The Rise of Mercenary Armies

[Mari333]

Americans are less inclined to oppose a war that is being fought by hired foreign mercenaries, even when their own tax dollars are being squandered to fund it.

“The increasing use of contractors, private forces, or, as some would say, ‘mercenaries’ makes wars easier to begin and to fight – it just takes money and not the citizenry,” said Michael Ratner, of New York’s Center for Constitutional Rights. “To the extent a population is called upon to go to war, there is resistance, a necessary resistance to prevent wars of self-aggrandizement, foolish wars, and, in the case of the United States, hegemonic imperialist wars.”

n 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.









http://revolutionradio.org/2009/09/02/the-rise-of-mercenary-armies/

if you wonder where your money goes, its going down the black hole of neverending bullshit occupations that you pay for. And the SOLDIERS get paid squat, and the MERCENARIES get paid megabucks...
want health care for all??? stop allowing the SQUANDERING OF OUR TAX DOLLARS TO PAY FOR MERCENARIES TO DESTROY OTHER COUNTRIES SO WE CAN STEAL THEIR RESOURCES

[imdjh]

1. Just begun, the clone wars have.

[Taverner]

2. Same thought, I had...

[FarCenter]

3. One of the better films about mercenaries -- The Wild Geese

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wild_Geese

"The Wild Geese is a 1978 film about a group of mercenaries in Africa. It stars Richard Burton, Roger Moore, Richard Harris and Hardy Krüger."