IRAQ IIO
Summaries here and here and here.
Just one telling excerpt from a radio interview with a top-ranked reporter covering Baghdad.
…What you find is a real loathing and contempt for Blackwater and the other private security contractors, a feeling that they’re a bunch of cowboys. You know, they come into an area an American commander’s trying to deal with and they mess things up, and you don’t know they’re there. They don’t coordinate. They don’t tell you they’re coming through. And most of all, that they don’t have the best interest of the country in mind. All they’re there is to make a buck by executing their contract, and their contract is to keep their principal alive, to perform their bodyguard function, at the expense of everything else. American troops know that sometimes you might have to die in the course of your duty rather than, say, kill a bunch of kids. And they really make sacrifices in executing their duty.
And they’re very unhappy when they see these boys cowboying it up, is the term they use, acting like a bunch of cowboys. I was actually talking to a brigade commander about this, and I said, `Would you want the responsibility of having these guys in your chain of command, of having to discipline them?’ And he said, `Absolutely.’ He said, `It would be a lot of extra work to try to keep tabs on these guys, but it’s a lot better than having them just shoot through my’–what he calls–`my battle space, my area, without me knowing about it and messing up the area and maybe undercutting my progress.’
I think that the security contractor situation has really come into relief this year, though, because, for years, some American units acted in a way not unlike the way the security contractors act.… Audio Link
Come back soon.
Comment by tireiron chef — December 8, 2007 @ 10:19 pm on Saturday the 8th
Thank you, my friend, for all you do.
Know this. You’re a wonderful man.
Comment by Hill — January 7, 2008 @ 11:48 pm on Monday the 7th