Shut Up Iris

Consumer Reports says 'No'. That's good enough for me.

Looks like we have a ton of space left, so let's look at something else: Mercenaries. That's right, mercenaries, oops, I mean 'Security Contractors' because if you call them 'Mercenaries' they are illegal. Now to the point, the United States of America employs anywhere from 30,000 to 90,000 'Security Contractors' in Iraq and one has to wonder why? Why wonder why? Well the United States starting off had a very bad image of the mercenary, we all learned in grade school about how General George Washington fought the dastardly Hessian Mercenaries hired by King George the Third to kill, rape and pillage the colonials and of course to the Hessian Mercenaries there were only two types of colonials, those that were actively fighting you and those that were going to eventually be fighting you and they killed both. This made them extremely unpopular.

Of course the problem was that by the standards of the day the Hessian Mercenaries were exceptionally brutal, in fact all mercenaries in the 1700's were exceptionally brutal. Armies were expected to fight a certain way, take prisoners and act with a modicum of decorum, that is don't pillage, rape or kill anyone unless your commander says it's okay. Mercenaries of the day of course were not so nice, they had no place to send prisoners of war so they killed all the wounded and captured after a battle, their pay was supplemented by explicit permission to pillage and rape and since they were poorly paid they supplemented their pay at every opportunity they could. Ever since man invented warfare, mercenaries were not far behind and were always universally hated.

We should hate them too, just read this article and you'll start to see why. First if we take the example of Triple Canopy 'Security Services' we see that in a year the Defense Department pays them TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY MILLION dollars a year to provide ONE THOUSAND security personnel, now let's say Triple Canopy's cut is a generous 50% that means each mercenary is paid on average $125,000.00 per year. Good for them, you say? Well take a hot steamy look at this! In the same year the average US Army Infantryman made UNDER $40,000.00!

'Wow' you're saying to yourself 'Mercenaries, er Security Contractors must do the most dangerous work in Iraq!' you would think so, but have a look at this next picture:

Now, you see there, it's Paul Bremer, the guy Bush put in charge of Iraq because of his, uhm, nation building expertise? Anyhow see the fat guy with the gun and beard, he is a Blackwater, er sorry, Xe Mercenary, er Security Contactor, now you see the military personnel and state department personnel behind him? He makes more a year than ALL of them. Why are mercenaries guarding US officials instead of say Marines? Well, Marines don't cost enough. Dubyah, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Bremer and Wolfowitz all had the same mindset that 'More money = Better' and so to guard them, our troops aren't good enough because our officials (the same guys that underpay them) want the most expensive, best equipped security in the world, and they know that they don't give our troops the pay , support or equipment they need. Just using mercenaries is a kick in the teeth to our own underpaid, under equipped soldiers and having mercenaries guard our officials sends that message to our troops each and every day.

There are other reasons to hate them too. Besides their ridiculous pay for doing the least dangerous jobs they are not in any chain of command and they do not have to follow the military's rules of engagement and until recently they could not be charged with a crime in Iraq or the United States for breaking the law! So you have heavily equipped , highly paid and heavily armed mercenaries who take orders from practically no one and can't be held accountable for their actions. We know what the outcome is, that is that mercenaries end up only engaging unarmed targets and often times for no apparent reason. Think about it, you get paid whatever you want, it's not your patriotic or legal duty to do anything why would you ever even get tangled up with actual armed insurgents? You wouldn't you'd spend your time shooting civilians that can't shoot back and of course try and cover it up.

Supporting or even being a mercenary is by definition un-patriotic and the United States is one of the few nations in the world where it is legal to hire them, heck where it is legal to BE them. Our nation should not have to stoop to hiring them, if anybody at the Defense Department had half a brain, they'd use the BILLIONS of dollars spent on mercenaries giving pay raises and the proper equipment to our brave troops.

Support our troops.