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Bush--"We Don't Torture."
Universal Soldier--Blackwater
for release 10-26-07
Washington DC
by Lightning Rod
On Sept. 14, 2001, The Poet's Eye observed that as terrible as the spectacular acts of vandalism which had occurred several days before were, they were to be a minor disaster compared to what we were about to experience in the aftermath. It wasn't 'the terrorists' that I was worried about, I didn't fear an invasion by wild eyed Muslim fanatics. I feared what the arrogant nut-jobs who had already seized control of our government were about to do to our rights and freedoms and our fortunes using the fears generated by the events of 9-11. The real enemies to freedom and liberty and democracy were already on our shores.
My advice that day to anyone who had enough money to invest, was to buy stock in private security companies. At the time I envisioned a growth industry in patting down our own citizens while they were being held prisoners in airports. As usual, my expectations were exceeded.
There are now about 30,000 armed security contractors in Iraq. They are hired by numerous shadowy companies. The most prominent of these companies, Blackwater, DynCorp and Triple Canopy, were started and are run by former US military men. But these companies hire mercenaries from all over the world.
Mercenaries can be defined in many ways, but for the purposes of this discussion, the definition of a mercenary is someone who is serving in a military force whose allegiance is not based on nationalism or politics or ideology, but on money.
It's not as if mercenaries are a new thing. Mercenaries have participated in almost every war and conflict in recorded history. We've just given them a fancy Newspeak corporate sounding name now. We call them Private Security Contractors.
Ain't free enterprise great? You can hire a bunch of ex- Navy Seals and Green Berets, pay them ten times what Uncle Sam did, and with just one little invasion score a billion dollar contract to do the same things that any grunt marine can do and should be doing not for pay but for patriotism.
On the high seas, a mercenary is called a privateer. Governments used to issue what were called 'letters of marque' to sea captains. These were authorizations which gave the pirates legal right to loot, rape and pillage as long as they did it to the designated victims. What used to be called 'letters of marque' are now called 'government contracts.' We give them to companies like Halliburton and Blackwater (which is a name strangely similar to another pirate and mercenary, Blackbeard) so that they can legally loot and rape a pillage.
America has long prided itself for being a nation governed by its people and defended by a citizen army. Neither of these things is true today. We have a professional class of politicians who run this country and a 'volunteer' military which must be supplemented by mercenaries in order to accomplish its missions.
The outsourcing of our national defense goes right along with the capitalist tendency to outsource all governmental activities. We stubbornly continue to outsource our health insurance and hand regulatory duties over to the industries which they are supposed to regulate. We want to outsource all of our manufacturing to China and farm our elections out to Dibold and our ports to Dubai. These policies are very lucrative for a certain few people but don't serve the interest of the commonweal.
The Poet's Eye easily sees that our present government is using the ruse of Private Security Contractors to avoid accountability for the piracy that is being committed on the Iraqis and our own people as well. As Bush has famously said, "We don't torture." No, we hire somebody else to do it for us. Our hands are clean as Pontius Pilate's.
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