Last week a friend of mine sent me a link to this New York Times review of Andrew Keen’s new book “The Cult of the Amateur”. Keen is often referred to as the leading contrarian and critic of Web 2.0. and ironically has his own Typepad hosted blog to…

they plan to extend immunity for U.S. contractors in Iraq past the June 30 handover of sovereignty. This extension would continue our policy of exempting private contractors from Iraqi law. Some would still be bound by U.S. law, but because of a legal loophole many contractors would face no accountability for criminal actions.

So in addition to doing what the British in particular did in Iran long ago, which angered the Iranians, there is dual protection in that the contractors are immune also in the USA or under US law, too?

isn;t that the way it usually works with nobid contracts, all that money and political aims?

Not just with war reconstruction (in Bosnia, not only in Iraq) but with defense contracts, disaster recovery here in the USA, and with other government projects that would be contracted to the private industry.

Not just with no-bid contracts, either.

In theory, going private should be more efficient and you remember even during Clinton-Gore there was the use of the term “government-business partnerships” not only for federal intervention in this or that, but also specifically for contracting out government services — trash collection (Waste Management, Inc.) or other functions. (So far, not the Post Office.) It should be better (and in fact, where it is done, in most cases it should not even be a government service at all) but in practice it can be bad — not only cheaters but sweetheart deals. At least as far back as the Civil War, military procurement and contracting resulted, if I remember, in defective rifles (which meant Union boys were killed in the field when they couldn’t fire at the enemy who was firing at them).

WASHINGTON – The Bush Administration announced today that they plan to extend immunity for U.S. contractors in Iraq past the June 30 handover of sovereignty. This extension would continue our policy of exempting private contractors from Iraqi law. Some would still be bound by U.S. law, but because of a legal loophole many contractors would face no accountability for criminal actions. According to the Washington Post, immunity for U.S. personnel abroad is “among the most contentious in the Islamic world, where it has galvanized public opinion against the United States.”
http://www.house.gov/list/press/ma05_meehan/NR040624IraqPrivContractors.html
Congressman Marty Meehan (D-MA), the author of the Contractor Accountability Act, legislation that would hold private contractors accountable under U.S. law, issued the following statement:

Then you don’t feel sorry for any soldiers who are killed, either, do you, and you’d support their choice to refuse orders and to mutiny, wouldn’t you?

It’s a little morbid, but if I had to put in on a scale of sympathy it would be Mercenary < Soldier < Civilian. Although, to be fair, it’s best to take each case individually

I’m sure some mecernaries are all about serving their country, while some soldiers are all about getting the money and getting the hell out, but I’d bet that the reverse is more often true.

That we don’t have the military might to keep those positions within the armed forces speaks more to our poor planning and the weakened state of our military

Yep — errors after the real war was won. (Before it, too, to the extent the military was weaked before 2003)

Blackwater

… claims federal government sovereign immunity?

If they wanted to make sure their family had a father, son or brother, they would have stayed home.

Then you don’t feel sorry for any soldiers who are killed, either, do you, and you’d support their choice to refuse orders and to mutiny, wouldn’t you?

Its that these contractors have often underperformed at exhorbitant prices with zero accountability to the taxpayers who are forced to support them.

And the contractors are well-connected “insiders” who are getting special deals, it seems too often.

This has nothing to do with comparitive efficiency of the private versus public sector and everything to do with political connections and politics.

Wouldn’t it make the most sense to contract the reconstruction of Iraq to the Iraqis themselves?

Don’t they need jobs?

In many cases Iraqis are employed. However, can you name any Iraqi companies that are able to fulfill these contracts? The answer is there are none.

All that aside, the real tragedy revolves around those private contractors who are killed in Iraq.

I feel bad for their families, but it’s hard to muster sympathy for the mercenaries themselves. They strapped guns to their backs and started patrolling around someone else’s country, for money.

If they wanted to make sure their family had a father, son or brother, they would have stayed home.

There are an estimated 100,000 contractors in Iraq, compared with a fraction of that the last time the U.S. was fighting there, and they are not working in just mess halls. They are bodyguards for vips, snipers in the field, translators and interrogators. They man checkpoints at Army bases and run supply convoys through the streets of Iraq. As with much of the occupation, the emergence of guns for hire among this contractor group was not part of the original plan. The number of contractors swelled, the insurgency grew, and the military was unable to provide adeqaute security for all of the civilian workforce. So companies like Blackwater began offering those services–at a high price–in the military’s stead.

These security roles are the sorts of jobs that were typically fulfilled by the military in past conflicts. IMO, they should still be. That we don’t have the military might to keep those positions within the armed forces speaks more to our poor planning and the weakened state of our military – it is no longer able to maintain a base of operations without resorting to private security to guard itself. WTF?
All that aside, the real tragedy revolves around those private contractors who are killed in Iraq. They aren’t part of the armed forces and so their families get no benefit from the government. Their families also get no compensation from Blackwater itself, who argues that it’s contractors operate as part of the U.S. “total force”.

As such, they claim, the company could no more be sued than the U.S. Army could for something that happened in a war zone. And they argue that any compensation for the families (28 Blackwater men have died in Iraq) would have to come from the U.S. government, not from Blackwater.

These families get nothing – no benefit, no information on how their loved ones died…The company isn’t required to release ANY info on these deaths, and it refuses to do so, even to the families who lost a son or a father or a husband.

The idea of using contractors is that the military is capped as to total numbers

Numbers which the Left would like to reduce still more, taking billions more out of the military to spend instead of social programs (and vote buying), all too often.

Remember the disgusting elite-left concept after the Cold War, the “peace dividend”? Rather than pay off debt and permanently reduce taxes to the extent a military reduction was truly justified, with no increase in spending elsewhere, which is what rational, normal people expected, the left-elites drooled instead over the prospect of taking so much of the money that would no longer be spent on the military, and not using it to pay off federal debt, not giving the rest or all of it back to the taxpayers where it should go, permanently, but instead they saw it as an opportunity to take those billions and spend them (naturally) on other, more dear-to-their-warped-hearts objectives.

The so-called “dividend” should have gone fully or partly back, permanently, to the taxpayers, a true dividend, with the only exception being paying off federal debt with no change in tax levels until the debt was paid (substituting debt service for extra military spending). It was no “dividend” for people out of touch with the majority of the US public immediately to drool at the prospect of spending the money instead, on “social” and other related programs.

Let’s be cynical for a moment

Moment after moment after moment after moment after moment after moment…thread after thread after thread after thread after thread about something “new” [sic]:

Bush bad, Bush bad, Bush bad, Bush bad, Bush bad…

The “mercenaries” you mention are a tiny, tiny minority of contractors in Iraq.

Mercenaries are freelancers, individuals, not employees of contract agencies (”contractors” means not only the employers, but the employees here).

Wouldn’t it make the most sense to contract the reconstruction of Iraq to the Iraqis themselves?

Insiders with the right connections wouldn’t benefit in that case. This is part of the post-war stuff (the true war was with the Iraqi military) that has soured Americans.

We haven’t even done things right in this situation. The person who I heard a long time ago on the radio said it right, and spoke for Americans, and all decent people with common sense, regarding our commitment to protect American civilians as well as military, and punish the wrongdoers, when the U.S. contractors were killed in Fallujah and hung from the bridge. “[sign] Get our people out of there, then flatten the place.” We haven’t done much right since the actual war ended.

I be a bad ass hired gun getting rich off of da war.

Typical liberal hypocrisy. You’d scream “Racism!” and behave neurotically or psychotically if a non-liberal wrote that.