year.
Since U.S. taxpayers are underwriting private soldiers' paychecks, where's the savings? It is money from taxpayer's pockets that has made these shadow armies great.
In his bestseller "Blackwater: The Rise of The World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army(Nation Books) reporter Jeremy Scahill writes: "Its seven-thousand-acre facility in Moyock, N.C., has now become the most sophisticated private military center on the planet, while the company possesses one of the world's larget privately held stockpiles of heavy-duty weaponry. It is a major training center for federal and local security and military forces in the United States, as well as foreign forces and private individuals".It is developing surveillance blimps and private airstrips for its fleet of aircraft, which include helicopter gunships." Company officials say they have been training about 35,000 "law enforcement" and military personnel a year.
The idea of the Pentagon outsourcing much of its work, from kitchen police to war zone truck drivers, came largely from then Defense Secretary Dick Cheney in the early 1990s, when he was tasked by Congress to reduce Pentagon spending after the Cold War thawed. And after leaving his Defense post to become CEO of Halliburton, Cheney also oversaw the use of contractors to support the military then engaged in the former Yugoslavia. As Pratap Chatterjee reminds in "Halliburton's Army" (Nation Books), "Approximately one in one hundred people on the Iraqi battlefield in the 2001 Operation Desert Storm were contractors, compared to today in Operation Enduring Freedom, where the number of contractors are roughly equal to those of military personnel."
And since mercenaries can work in civvies, they are useful to the Pentagon when it seeks to build a military presence in a country without attracting undue attention. As Scahill writes, "Instead of sending in battalions of active U.S. military to Azerbaijan, the Pentagon deployed "civilian contractors' from Blackwater and other firms to set up an operation that would serve a dual purpose: protecting the West's new profitable oil and gas exploitation in a region historically dominated by Russia and Iran, and possibly laying the groundwork for an important forward operating base for an attack against Iran."
Scahill says "Domestic opposition to wars of aggression results in fewer people volunteering to serve in the armed forces, which historically deflates the war drive or forces a military draft. At the same time, international opposition has made it harder for Washington to persuade other governments to support its wars and occupations. But with private mercenary companies, these dynamics change dramatically, as the pool of potential soldiers available to an aggressive administration is limited only by the number of men across the globe willing to kill for money. With the aid of mercenaries, you don't need a draft or even the support of your own public to wage wars of aggression, nor do you need a coalition of "willing" nations to aid you. If Washington cannot staff an occupation or invasion with its national forces, the mercenary firms offer a privatized alternative---including Blackwater's 21,000-man contractor database".If foreign governments are not on board, foreign soldiers can still be bought."
In Jan., 2008, the UN working group on mercenaries found an emerging trend in Latin America of "situations of private security companies protecting transnational extractive corporations whose employees are often involved in suppressing the legitimate social protest of communities and human rights and environmental organizations of the areas where these corporations operate." And South Africa's Defense Minister Mosiuoa Lekota, termed mercenaries "the scourge of poor areas of the world, especially Africa. These are killers for hire. They rent out their skills to the highest bidder. Anybody that has money can hire these human beings and turn them into killing machines or cannon fodder."
Mincing no words, Ratner warns, "These kinds of military groups bring to mind Nazi Party brownshirts, functioning as an extrajudicial enforcement mechanism that can and does operate outside the law."
Of course, contract warrior firm officials see themselves in a nobler light. Blackwater's Vice-Chairman Cofer Black in one speech compared his company to King Arthur's Knights of the Round Table, asserting they "Focus on morals and ethics and integrity. This is important. We are not fly-by-night. We are not tricksters. We believe in these things." For all such claims, the final judgment on the performance of contract military firms must come from the people these noble knights purport to serve. And if Blackwater is any example, they are hated.
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(Sherwood Ross has worked for major dailies and wire services and served in an executive capacity in the U.S. civil rights movement. He currently is active in the anti-war movement and operates a public relations firm for good causes. Reach him at sherwoodr1@yahoo.com).
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