I remember seeing the news footage of the bodies of American "contractors" hanging from the bridge after being dragged behind cars and burned with gasoline. I was angry and wanted revenge.
Now, the families of these people are suing the employer of these "contractors" for culpability in their deathes. I hope they win their suits, but I truly have no heartache over the deaths of these Blackwater mercenaries. They are a part of the war profiteering industry, and they were not patriots. They were mercenary swine.
Posts: 946 | Location: Newberg | Registered: 15 March 2006
The naivety within some of these Iraq-related posts is mind boggling. Artlo if you had any idea just what is required to organize chaos as in Iraq on the individual human level, day after day after day... all the pieces that have to be moved around and all the relationships that need to be preserved and all the messages sent.. all the while under fire..
But I guess simply writing blackwater employees (2 of whom i've served with as Marines and now with Blackwater) off as mercenary swine makes you all cozy and right..
I think I was born half a century too late. I wouldn't believe it if i wasn't reading it.
Posts: 2167 | Location: CA | Registered: 14 November 2003
The complexity of the war has no bearing on the morality of how it is conducted. These cynical, greedy, opportunistic people aren't man enough to enlist in the military and fight the war on principal for customary soldier's pay. I have no doubt that they have friends who share their level of depraved judgment. This is the place where this perverse administration has brought us to.
Posts: 946 | Location: Newberg | Registered: 15 March 2006
Artlo if I wasn't so upbeat about today being friday i wouldn't even waste my time with you. You know NOTHING of what you speak.
The vast majority of Blackwater employees from the managment on down are former military so yes in fact they are man enough. I just got done telling you I served with two blackwater employees as U.S. Marines.
Blackwater provides speciality security services and they charge what the market bares for their efforts. Like it or not that is how our capitalist system operates.
The US military cannot provide security for every last dignitary, delagate, utility worker, humanitarian worker, journalist etc. that needs to travel from where they sleep to where they work EVERY SINGLE DAY. The combined efforts of these thousands of people is what is required to achieve stability, peace and dare I say, victory (a concept you no doubt reject as not fitting into your anti-war, anti-America defeatist framework).
You do not know but yet you self-richeously bloviate.
You have no credibility not becuase you were never there but becuase you make these baseless assertions coupled with disrespectful insults aimed at people more "man enough" out of the womb than you'll ever be.
Posts: 2167 | Location: CA | Registered: 14 November 2003
Originally posted by artlo: The complexity of the war has no bearing on the morality of how it is conducted. These cynical, greedy, opportunistic people aren't man enough to enlist in the military and fight the war on principal for customary soldier's pay. I have no doubt that they have friends who share their level of depraved judgment. This is the place where this perverse administration has brought us to.
It is hard to believe an adult wrote this.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ "A vote is like a rifle: its usefulness depends upon the character of the user."
Theodore Roosevelt, 1913
Posts: 2404 | Location: Redmond WA | Registered: 04 September 2006
The US military cannot provide security for every last dignitary, delagate, utility worker, humanitarian worker, journalist etc. that needs to travel from where they sleep to where they work EVERY SINGLE DAY.
for 30 grand a month per person the military should be able to provide plenty. 30 grand a month is what these contractors are getting. It's all about milking the US treasury for all its worth and then some.
Up until now nobody has been accountable for billions missing, but that is about to change.
"These things which man purports to admire-the noble, the brilliant, the splendid-these are the very things he cannot tolerate when he finds them."-----Mark Clifton
Posts: 5565 | Location: hoffman estates il | Registered: 01 April 2003
A federal judge has dismissed a civil case against a military contractor accused of improperly billing Iraq reconstruction authorities for tens of millions of dollars worth of security services that it did not provide.
quote:
A jury found the company, which had offices in Northern Virginia, liable for fraud in an earlier case, but Ellis dismissed that verdict.
This judge has to be a republican, Rotten to the core I say!
"These things which man purports to admire-the noble, the brilliant, the splendid-these are the very things he cannot tolerate when he finds them."-----Mark Clifton
Posts: 5565 | Location: hoffman estates il | Registered: 01 April 2003
I know I know. I argued for Quickbooks and Basecamp on the battlefield but it just wasn't deployed in time.
Newsflash gentlemen. When you zero out the Iraqi financial infrastructure like we have, it's a cash business. There will be inconsistencies and there will be foul play. as long as it's the exception and not the rule.
so the Custer Battles firm has some discrepencies and therefore all security contractors are setup to milk the government.
that's a great arguement. not one i'd like to back but good luck with it.
the good news is your team is holding the purse strings now so we shouldn't have these 'problems' anymore come the next war budget vote.
