A small matter of terminology
Let’s get one thing straight. They’re not private security contractors, they’re mercenaries. The media seem determined to finesse the fact that these people swarming all over Iraq are hired guns and, as we saw on Sunday, hired killers. There’s between 20,000 (BBC) and 127,000 (Washington Post) of them apparently. That kind of accuracy with figures is symptomatic of the unmitigated incompetence we’ve seen since the invasion.
Blackwater, the perpetrators of Sunday’s little snafu, are buying light combat aircraft, for God’s sake:
The aircraft can carry up to 1.5 tons of weapons, including 12.7mm machine-guns, bombs and missiles.
…
Blackwater already has a force of armed helicopters in Iraq, and apparently wants something a little faster, and more heavily armed, to fulfill its security contracts overseas.
That’s some heavy machinery for private security contractors. Particularly when their legal status (ie, can you get redress if they shoot up your family?) is ambiguous at best.
Posted on September 18th, 2007 at 6:45 pm
| See also • Washington Post: Other Killings By Blackwater Staff Detailed • Is it cos I is Blackwater? • Downing Street does auto-fellatio |
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blackwater have recently been told to get out of iraq after one massacre too many
I’d like to bet that precisely zero Blackwater contractors leave Iraq. Secretary of State Rice has already yanked Prime Minister al-Maliki’s chain.
The US government really needs someone to help them quash any resistance to their ‘liberation’, so I’m sure they are grateful for the help.
The US government fears the incident could further inflame anti-American feelings among Iraqi civilians
Not out of the question, I shouldn’t imagine
There’s been a determined PR effort around the rebranding of “mercenaries” since the late 1990s, and the extent to which the media has played along is pretty damning. The Centre for Public Integrity has some interesting stuff on it here:
http://www.publicintegrity.org/bow/report.aspx?aid=149
Tim Spicer (of Sandline, and latterly Aegis) and his PR buddy Sara Pearson both claim not to remember how the term “private military companies” came into existence, but this was the term of choice from about 1997 until the Iraq war, when PMCs became “Private Security Contractors”. Aegis have certainly gone to a lot of trouble to make sure that this is now how everyone describes them; for example, one of a small number of wikipedia edits linked to Aegis by “Wikiscanner” involves redefining Aegis as a “Private Security Company” on the entry for Aegis CEO, Tim Spicer: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=prev&oldid=32244204
PR and image-airbrushing is absolutely central to what these people do, and it’s striking how meekly the media and governments parrot the euphemistic terms that they have invented for themselves.