Has anyone heard of Blackwater?

Read-Only said:
Are you serious??? They've been all over the news for quite a while now! Seems everyone but you knows about them. Do you live in a cave somewhere on another planet???? And they aren't some kind of "shadow troops" - they're private security forces hired to protect contractors and government officials.
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Technically the only work under the Bush administration.

I just wanted to see how many other people know about them.
 
read said:
Correct. You didn't make the choice to start the war, it's your job to provide the needed support. How are you going to do it???
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I'm not going to do it.

I'm going to admit failure, rather than compound it. Anybody who started a war without bothering to line up the logistics first will just have to deal.
 
Anybody who started a war without bothering to line up the logistics first will just have to deal.
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Quite. Considering what's been spent (not just by the US), the result (a complete and utter fiasco --with terrorists in the Iraqi Army and Security forces, or gangs seeking retribution against other gangs, or the Taleban, or the Mehdi, dead civilians everywhere, or lots of other problems which are probably pointless to list)
--isn't what I would call "money well spent", at least.
 
iceaura said:
I'm not going to do it.

I'm going to admit failure, rather than compound it. Anybody who started a war without bothering to line up the logistics first will just have to deal.
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You still don't get it do you????:bugeye: It's a very simple thing yet still completely beyond your comprehension.

The people who issue the orders to go to war don't concern themselves with the details - that's the responsibility of underlings who have no choice but to try and make the necessary things happen.

Yeah, I understand what you're made of. In your simplistic view you believe it was Bush himself who hired Blackwater. And all the various other contractors to rebuild the infrastructure.
 
USS Exeter said:
http://www.blackwaterusa.com/

A private defence company. This is weird, it says that there are 20,000 of these shadow troops in Iraq. Nobody knows about them.
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Lots of people know about them, obviously. If one examines their web page one will see that the employment qualifications far exceed those of traditional military lackey dogs.
 
USS Exeter said:
I just wanted to see how many other people know about them.
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I don't believe THAT for a single millisecond! You've paid no attention to the news (like most kids) and happened to stumble across something you've never heard of before - and figured no one else had either. :bugeye:
 
Grandtheftcow said:
Unfortunately it's better to have idiots guarding a convoy than no one at all. So we're stuck with them unless the US does something crazy like institute a draft.
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Or else something smart like get the hell out of there. Sometimes when you break something you can't fix it. You have to leave it alone to heal by itself.

If the Bush administration tried to reinstitute the draft the resulting riots would make the 1960s look like picnic.
 
Read-Only said:
I don't believe THAT for a single millisecond! You've paid no attention to the news (like most kids) and happened to stumble across something you've never heard of before - and figured no one else had either. :bugeye:
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Well, I've actually known about them for a while. I wanted to learn more about them, so I started this thread to learn what others knew that I didn't. So uhhh.... thanks for the information, Read-Only.....:rolleyes:
 
Blackwater guards were promised a certain immunity by the state department for last month shooting in iraq where some 20 iraqi civilians were killed in Baghdad.
 
iceaura said:
And throughout history they've been trouble, at best a desperation move that seldom works the way you want it to, and worst a deliberately adopted strategy by people arranging for what most would call an unfortunate outcome.

The US was not forced by unexpected developments to use mercenaries in Iraq. They were part of the setup and preparation from the beginning, along with contracting out (at greatly increased cost) such formerly military functions as fuel supply, vehicle maintenance, water, and food, for the army.
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oh come n, don't be so ignorant - the romans used mercanaries and they came out with some pretty positive outcomes - modernisation of the west mean anything to you?
 
oh come n, don't be so ignorant - the romans used mercanaries and they came out with some pretty positive outcomes - modernisation of the west mean anything to you?
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Most historians seem to regard the increasing employment of mercenaries in the later years of that Empire to have contributed to its fall, not its ascendency.
 
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