Blackwater's contract should be considered to have expired in May 2007. The State Department should demand their money back due to piss poor performance.

In the ideal world all Blackwater operations would take place from a prison cell after conviction for mass murder and war crimes.

One of the features I would like to see is a search on user names, as a condition of be able to search the insight and consistency of a poster's observations.

Some time back I posted that the blackwater issue was a 'move on issue' and that blackwater would:

1.) Observe a covenant of trust with it's employees. And then a subsequent release from that company that they would not allow their employees to be arrested.

2.) A shuffle in contracting or teaming, that the removal of blackwater would form an agreemnet with a company such as Dynacorp/CSC for the services in a sub-contracting agreement with the identical perosnel and that the circumstances would not change.

The reason behind this is simple: There was never enough resources to perform the mission in Iraq and the mission's complexity was severly under estimated from initial conception, most notably the sectarian and political resistance to transformation to US goals and the historical reluctance to place ethnic policing in charge of ethnic populaces.

As a consequnce of the initial poor planning and unpreparedness, even extending to a rational and comprehensive energy plan, and ergo: economic plan to wage war, (as an example no rationing of energy or war bonds) the circusmances have globally and from a national security perspective eroded over the last 6 years and the prospect of not needed the contractors even more apparent.

I saw last evening the lampooning of the I looked into his eyes and saw KGB and had to think, whom short of an idealouge, a faith based individual would not see anything but an opportunistic pragmatist? And there is the reason why the blackwater issue is moot... the myoptic assesments that lead to initial decisions has no necessitated that their not be a change of course as the circumstances have deteriorated and that realization is acted upon by other nationalistic actors and idealogical groups.

I see that Bhutto stands against non-secular government in Pakistan and with support from Musharaf, and that is the correct way to 'pragmatically' wage war on terrorism, to realize that the marginalization of these groups as criminals is the correct course...

There is a sever disconnect with the GWOT and the policies in the US and those poor decisions will affect the economy, affect the national security priorities, and effect a change in the strategy, but one damn thing is for certain... it will not effect a change with the number of contractors in Iraq, if anything that number will increase over the next couple months.

This is a moot issue... there is nothing to pontificate on this issue.. facts are the facts.. you may not like the facts, but you damn sure have to acknowledge them. You have to look facts straight in the eyes.. and all that BS optomism that was pimped as policy by the GOP with trade with China, seeing a man that could be trusted in Putnin, (if he had a calculated opportunity) as the same goes with China.. is BS!

And due to the circumstances that the US finds itself in.. there is no options on the table to remove the contractors from Iraq.

There might be other options worth pursuing, but they are on major indexes as the dollar sinks and the costs of these bad policies by the US are realized.

JMHO...

Yawn...

Blackwater's current contractors ain't going anywhere.... They just will get their payday from another source with a teaming agreement.

You have NO F*CKING IDEA what it's like to work in this environment. I have personally been protected by BW operators, and have never found them anything but professional and ethical. In the past two years, I have been in two situations where we were fired upon while in convoy. In both situations, the BW personnel's only concern was getting us out of the problem area ASAP! And yes they had to bump a few cars out of the way to do it! Neither time did BW return fire, even with some of the bad guys completely exposed, firing from less than 20 yards. Some much for them being blood-thirsty mercenaries.

Welcome to the real world.

New chief? Or simply a patsy? I have seen enough of Blackwater to tell me not to come into contact with anything they do. Blackwater is a clear example of what too much money in the hands of an inexperienced person with too much power can do. Hell the same goes for Bush.

"State Department should demand their money back due to piss poor performance."

If we have any chance at all to gain back our power over our hired folks in government, we REALLY need to stress the concept that THIS IS ALL OUR MONEY, not the state departments.

I get agitated every time I see a highway construction sign (paid for by you and me) that tells everyone passing that the construction was paid for by (it then lists the government agencies involved with the construction), like these agencies were our benefactors, instead of our robber barons, taking our money forcefully and then using it to increase the size and power of the beaurocracies, while spending two or three times the amount necessary for EVERY project...IMHO

Anyone else creeped out by the name "Moyock?"

Combo of "mynock," which were gross bug things in Star Wars, and "morlocks," who lived underground and ate humans in "The Time Machine."

OK? What further proof do you need? Whole thing stinks to high heaven.

"You have NO F*CKING IDEA what it's like to work in this environment."

John... I have never been in Iraq, but I would venture that some of those folks (including me) have been in combat zones also. I am aware that there are good and bad people working in any profession. I also am aware that when you give automatic weapons and armed helicopters and twenty thousand pound armored vehicles to folks without any penalties for murdering innocent people, innocent people will be murdered..

We have plenty of laws back here in the states with severe penalties for murdering innocent people and it still happens every day. I tend to believe it is no different in Iraq...IMHO

John in Bagdad,
Well, your second post is much easier to read and provides more information than the first. It's easy to put people off when you start a post by yelling profanities. I am sure that I don't know what it's like there, primarily because we don't get a lot of information here about what it is like there. Every now and then the congresscritters who visit Iraq come back and tell us things are going very well. So if they are telling us that, and you are telling us that we have no idea what it's like there,then what are we to think? Why don't you start a blog and tell us about it, preferably with some video and photos?

Secondly, I expect BW is considered by those being protected to have done a good job, since they have not lost a single person they are in the business of protecting (as Prince tetified). No company in the USA has a 100% rate of return like that. However, you are aware, aren't you, of the 17-20 Iraqis killed on 9/16 who had not done a damned thing except go to town and were perceived to be in the way of the convoy protected by BW?

Would you not agree that such contractors ought to have someone to oversee their operations? Either under the military umbrella, US law, or Iraqi law? Or do you think there should be no oversight of anything going on in Iraq?

One las tnote: You said "Most seem to have an unhealthy attachment to extreme sports (mountain biking, heli-skiing, etc.) and motorcycles." speaking of the BW personnel. This "unhealthy" attachment to "extreme" sports could, just maybe, at one particular junction in time, be translated into unhealthy, extreme reaction to an automobile coming toward them with a young man and his mother in it on their way to pick up his sister/her daughter from school.

I pray you stay safe while you work hard to provide water to the Iraqis. And I pray they get that water soon.