What is your opinion on the use of an independent agency such as Blackwater in fighting the war in Iraq?

Question

Do you feel that they are harmful or helpful? Do you think they are used because they cannot be punished by the same laws as a U.S. soldier would be punished? I was totally unaware that organizations like this existed and find this extremely interesting. For Poli Sci class term paper........... I am not aganist the war so for those who are, no comments please! Serious opinions only needed for statistical chart!

Answer 1

They aren't fighting the war.
All they do is guard and provide convoy security details when there are special guests, like Condi, for example.
We need to use a different agency because everybody hates BW.
The military people hate them because they are making 600 bucks a day whether they work or not.
When they HAVE to call the military to help them get out of a situation they cannnot handle, the military takes their sweet time in responding and rightfully so. With this type of hostility though, it isn't good for them to be there at the level they are.
They spend hours upon hours at the gym everyday (while making 600 bucks) and days off (which are many) at the Palace Pool getting their tans.
On party night, they used to get so drunk at the pool they ended up being banned from partying there.
One guy threw me in the pool with my video camera in my hands ruining it one night, he did pay for me to replace it but that is beyond the point. I was working there for KBR and I was working at the pool that night.
They think they are God's, seriously. I dated a few of them, and my brother in law IS one of them.
They do and did shoot without cause. They need to be held accountable and have to follow the same protocols at the military. I've heard lots of stories and seen lots of videos from the guys themselves.
I was there, so I know all of this first hand.

Answer 2

Well first, Blackwater and companies like them, aren't fighting the war.

They provide security guards, to protect diplomats and contractors.

All US contractors in Iraq do fall under the military UCMJ.

They have since 2006 when the law was changed as part of the FY 2007 Defense Authorization.

Blackwater was hired by the State Department to suppliment the State Departments Diplomatic Security Corp.

Answer 3

They're difficult to control and dangerous, especially since they aren't working towards the same goals as the country that's hired them. It's perfectly reasonable to use them if there's no alternative, but the USMC have traditionally been used for embassy security, and I don't see why we need to contract out jobs like that, or for that matter jobs repairing Iraqi infrastructure, when we should have enough Marines and Army engineers and civil affairs people to do those jobs. OK, we went in with the army we had rather than the one we needed, to paraphrase Rumsfeld, but it's ridiculous that no efforts were made to remedy the situation after the decision to invade was made.
This is a chronic problem with the Pentagon. They're a bureaucracy like any other, so they aren't going to make internal changes to adapt to modern warfare, especially when they have aberrancies like the conventional wars in Iraq to bolster their old thinking. We need SecDefs who can force these changes, and make the Air Force buy fewer F-22's and F-35's, and more C-17's. (We couldn't have supplied our troops in the first Gulf War without FedEx!) We need people to push for more civil affairs and engineering officers and a LOT fewer field-grade staff slots. We need to worry less about training for 2nd generation war when we keep losing 4th generation wars (or, as Powell proposed in his famous "Powell Doctrine," just refuse to fight the latter, which seems a bit impractical since 9/11). This is not an easy job. Our SecDef needs to be neither anti-military (as the Truman administration nearly destroyed the DOD at its birth) nor pro-military (supporting the Pentagon instead of forcing it forward).

Answer 4

i think that if more people would quit whining about the war and join up to fight for some of their freedoms we would not need such agencies as blackwater but at the same time if the government wouldn't pay them as well as they do maybe more of there people would be soldiers. in either case i believe that agencies such as these should be made moot. i believe that they are as effective as they are allowed to be. i believe that if they are using united states citizens then those citizens still fall under united states law however if they never set foot in the country they are considered expatriates and i dont think that the government will trace them to far or hard.

Answer 5

Blackwater and other such security firms have no connection to the military, they were neither under the control of the Iraqi Government or US forces, in all regards they had a free hand to be as mercenerary as they wanted, thankfully they are now all being removed from Iraq and returned to the USA.
Without having to account for many of their actions which rate as cold-blooded murder of many innocent Iraqi civillians.

Answer 6

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=AqOGKn3LsbcV4rm7HxvR6mTsy6IX;_ylv=3?qid=20070918043855AAf6Zpd

This is a question I posted a few days ago. I feel that Blackwater and companies like them are a valuable tool in the war. Think about it, if they weren't doing that job, we would have to deploy that many more US soldiers to do those jobs. Then are NOT mercenaries...they are there to protect foreign dignitaries, not fight the war. And FYI, the Iraqi's have been claiming that the US has been killing "civilians" who are actually insurgents for years, when it is them who kill WAY more civilians, intentionally, than we ever will.

EDIT

To the person who said they shot without cause, getting blown up and shot at is without cause?

Answer 7

$35,000 per month! Liberals have this unbelievable ability to inflate any number or statistic that comes their way. 47,000,000 without health care, 3,000 school children a day start smoking it never ends with these liars....

Blackwater is a private American company that exists for many purposes. They have security specialists that are from military units of all nations.

They do not have the protection of the status of forces agreement so they are liable to civil laws unless there is some lateral arrangement.

These folks are dedicated and do good work. I don't know the details of the events of last week and neither does anyone else here. There will be some liberal who can make some up but I will wait for a peek at the after action report.

Maybe they screwed up, in which case they will be punished and the survivors compensated.

Answer 8

Tommy is a soldier in a poem by Kipling.

For it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Chuck him out, the brute!"
But it's "Saviour of 'is country," when the guns begin to shoot;
An' it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' anything you please;
But Tommy ain't a bloomin' fool - you bet that Tommy sees!

It is a tough neighborhood and we need all the help we can get.

You don't tug on Superman's cape... You don't spit into the wind ... You don't pull the mask off the old Lone Ranger... and you don't mess around with Blackwater.

In Korea, locals would steal things like paint. We collected cigarettes to pay them to paint our vehicles with the stolen paint. The Turkish compound down the road never had that problem after one fell on a ram rod and it came out the other ear.

YOU MUST MEET OR EXCEED ALL OF THE FOLLOWING REQUIREMENTS: Must have minimum of one (1) year experience in providing Protective Security Services (high threat close protection, preferably overseas) in: Special Operations, US Military Special Forces, US Secret Service, Department of State Diplomatic Security Service, commercial executive protection services, or military, federal, state and local law enforcement agencies.

Answer 9

They are needed because there isn't anyone else that can do it. Most all of them are former special forces in the military or law enforcement. These aren't a bunch of yahoos out there. And they are being killed by insurgents like everyone else. They aren't body guards of what we think. When a diplomat goes out, they are the only ones that go with that person, no military.

Answer 10

The alternative would be to re-institute the draft, and we'd have to draft far more people than the entire Blackwater group to get the same job done, if it could be done at all, because the draftees would not have nearly the same experience and capabilities.