Posts: 2167 | Location: CA | Registered: 14 November 2003
Al-Samaraie was serving a two-year sentence on charges concerning about $2 billion in missing funds for contracts to rebuild Iraq's electrical infrastructure when he escaped Dec. 17 from an Iraqi-run jail inside the heavily fortified Green Zone.
Talk about suspicious! Two billion dollars missing?
quote:
There will be inconsistencies and there will be foul play. as long as it's the exception and not the rule.
Two billion dollars still qualify as an exception?
The former minister said Americans were involved in his jailbreak, but none were affiliated with the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. He declined to say whether any of his American accomplices worked for the U.S. government.
I guess it's safe to say some of that 2 billion paid for the prison break to contractors.
quote:
He said he would return to his home in Oak Brook, outside Chicago, as long as he receives assurances that he won't face U.S. legal problems related to his offenses inside Iraq.
Sounds like he struck a deal of immunity with the US government, maybe in return for who pocketed the 2 billion and testimony, but so far the only company being investigated is the one who was a fundraiser for our Democrat governor.
"These things which man purports to admire-the noble, the brilliant, the splendid-these are the very things he cannot tolerate when he finds them."-----Mark Clifton
Posts: 5565 | Location: hoffman estates il | Registered: 01 April 2003
Newsflash gentlemen. When you zero out the Iraqi financial infrastructure like we have, it's a cash business. There will be inconsistencies and there will be foul play. as long as it's the exception and not the rule.
So, Mr. Newsflash, what's the dividing line between exception and rule?
The Bush administration can't account for up to $12 billion handed out in Iraq by the Coalition Provisional Authority. Only 10 percent of it seems to have gone to firms or persons with written-down contracts. There are fears that some of it went to the building insurgency. Wolf Blitzer asked today on CNN why it had to be in cash, and didn't they have banks? That one is easy. The banking system in Iraq collapsed and the Bush administration had made no plans for reviving it. So the CPA had to deal in cash. It was given out arbitrarily. Rory Stewart's Prince of the Marshes tells some of that story; see also Rajiv Chandrasekaran's Imperial Life in the Emerald City. Also they gutted the Baath government ministries, fired party members, and let the records be burned, so there was no auditing capacity.
"These things which man purports to admire-the noble, the brilliant, the splendid-these are the very things he cannot tolerate when he finds them."-----Mark Clifton
Posts: 5565 | Location: hoffman estates il | Registered: 01 April 2003
Thanks for the Jon Stewart clip. Laughed out loud.
I think it's called Dark Blackwater humor.
--------------------------------------------------------------- "if you always do what you always did, you always get what you always got." ---------------------------------------------------------------
Posts: 6804 | Location: usa | Registered: 09 February 2006
In an effort to stay on the moving goal post that is the topic of this thread, let me reiterate my original point.
My first post had to do with objections to artlo's two assertions that all Blackwater employees are not only mercenary swine but are not man enough to go the military route.
I believe I've debunked both.
I'll add perspective to the war profiteering arguement later.
Posts: 2167 | Location: CA | Registered: 14 November 2003
My first post had to do with objections to artlo's two assertions that all Blackwater employees are not only mercenary swine but are not man enough to go the military route.
I believe I've debunked both.
Yeah you did, but you and Slab were double-teaming artlo pretty hard so I figured I would slide those goalposts over a little...
"These things which man purports to admire-the noble, the brilliant, the splendid-these are the very things he cannot tolerate when he finds them."-----Mark Clifton
Posts: 5565 | Location: hoffman estates il | Registered: 01 April 2003
Originally posted by bill king: Yeah you did, but you and Slab were double-teaming artlo pretty hard so I figured I would slide those goalposts over a little...
Changing the topic to try and save artlo from his silly comments doesn't do much but...change the topic. No save, but nice smoke screen.
Picking off one or five companies that have double billed the government is another thread.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ "A vote is like a rifle: its usefulness depends upon the character of the user."
Theodore Roosevelt, 1913
Posts: 2404 | Location: Redmond WA | Registered: 04 September 2006
Changing the topic to try and save artlo from his silly comments doesn't do much but...change the topic. No save, but nice smoke screen.
Slab... buddy!
First off, I didn't "change the topic", but I did redirect the direction of the thread more suitable for debate.
Secondly, I didn't "save" Art, so much as lend support by focusing on the valid points he brought up.
Art said some things that you both took personally, so your anger was justified, I just thought the important points he was bringing up about the war profiteering shouldn't have been discredited along with the other things said.
