Soldiers on Sale
Who’s In Charge of These Hired Killers?
By Eric S. Margolis
A fascinating scandal has erupted in Washington over the use of mercenaries (‘private contractors’ in US terminology) that is exposing the dark underbelly of America’s foreign wars. It has been that the Pentagon and other US intelligence agencies secretly fielded mercenaries in Afghanistan, Pakistan (aka “Af-Pak”), and Iraq to assassinate tribal militants.
US law forbids murder or using mercenaries. But, as the Roman jurist Cicero said, “laws are silent in times of war.”
A former senior Pentagon official specialising in clandestine operations, Mike Furlong, set up a shell company, International Media Ventures (IMV), to supposedly provide the US military with “cultural information” about Afghanistan’s Pashtun tribes. Two obscure Pentagon outfits, the “Cultural Engineering Group” in Florida, and “Counter-Narco-terrorism Technology Programme” of Virginia funded Furlong with $24.6 million.
Furlong hired a bunch of former Special Forces types and assorted thugs. These rent-a-Rambos’s real mission was to assassinate Pashtun leaders in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and target tribal compounds for strikes by US Predator drones. Welcome to the modern version of the Mafia’s infamous contract killers, “Murder Inc.”
Thickening this plot, retired CIA types, including the flamboyant Dewey Clarridge, whom I well recall from the 1980’s Afghan war, were involved. So were other would-be bounty-hunters, eager to cash in one the Pentagon’s cash bonanza. It is uncertain if Furlong’s Murder Inc had time to go operational. But its exposure is causing uproar. In best US government tradition, the Pentagon denied backing Furlong and cut him adrift. He is now under criminal investigation.
Shades of former CIA agent Edwin Wilson, whose frightful case I long followed. Wilson was set up as a deniable “independent” by CIA to supply arms and explosives to Libya and Angola in the 1980’s. When this intrigue blew wide open, Wilson was kidnapped by US agents and buried alive in federal prison for 27 years.
The Furlong scandal comes at a time of growing criticism of the US government’s use of over 275,000 mercenaries in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. These hired gunmen and logistics personnel operate without any accountability, legal structure, or oversight. Lack of command and control of such free-lancers infuriates traditional military men, who detest US Special Forces and these hired gunmen as ‘cowboys.’
It certainly is no way to win over Muslim hearts and minds.
Private mercenary firms like Xe (formerly Blackwater) and DynCorp have raked in fortunes running private armies for the US. They are major donors to the far right of the Republican Party. Deeply worried civil libertarians call these private armies potential Brownshirts, after the Nazi Party’s private army in the late 1920’s.
Amazingly, US Special Forces in Af-Pak have not until this month been under the control of supreme commander, Gen. Stanley McChrystal. They apparently reported to his rival, Central Command chief Gen. David Petraeus in Tampa, Florida.
To the Pentagons’s anger, CIA runs its own killer paramilitary units and drone assassination operations, 90 per cent of whose victims are civilians, according to Pakistani media investigations. CIA’s paramilitaries report only to HQ in Langley —which does not talk to the Pentagon. Pakistan’s feeble government is not even informed in advance of Predator strikes and assassinations on its own territory. How many of the 15 other US intelligence agencies and NATO forces are running their own little illegal private armies?
US mercenaries are responsible for a growing number of civilian deaths. It’s only a matter of time before all these cowboys begin shooting at one another. Reliable sources in Pakistan report that US-paid mercenaries are staging bombings there and in Afghanistan in an attempt to incite popular anger against Islamic or tribal militants, and draw Pakistan’s army deep into the fray.
Washington brands all Al Qaeda and Taleban “illegal combatants,” denying them due process of law and the Geneva Convention’s prisoner protections. Murdering or torturing such “terrorists,” says Washington, is lawful. So what about all the US mercenary Rambos running amok, who wear no uniform, kill at will, and have no legal oversight and, as we saw in Iraq, get away with murder?
Eric Margolis is a veteran US journalist who reported from the Middle East and Asia for nearly two decades
From - "Khaleej Times" March 21, 2010
Images -http://schema-root.org/military/mercenaries/mercenaries.jpg
http://aftermathnews.files.wordpress.com/2009/08/knights_templar_battle.jpg
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Yes, You're right. Mercs for hire is a huge problem, they contribute to the expansion of empire, they'll kill their own people for the right price. When will we finally learn that the "price is wrong." Plain and simple, they'll do anything for money. If you want to expand your corporate empire to another part of the world like Afghanistan you send in a diplomat in an attempt to negotiate a deal with the head officials, if that doesn't work you arrange sanctions, and if sanctions don't work, you send in the Jackals (Mercs) to overthrow their government, they spread propaganda for the purpose of creating a strong opposition party against the existing government. This goes on until the opposition becomes violently rebellious, then the mercs provide them with arms enough to overthrow the government. There is one primary reason that the international owners and controllers of banks and energy want this to happen. PROFIT.... Profit from the Mercs dependency on arms and supply's which we the tax payer pays for. Profit from rebuilding the country they destroy again which we pay for. Profit from the natural energy resources they loot. Profits from the all the corporations that they set up there. All of this is done in the name of DEMOCRACY. Now what is the solution? You take the money away and you give people more than enough to sustain their lives from the cradle to the grave trough abundant supply of FREE ENERGY technologies and resources.
ReplyDeleteIt doesn't take too many people to throw the entire world out of balance.
Aye - abundance extinguishes money! See http://nexusilluminati.blogspot.com/2011/01/abundance-extinguishes-money.html
ReplyDelete