USA Hiring Mercs For Iraq Duty

[EmperorMing]

Score one against Machiavelli

*&#%)*&# registration...

[Joe]

An attack by hundreds of Iraqi militia members on the U.S. government's headquarters in Najaf on Sunday was repulsed not by the U.S. military, but by eight commandos from a private security firm, according to sources familiar with the incident.

Before U.S. reinforcements could arrive, the firm, Blackwater Security Consulting, sent in its own helicopters amid an intense firefight to resupply its commandos with ammunition and to ferry out a wounded Marine, the sources said.

The role of Blackwater's commandos in Sunday's fighting in Najaf illuminates the gray zone between their formal role as bodyguards and the realities of operating in an active war zone. Thousands of armed private security contractors are operating in Iraq in a wide variety of missions and exchanging fire with Iraqis every day, according to informal after-action reports from several companies.

In Sunday's fighting, Shiite militia forces barraged the Blackwater commandos, four MPs and a Marine gunner with rocket-propelled grenades and AK-47 fire for hours before U.S. Special Forces troops arrived. A sniper on a nearby roof apparently wounded three men. U.S. troops faced heavy fighting in several Iraqi cities that day.

The Blackwater commandos, most of whom are former Special Forces troops, are on contract to provide security for the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) in Najaf.

With their ammunition nearly gone, a wounded and badly bleeding Marine on the rooftop, and no reinforcement by the U.S. military in the immediate offing, the company sent in helicopters to drop ammunition and pick up the Marine.

The identity of the Marine and two other wounded men could not be established, but their blood was still fresh hours later, when the top U.S. commander in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, and spokesman Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt arrived to survey the battle zone.

Without commenting at a news conference yesterday on the role of the Blackwater guards, Kimmitt described what he saw after the fighting ended. "I know on a rooftop yesterday in An Najaf, with a small group of American soldiers and coalition soldiers . . . who had just been through about 3 1/2 hours of combat, I looked in their eyes, there was no crisis.

"They knew what they were here for," he continued. "They'd lost three wounded. We were sitting there among the bullet shells -- the bullet casings -- and, frankly, the blood of their comrades, and they were absolutely confident."

During the defense of the authority headquarters, thousands of rounds were fired and hundreds of 40mm grenades shot. Sources who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of Blackwater's work in Iraq reported an unspecified number of casualties among Iraqis.

A spokesman for Blackwater confirmed that the company has a contract to provide security to the CPA but would not describe the incident that unfolded Sunday.

A Defense Department spokesman said that there were no military reports about the opening hours of the siege on CPA headquarters in Najaf because there were no military personnel on the scene. The Defense Department often does not have a clear handle on the daily actions of security contractors because the contractors work directly for the coalition authority, which coordinates and communicates on a limited basis through the normal military chain of command.

The four men brutally slain Wednesday in Fallujah were also Blackwater employees and were operating in the Sunni triangle area under more hazardous conditions -- unarmored cars with no apparent backup -- than the U.S. military or the CIA permit.

One senior Blackwater manager has described those killings to U.S. government officials as the result of a "high-quality" attack as skilled as one that can be mounted by U.S. Special Forces, according to a copy of a report on the incident obtained by The Washington Post.

The four victims of that attack, according to Blackwater spokesman Chris Bertelli, were escorting trucks carrying either food or kitchen equipment for Regency Hotel and Hospitality. Regency is a subcontractor to Eurest Support Services (ESS), a division of the Compass Group, the world's largest food service company.

ESS provides food services to more than a dozen U.S. military dining facilities in Iraq, according to news accounts.

Blackwater, a security and training company based in Moyock, N.C., prides itself on the high caliber of its personnel, many of whom are former U.S. Navy SEALs. It has 450 employees in Iraq, many of them providing security to CPA employees, including the U.S. administrator, L. Paul Bremer, and to VIPs visiting Iraq.

Blackwater has applied to occupy a former MIG air base near Baghdad as a counterterrorism training facility for Iraqi forces. The training range will mirror the 6,000-acre Moyock site, which is frequented by U.S. law enforcement and military personnel.

[Vympel]

I love these new, fancy sounding names for mercenaries.

