Isla Vista killing....the NRA's fault?

Political expediency is the only purpose. Black Ops are too important to sub out to civilians. The CIA and military SPEC OPS still do the covert dirty work. Mercenaries like Blackwater are for overt security work that politicians prefer not to go through DoD oversight. Blackwater failed so spectacularly that they have changed their name twice. Now they call themselves Academi.

The military and intelligence services are entirely capable of doing the evil and necessary things that they always have done. They don't like Blackwater and other mercenaries one bit. Those guys get huge pay compared to soldiers for doing similar work and doing it poorly.

Using mercenaries is not a military decision, it has always been a political decision. The government-hating Republicans thinks that privatizing armies is good for business. The Image-sensitive Democrats think they are usefully low-profile rather than clearly military for certain work. The State Department thinks that having civilian security rather than Marines embassy guards is more PC in some countries. Ex-politicans and ex-military brass have learned how to turn a $10 million military job into a $100 million contract job, with huge profits for the owners and robust salaries for the employees. All at taxpayer expense.

 

What nonsense! Again a blogger with a political agenda is trying to place responsibility on political adversaries rather than the culprit, the generally poor handling of the dangerously mentally ill, and the ease with which they can acquire weapons.

 

You miss the point. They are decidedly civilians and thus not subject to military authority . . . or legal ramifications. The international treaties that establish the Laws and customs of war explicitly forbid the usage of mercenaries in warfare. Legally they are neither lawful combatants, nor non-combatants, and thus aren't eligible for protection and respectful treatment under, for example, the Geneva conventions. When captured, they are treated as a criminal gang at best, and at worst as complete outlaws. The term "Private Military Contrators" is a transparent attempt to make mercs look like they aren't mercs for legal reasons.

Blackwater no longer exists. And the CIA does hire civilians for covert work, its what they have always done, but only a few of the most capable military contractors and not because our military is incapable. It's usually because there is a political reason to avoid military oversight, international legal issues, or congressional auditors.

Where have they successfully defeated terrorists? Of these "hundreds" of mercenary contractors out there, only a few are militarily capable, with high-enough security clearances, and with low-enough profiles that are useful to us. Most are far less capable, trustworthy, and dependable.

It is to me. Are you seriously trying to say that our intelligence agents and military special operators aren't as capable as a "PMC"?

Sure. Mostly they do security work. Specifically, like the two of them that OD'd on the Maersk Alabama. Officially, they may be employed only in duties not involving actively engaging the enemy (though they can do this if forced), such as escorting convoys and guarding civilian structures. It must be noted that not all PMCs are thinly disguised mercenaries, most of them don't do military work at all. A private military contractor is any non-government organization contracted by the military, which may include office work like air-photo interpretation and computer repair or mundane things like a contract to make and serve food for an army in peacetime.

I'll give another "specific". A good friend of mine is an Army National Guard E-8 specializing in food service. He fed the people in the Superdome during Katrina. He's qualified to run a battalion-sized field kitchen. In peacetime he runs a military kitchen at Camp Beauregard, the Louisiana National Guard main base. During the Iraq War, some Army Reservists from New York were stationed there as active duty personnel for training and awaiting duty overseas. These guys were not fed at the National Guard Mess Hall. They were fed by Bechtel, a PMC with a contract to feed the Army Reservists.

One day after chow call, my friend spotted a half-dozen of these guys hanging around outside the mess hall and invited them in to eat because there was plenty of hot food left. He said these guys attacked the food like it was their last meal and thanked him profusely. One said that he had lost 20 pounds in the six weeks that they were at Camp Beauregard. Bechtel had been feeding them "hot meals" that were actually prepared off-base in a nearby city hours earlier and were delivered to the base in styrofoam lunch boxes. Cold by the time they arrived, the food was also in small quantities and had been obviously canned or frozen, not the fresh meals served in stateside military kitchens.

The PMC was charging God-know-whats to the taxpayer to feed substandard meals to these soldiers, who should have been fed in army mess halls on the same friggin' base. And the profits flowed to the Corporate giant. And you and I paid for it.

What do you imagine that reason is? Does it include the term "corporate profits"?

Frankly, I know quite a bit about private military contractors, because I was one . . . doing research contracts for the Navy Department. But mostly I read the news and study some things that are not classified but harder to root out. Blackwater was not a black operation. Their story is public knowledge, as were their propensity for killing civilians non-combatants. That is NOT what they were hired to do. Most PMC's are not involved in black operations and their work is public record.