<p>Oh, come on now, browninfall. You can do better than that. It is quite clear that she was not calling our soldiers mercenaries.Jeez.
Try again.</p>
<p>(I was ready to come unglued if she had. Nobody disrespects our soldiers. Disrespect each other all you want but those who are asked to fight and die deserve our unwavering support. Now, back to the regularly programmed craziness.)</p>
<p>How do you interpret post 295?</p>
<p>Umm, we are paying civilian contracters, mercenaries, huge amounts of money to fight this war, and I think you know that and know exactly what I meant, if you didn’t well, look it up…</p>
<p>Still waiting, nobel cause…noble cause…it not the oil right?</p>
<p>“And how much are we paying the mercenaries over there?”</p>
<p>US hires mercenaries for Iraq role
By Jonathan Franklin
Santiago
March 6, 2004</p>
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<p>The US is hiring mercenaries in Chile to replace its soldiers on security duty in Iraq.</p>
<p>A Pentagon contractor has begun recruiting former commandos, other soldiers and seamen, paying them up to $US4000 ($A5300) a month to guard oil wells against attack by insurgents.</p>
<p>
How many and how much are we paying mercenaries to “fight this war?”</p>
<p>CGM, I know that it’s been repeatedly pointed out to you your annoying habit of repeatedly asking and re-asking questions which have been answered already multiple times. Yet, you continue with this practice. I suggest you either remember what people have posted or do some research. It gets very old to always have to repeat answers to your questions when it is known that you never even read or absorb the answer.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/meast/[/url]”>http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/meast/</a></p>
<p>The posting of non-germane links gets extremely old, too.</p>
<p>Okay I won’t ask what the noble cause is again, I jsut haven’t gotten an answer</p>
<p>And yes I do read, but the answers aren’t there</p>
<p>The events in Baghdad today were truly tragic. Yet this is only a sample of the devestation that will occur if you, Cindy and the far left get your way. Your false concern for American lives (the real concern is - demonize Bush at all costs) is at odds with any potential concern for human lives.</p>
<p>To bad Cindy had to lose a son, she doesn’t get it does she…guess her lose wasn’t good enough for her to want answers and to be mad</p>
<p>Still noble cause, I guess we have to keep asking cause the cause keeps shifting around</p>
<p>If the president changes his reasons, I guess that is okay- and Bush is a bad president- yes I said it out loud</p>
<p>Go back to idolizing and adoring Bush without question, that is all some people are capable of</p>
<p>Driver and FF: I thought it was common knowledge we have huge numbers of paid people in Iraq doing soldiering activities. Someone defined mercenary as someone who will fight for any side for money. I don’t think these people would fight for just anyone. But we are paying some of these civilians $150,000 to do the exact same job we ask our soldiers to do for a pittance. Every time you hear the death toll as, for instance, “3 soldiers and two contractors” - who did you think those contractors were - bricklayers? And how about the “contractors” at Abu Graib? These are all mercenaries. Do you realize the US gov’t pays a private company a fortune to guard and protect the Iraqi army? Our recruiting efforts might go a little better if we took even half the money these private companies get, and give it to the US Army and National Guard.</p>
<p>Thank you hayden, I was getting frustrated. You were very clear.</p>
<p>I for one, feel that the Bush Presidency is far from satisfactory. I suspect that John Kerry would have been far worse but, no, George Bush will be getting no high marks from me. We should have never gone into Iraq. It was an ill-advised decision that has done nothing whatsoever to improve our national security. If anything, it has done the opposite. But now that we ARE there, and are attempting to help them establish some semblance of a stable government, we have a MORAL obligation to preserve Iraq’s primary means of gross domestic product. ANY country’s economic viability is dependent upon the health of its primary economic resources. I’m sure the people of Iraq would not thank us if we allowed terrorists to destroy their primary means of economic trade. </p>
<p>And yes, Iraq’s oil production IS a matter of OUR OWN long term national interest. If our middle eastern oil supply becomes dangerously compromised, those on the extreme left will be the very first to howl with righteous indignation over the resulting economic catastrophy. In my estimation, preservation of our domestic interests, the preservation of our national economic solvency, are INDEED moral imperatives worth fighting for. </p>
<p>I just wish we had never taken the initial action that has plunged us into this horrible morass, but what’s done is done. We need to commit to doing what’s absolutely necessary in Iraq and get the he<em>l</em>l out as soon as possible.</p>
<p>What is considered victory over there? i have no clue…the constitution is going to have many issues, the country is a mess, insurgentants, terrorists, resistance fighters whatever are multiplying, we are spending more money, that when major combat was over, and as long as Bin Laden is out there, we will always have an enemy…What is victory? What is the end to look like? Do we go to Iran next?
