mercenaries in Iraq

Oh wait, we're supposed to call them 'private contractors.' Walter Pincus writes in the Washington Post on how

While U.S. contractors have provided personal security to officials in other conflict zones, those in Iraq are now being used in all aspects of the struggle because, as the CRS report says, doing otherwise would require policymakers "to contemplate an increase in the number of U.S. troops, perhaps increasing incentives to attract volunteers or re-instituting the draft."

This has a couple implications - obviously, the ways in which they can operate in a legal gray zone and the way in which these companies become a shadow enforcement arm of unaccountable elites are among the most severe. (Indypendant article of Aug 15 by Jeremy Scahill - of Blackwater fame) Also that it proves this war is, among other things, designed to funnel money to US corporations allied with Rumsfeld, Cheney, etc.

And it suggests that The Surge is actually more expansive than we've thought, because they can funnel Blackwater into the region without having to report it to anyone.

And also it upps the number of US casualties by at least 1,000.

And it promises the future expansion of warfare around the world -- with, as a bonus, extremist religious connotations. As Scahill says in his interview with Democracy Now:

You know, something happened last year that got no attention whatsoever. In October, President Bush lifted sanctions on Christian Southern Sudan, and there have been reports now that Blackwater has been negotiating directly with the Southern Sudanese regional government to come in and start training the Christian forces of the south of Sudan. Blackwater has been itching to get into Sudan, and Erik Prince is on the board of Christian Freedom International, which is an evangelical missionary organization that has been targeting Sudan for many years.

And finally that there's a good chance our own country is going to be fucked. up. when these people come back from their mercenary adventure. Within 10-20 years after our inevitable pull-out of Iraq, we are going to have to deal with our own home-grown warlords. Of course, they're already in charge now. So how much worse can it get? Scahill:

[W]hat’s really frightening is that you have a man in Erik Prince, who is a neo-crusader, a Christian supremacist, who has been given over a half a billion dollars in federal contracts, and that's not to mention his black contracts, his secret contracts, his contracts with foreign friendly governments like Jordan. This is a man who espouses Christian supremacy, and he has been given, essentially, allowed to create a private army to defend Christendom around the world against secularists and Muslims and others, and has really been brought into the fold. He refers to Blackwater as the sort of FedEx of the Pentagon. He says if you really want a package to get somewhere, do you go with the postal service or do you go with FedEx? This is how these people view themselves. And it embodies everything that President Eisenhower prophesied would happen with the rise of an unchecked military-industrial complex. You have it all in Blackwater.

So maybe that's the best argument for keeping these insane people fighting their happy colonial wars in other countries. Because if they ran out of those to fight they'd just set up their fiefdoms here. Of course, this might just upset people the slightest bit in the countries we choose as our playgrounds, but it's not like a couple dozen pissed off brown people with box cutters could ever attack us back in any way...