Paying Blackwater is cheaper than maintaining the surge capability of troops.

Also, it is a way for the military to retain top talent at "market" wages. Great for a military who is having terrible retention problems with special operations folks.

My cousin makes over 100k a year at Blackwater as a short term contracted soldier who travels around the globe doing private security. It seems like an awesome job, especially for him, as he barely passed high school.

I think they can use US/Coalition assets, but also, Blackwater has their own planes and helicopters

I'm duly impressed with this post, Zarth. If this is the quality of the stuff you'd contribute, I hope we see more.

I'm no fan of the massive use of contractors in Iraq or elsewhere, but they are needed to one extent or another. Remember, there are many contractors other than "trigger-pullers". But I do not like the privatization of combat arms or intelligence. Nonetheless, traditional security services like the Diplomatic Security Service (DSS) are incapable of providing the numbers of bodies necessary to protect all the assets for which they are responsible (embassies, etc.), so their use is necessary. Please keep in mind that I am looking objectively at the situation, not judging the war/situation as wrong or right. Ignoring 'wrong or right" these contractors are quite necessary, both for logistics and personal security now.

However, they must be held accountable, and they are not in many cases. Many times, one contractor will fire a team member and he'll be hired on by another in a few weeks and be back doing the same thing he was doing in the same place.

Also bear in mind, the ridiculous figures on dollars "per day" that are thrown around are somewhat misleading. Yes, they may in fact be true. Some may make $1,000 a day. But the military is also justly rewarded for their service and have at their disposal a number of perks and benefits that surpass most of America by a long shot (and as a former military member, I never thought of it that way until long after I got out). Pure "dollar vs. dollar" comparisons ends with contractors winning virtually every time. But when you start thinking in terms of fringe benefits...

Oddly enough, I'm not happy any time an innocent person is murdered. But whenever you're put in a deadly, confusing situation, mistakes are going to happen.

Pending further investigation, there are a lot of questions still unresolved here, and until the answers start coming in, the contractors' degree of blame - and their level of professionalism - remains uncertain.

I'm pretty sure that this is actually not true. It's arguable, of course, because you're dealing with counterfactuals, but I've never seen any genuinely convincing evidence that the present military model of specialized combat troops and support contractors is either economically or militarily effective.

Dude, the military is having terrible retention problems precisely BECAUSE of Blackwater and its' ilk.

The pic in this is not Blackwater or any other PMC. Its a .gov agency in NOLA post Katrina. Sorry I'm a stickler for details.

Well, I certainly hope you've complained to the management.

I'm not in the seals or anything, but the when I was in ramadi we had some hoity-toity fancy pants people come to visit and they had blackwater security. I swear if those guys hear a stick break in their vicinity they start at everything.

they've been pulling crap like this (what happened on sunday) since the war began. I know lots of people with stories about how ate up blackwater is. granted everyone wants to sign up with them after getting out because they pay so well.

It is true. I am a lower end security contractor, not Blackwater, but a security contractor.
So many of the people I work with are Iraq/Afghanistan military vets that saw the money that could be made contracting.
Throw on top of that the lack of rules, the freedom to leave at any time, the pay, it is a good deal. You basically do what the military does with out all the bullshit, more freedom and better pay.
Heck, many of the people are still in the Guard or Reserve and do this for a year and go back to Guard/Reserve.

i think they should be commended for a job well done... im sure we are not hearing their side of the story..... id do the same exact thing if i were in their shoes.... i can almost guarntee that it was a complex attack that started of with an IED. so until everyone gets the whole story lets not start talking bad about blackwater

Blackwater scares the hell out of me, they hire 40,000 soldiers a year and are a private mercenary army lead by a hardcore bible thumper, that donates heavily to the republicans. so when the apocalypse comes these are gonna be the guys who ruin it for all of us.

Do you even realize the contradiction you've just made?

You've just argued that we withhold criticism against Blackwater until we "get the whole story". Yet, you just praised them.

Blackwater has a dark history, detailed in this book. At it's root, it is war-profiteering at it's worst.

Source: NY Times

Blackwater is our administration's private militia. They earn $1000 a day, yet only have to declare 25% of it on taxes. They are not held accountable to Iraqi law, Geneva Conventions or anything else. And like someone posted earlier, they're casualties don't add to the official body count. I met quite a few of them in Post Katrina New Orleans, where they made a $1,000 a day getting drunk, and fucking around. It made me sick to know that they were where the money was going.

Jeremy Scahill of The Nation, who wrote a book criticizing Blackwater, sums up the main criticisms of these 'security' firms, Blackwater in particular, in this CNN interview:

Well that explains where the Trustwell company in DMZ came from...