"These things which man purports to admire-the noble, the brilliant, the splendid-these are the very things he cannot tolerate when he finds them."-----Mark Clifton
Posts: 5565 | Location: hoffman estates il | Registered: 01 April 2003
Blackwater is a war profiteering firm, plain and simple. Take away Cheney's gift to them (and indirectly, himself), No-bid, cost-plus contracts and Blackwater is out of there in a second. This is what you refer to as "what the market bears". Hardly an example of market forces.
Blackwater employees are not necessarily mercenary swine. Most likely just opportunists helping themselves to what's available. If they are trigger-pullers, they are mercenaries. In no case are they patriotic war heroes. Worst of all, they are enablers. Without them, Cheney has fewer opportunities for war profiteering.
Maybe I don't know what I'm talking about. That would be because there were no government sponsored war profiteers from my time 40 years ago. This is an entirely new time. Blackwater employees may be mere tools, but I smell pork here, somewhere.
Posts: 946 | Location: Newberg | Registered: 15 March 2006
Changing the topic to try and save artlo from his silly comments doesn't do much but...change the topic. No save, but nice smoke screen.
Slab... buddy!
First off, I didn't "change the topic", but I did redirect the direction of the thread more suitable for debate.
Secondly, I didn't "save" Art, so much as lend support by focusing on the valid points he brought up.
Art said some things that you both took personally, so your anger was justified, I just thought the important points he was bringing up about the war profiteering shouldn't have been discredited along with the other things said.
Important? BS.
Comments like this will get responses.
"but I truly have no heartache over the deaths of these Blackwater mercenaries. They are a part of the war profiteering industry, and they were not patriots. They were mercenary swine."
It's not a partisan issue for me. I can see by your comments, you believe it is and provide your own spin to divert the thread that way. I guess it's not a bad tactic as the original comments are inflamatory and rather stupid IMO. I understand the diversion.
Critisizing the accounting practices of government contractors is a far cry from professing that their employees deaths are irrelevent and that they are swine. It's amazing to me that I'd have to explain it.
This message has been edited. Last edited by: Slabmaster,
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ "A vote is like a rifle: its usefulness depends upon the character of the user."
Theodore Roosevelt, 1913
Posts: 2404 | Location: Redmond WA | Registered: 04 September 2006
Blackwater is a war profiteering firm, plain and simple.
Besides the government, please name a non profit firm that has anything to do with defense.
quote:
Maybe I don't know what I'm talking about.
That's true but from what I've seen, most of Blackwater's work has to do with protecting business people and diplomats from kidnapping or murder while traveling in the country for what ever reason.
A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship.
Posts: 8264 | Location: Fl | Registered: 05 July 2001
Originally posted by Sawdust: Besides the government, please name a non profit firm that has anything to do with defense.
Good point.
Boeing, General Dynamics, Lockeed, MD, Colt, Spingfeild Arms, Grumman, A.M. General, and a thousand+ other companies and every employee associated with them that have ever manufactured anything for a war effort are now classified as war profiteering swine.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ "A vote is like a rifle: its usefulness depends upon the character of the user."
Theodore Roosevelt, 1913
Posts: 2404 | Location: Redmond WA | Registered: 04 September 2006
The National Review article was amusing. Apparently, because Halliburon was employed to put out oil well fires in the Gulf War, they are now entitled to a monopoly on all support systems requirements forever and ever throughout the Middle East. Food Service (google "Halliburton poor performance"), construction (google "sub-contracting police academy"), body guard services (google "Blackwater incompetence") for HUGE compensation (google "Hallibuton profits") far, far beyond normal peacetime profit margins. . . . and by the way, who are those "private contractors" who took over Abu Graeb (sp?) and have been conducting those wonderful interrogations we've heard so much about, completely free from liability by executive order. Just asking.
Surely, you don't compare "Boeing, General Dynamics, Lockeed, MD, Colt, Spingfeild Arms, Grumman, A.M. General, and a thousand+ other companies" with these private contractors. These companies compete for their contracts and, when Congress is doing its job, they do their work in peacetime and war. We don't see them jumping into specific wars to feed at the kind of troughs made available by this occupation.
Wikipedia has a pretty good article that describes the difference between ordinary defense contractors and war profiteers.
Also by the way, why is the United States Government using my (and your) money to provide the most expensive possible private bodyguard services for anybody?
So, lets see what we have. A "war" that is intended to go on for years and years. a permanently open checkbook for whatever costs can be incurred plus a profit margin, a favored company with exclusive rights to help itself to this cornucopaeia of riches.
I recognize that "swine" is harsh and incendiary. But how whould you describe a horde of opportunistic creatures feeding at Cheney's endless trough?
This message has been edited. Last edited by: artlo,
Posts: 946 | Location: Newberg | Registered: 15 March 2006
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