Who surrenders? Terrorists are made, kill one, another is made, so how does it end? How do we protect the oil? For how long? </p>
<p>What is freedom and democracy over there? Who does it include? If the Sunnis don’t ratify the constitution, will there be a civil war and whose side are we on then? Will we accept a theocracy? How fundamentalist should we allow this new democracy to get?</p>
<p>And that’s just for starters</p>
<p>
No, it’s not common knowledge, which is why I asked you esoterical experts how many and how much.</p>
<p>driver, I think it is in fact pretty widely known. The media always specify when they’re referring to contractors as opposed to soldiers. I don’t know all the companies, or how many millions they’re being paid by the US gov’t. It’s a huge, huge number. When Jerry Bremmer got picked to head up the Iraq gov’t for a while, check out which company he was working for before he went to Iraq. That’s one of them. One of the others is called Black something - I can’t remember exactly, but that company was the employer for one of the early attacks on a humvee - the one where they dragged their burned bodies on the ground? You may remember they were identified as “contractors”. </p>
<p>How it works is, the money gets paid to the company, which in turn pays big bucks to their 'ees. Most of the ee’s - at least the ones with AK47’s - get a minimum of $150K. Many get more.</p>
<p>In addition to the inequity of these guys - who chose to be there - getting so much more than our soldiers, who are in Iraq because they do what they’re supposed to do, there’s also the uneasy situation of how these contractors work. Are they subject to military orders? Who’s in charge when a contractor tells a soldier what to do? Does a sargeant outrank a civilian? If a contractor disobeys a soldier’s order, do they only get fired or what happens - you can’t court martial them. That was one of the issues at Abu Graib (I know I’m spelling that wrong), when the soldiers were saying they did what the contractors told them, because it seemed like they were supposed to. (Edit: driver, CACI was the company hired by the US Military to do the interrogations at Abu Ghraib.) But then they weren’t acting on “official” orders, and didn’t have the protection of that umbrella. It got very, very complicated.</p>
<p>Here are some of the numbers you asked for:</p>
<p>CACI - $66 million revenue from the Dept of Defense (revenue from Iraq only)</p>
<p>Blackwater - $21 million (this applies only to revenue from Iraq operations since 2003). This is from Blackwater’s own website: “Blackwater was the subject of numerous media accounts after a March 31, 2004, incident in which four of its employees were killed in Iraq. The Washington Post reported that eight employees from Blackwater, alongside four military police and a Marine gunner, defended CPA’s Najaf headquarters from an attack of hundreds of Iraqi militia members. Blackwater called in its own helicopters for air support before reinforcements arrived.According to The Virginian-Pilot, Blackwater has more than 450 personnel in Iraq. The company now has opened offices in both Baghdad and Kuwait City.” $21 mm, and 450 people in Iraq - the math kind of jumps out at you, doesn’t it? Would some of our soldiers like that kind of money? Plus their own helicopters?</p>
<p>Kroll - revenue not published anywhere that I could find.</p>
<p>Hope that helps. BTW, I’m not totally obsessing with these guys, it’s just that my job involves one of these companies, so I tend to follow the news about them.</p>
<p>Blackwater is the name of the company you were trying to remember. Based in Moyock, NC. </p>
<p>I think it’s reprehensible that these soldiers of fortune are being paid many times more than our legitimately fighting men and women. It’s a dirty little secret that few Americans seem to know about.</p>
<p>Cindy sheehan had a very simple request, and a fairly straight forward approach…because others are embarrassed by the fact that a mother might challenge the value of this war…they attack her. Just a mom, who lost her son, but for some including several on this thread she became a target. Then because her request did not seem that absurd to many Americans, the President’s handling of it came into question…He drove by the mother of a deceased soldier on the way to a political fund raiser and couldn’t stop the car and talk for a few minutes… so he missed that opportunity and more people took notice that she was there a long time in Crawford…that brought additional attention to the President’s inability to handle a simple situation and the length of his record setting vacation. Don’t get me wrong, I know he quit his five week vacation 48 hours early so he could fly in airforce 1 along the gulf and get back to Washington.</p>
<p>The attacks on Cindy, the vindictive approach to attacking the grieving mother of a child slain in battle gives a glimpse to the true moral values of those who think the President is right in continuing this war.</p>
<p>This is not a war that compares to WWI or WWII and this is not a President who comes close to The Commander in Chiefs of those wars.</p>