[Ghost Rider]

I love these new, fancy sounding names for mercenaries.

Hey now...since the end of the cold war, we've needed to spruce things up around here .

Still interesting to see how this pans out...and given that they are mostly former American military yes, score one against Machavelli.

[Keevan_Colton]

Anyone else spot the problem in the article?

"No military personel" there, but they had a wounded Marine that had to be evacuated.

I'd think that a Marine counted as military personel and had to be there to be taken away from there.

[HemlockGrey]

8 commandos held off a few hundred Iraqi militia? Gotta get me some of that.

[The Yosemite Bear]

Someone hasn't been reading their Machiavelli.

well you know that as per the neo-cons Niccolo is not a team player, and a European and thus not a friend of the power of Pax Capitalist Americana.

[Vympel]

Oh, and since this news, can we stop calling these helicopter equipped mercs "civilians". It's really annoying seeing that on some of the news channels.

[Keevan_Colton]

Right...

four MPs and a Marine

no military personnel on the scene

Arent those two sort of mutually exclusive?

[aerius]

As to what's ahead, I'd always joked about taking SEAL Team Six commercial. "You call, I haul". KATN Inc. Kick Ass Take Names Incorperated.

It's not so farfetched. The U.S. Government has guidelines which ordain assassination as unacceptable as national policy. It has rules, which say that hostile targets, such as chemical-warplants, nuclear facilities and weapons, can only be hit during bona fide military strikes. But what happens when a superpower such as the United States is faced with a Muammar Qaddafi, a Manuel Norega, or a Saddam Hussein? <snip>

One way for the U.S. to strike back and still retain pausible deniability would be to subcontract its covert hits. So, Instead of lauching a complicated, costly, major military operation against Muammar Qaddafi for example, let Demo Dick's KATN Inc. do the job instead. Just call 1-800-SEAL R US.

Think about it: I have friends, now retired from SEAL Team six, who can fly anything from a Cessna to a 737 to an HH-53H. I have my own intelligence network. I can get a hold of specialized equipment. All those elements are easily recreated outside the military framework. Personnel is no problem either: the hardest chore would be selecting the few who make my final cut.

KATN could do the job lean and mean. <snip> Then, when we're ready, we hop and pop. We shoot and loot. We slip out the back door. If we're caught? Too bad - we knew the risks. We're cannon fodder - expendable assets. And the government still has plausible deniability.. You want one or two of Qaddafi's chemical plants blown up? You need Manuel Noriega Snatched? You want to vaporize the Iraqi nuclear facilities in Baghdad?

Well Mr. President, Mr. SECDEF, Mr. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mr. CNO - You call, I haul. Oh - half the fee up front please.

It's not so farfetched. Believe me.

Excerpt from Rogue Warrior by Richard Marcinko, written around the time of the first Gulf War.


Interesting preview of the future, except that instead of contracting out hits to firms run by ex-Navy SEALS, they're contracting out security to those same firms.

[Sea Skimmer]

8 commandos held off a few hundred Iraqi militia? Gotta get me some of that.

Eight British machine guns once racked up 15,000 kills in a single glorious day in the Sudan. However the claim of them holding off hundreds of attackers is BS, if such an attack ever occurred its escaped the notice of everyone else in the world except this writer.

[The Yosemite Bear]

Well skimmer it's happened in a few movies, and seveal pulp novels, and once upon a time, 1000 greeks held off 20,000 Iraqi ancestors, and then claimed that it was only 300 Greeks against 250,000 oersians...

[Joe]

Well skimmer it's happened in a few movies, and seveal pulp novels, and once upon a time, 1000 greeks held off 20,000 Iraqi ancestors, and then claimed that it was only 300 Greeks against 250,000 oersians...

Actually the Greeks put the number of Persians in the millions, not merely hundreds of thousands.

[Dirty Harry]

Out of curiosity, do these merc outfits provide their own weapons and ammo? or are they supplied by the U.S govt?

[Aaron]

Out of curiosity, do these merc outfits provide their own weapons and ammo? or are they supplied by the U.S govt?

Well if their being hired at 4000$ a month per merc. I'd guess that they are supplying their own weapons and ammo. One of the articles above stated that they have their own choppers too.