Very Sick: "Heavy Metal Mercenary" ( and A Christian Too!) ....

[leftchick]

This is an excellent article in Rollingstone magazine. These "contractors" are so warped it is scary. God help the poor Iraqis....



http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/_/id/6477829?

<snip>
Kedar swings his weapon around and trains it on the car. The driver takes the hint and immediately peels off.

Other contractors, especially the British, view such shows of force as unnecessary and insanely provocative. Treating everyone as hostile, they say, helps make people hostile: The more you point your weapons at innocent civilians, the harder it is to convince them that you're only here to help. Then again, Wolf isn't violating any industry standards, because for all practical purposes there are no industry standards. Anyone willing to carry a gun in Iraq can have a job in Iraq -- and those hired as shooters know that no matter how crazy or dangerous they act, they can almost certainly get a job with another company. "They didn't check crap," one operator told me in disgust after a prospective employer didn't even bother to verify his credentials. "They hired me over the phone and had me on a plane the next day." As a Special Forces veteran, Weiss is considered a Tier One operator -- someone with extensive experience in combat and overseas deployments. But many private contractors are drawn from what some call the Bubba Tier, guys who have worked as small-town cops or prison guards. The demand for private security in Iraq is so high that the supply simply doesn't matter.

As the offending driver falls back, Weiss tells me he has never actually fired at anyone for menacing him in traffic. But he did shoot out someone's engine once, and though he is somber about it, he has killed Iraqis in the course of four firefights, give or take, during the past year. His own marketing material, a poster-size photo of Wolf and the eight-man team of "wolverines" he commands, spells out his credo: protect the weak, defend the innocent, strike down thine enemies and vanquish all evil by the right hand of god. strength and honor to all who live by the code of the warrior.


<snip>
It didn't work out that way. Weiss supported himself as a tattoo artist while he booked gigs and sold tickets and produced his own album -- but he didn't like the pressure to compromise his artistic vision. "Because I was unwilling to change for the corporate machine known as the music industry, the business of arms continues to call me back," he says. So when American forces invaded Iraq last year, Weiss decided to fall back on his old skills. "There's only a few things in this world I can do really, really well," he says. "War is one."

[ElsewheresDaughter]

1. i hope these kind die..sooner rather than later

[BiggJawn]

2. Don't expect me to cry when he gets be-headed.

What an psychotic asshole.
"Because I was unwilling to change for the corporate machine known as the music industry..."

So he signs up with the "coporate machine" known as the War Industry instead.

Psycho.

[SpiralHawk]

3. Kerry: Make the mercenaries an issue

Our tax dollars are paying this corporate mercenaries $80,000 a year or more (much more), while our regular armed services and National Guard are getting paid peanuts ($20+ K). This is an insult to our men and women in our armed services, and a rip off to the taxpayer who is footing the bill to enrich the corporations that hire out the mercenaries.

I would THUMP Bush and the Republicans upside the head with this, over and over.

It is easy to understand. And it is shameful.

[leftchick]

7. I agree and our reps in congress as well....

My fucking tax $ are making this creep and his ilk fucking rich and fulfilling their warped fantasies! Perhaps it is time for a letter writing campaign!

:grr:

[Ruffhowse]

4. After reading that article, I've lost my ability to feel anything when

these guys are killed. You reap what you sow.

[leftchick]

8. Remember April when HUNDREDS of Iraqis died?

And over 100 of our soldiers? It was a revenge mission on Fallujah for the deaths of those four mercenary freaks! Really nice huh?
:puke:

[xchrom]

5. charming... and to think this creature

is a fellow citizen.
if this doesn't make one pause about being a ''proud american'' -- i can't imagine what would.

[Blue_Tires]

6. fucking mercs

they deserve what they get

[Strelnikov_]

9. This Is The Face Of The Future Corporatist Death Squads In The US

Once the economic crisis begins, these types will be turned loose on the organizers of the poor and disenfranchised by the Iron Heel.

[not systems]

24. Exactly.

Privatized defense is key to undermining democratic government.

This is why so much money is being funneled into these companies
when the army could do the same thing cheaper and better.

Bush Co are using war this to prepare future institutions of repression.

[saigon68]

33. These are the Strikebreakers many of our Grand-fathers fought.

Thugs, bums and bullies---- trained by the military (support the troops) using their training to become Murderers and assassins.

[ghostsofgiants]

10. ...

So are fucks like this guy subject to war crime laws, Gevenva conventions, etc?

[leftchick]

15. that would be negative....

but then you knew that. The are a lawless bunch of thugs running over what little rights the Iraqis have. A lot of the weapons and ammo they use are illegal as well!

[ghostsofgiants]

31. ...

I figured as much. That is incredibly fucked up.

[Cat Atomic]

11. He's the same sort of guy who killed labor activists here in the states

back in the late 1800's and early 1900's. I always wondered what kind of person would accept money from a corporation in exchange for murdering civilians. It's this sort.

I wonder if he actually believes that "protect the innocent" bullshit? He's making cash and he doesn't care who has to shoot.

[saigon68]

32. Men like these are capable of anything

In another time they exterminated Jews-- they would surely exterminate them again if the price was right.

Now they shoot anything for the "MONEY"

There is a special place in "HELL" for them.

[mitchum]

12. Weiss is just a brown-nose in a brownshirt...

I will have no sympathy for that psychotic toady

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

13. Armed adolescents still proving their "manhood".

Mercenaries are the lowest level of scum. Child soldiers in men's bodies.

[HEIL PRESIDENT GOD]

14. Small town cops and prison guards!

Wow! Who'd've guest those guys are PSYCHOTIC FASCIST ASSHOLES???

I've known what these mercs were from day one and celebrated their each and every death.

When it gets even worse over there, the difference in pay is going to cause, um, some difficulties in force cohesion.

[Crunchy Frog]

16. And I'm supposed to feel bad when

these people get killed? Sorry, just can't do it. I think that Darwin Award nominations would be more in order.

Sorry if I'm making us look bad.:-(

[frylock]

17. how many civilians and us military personnel will pay with their lives..

when this sorry fuck's charred corpse is being dragged behind a car, or displayed, swinging in the wind, from a span?

[SpiralHawk]

18. Kick - Make it a campaign issue, Johnny K.

The "mercenary" issue needs to be aired out anyway, because it stinks to high heaven.

You would be doing the nation a high public service, and it would give you some traction in your campaign.

[Name removed]

19. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[opiate69]

20. Hehe.. enjoy your brief stay..

"Our forces cannot be delegated to protect private installations 24 hours a day."

Well, if Dumbya had any diplomatic skills, whatsoever, these jobs would be done by the military forces of our allies. His mind boggling miscalculation in regards to the aftermath of the invasion, and his arrogance in front of the UN led to the "coalition members" sending over a token military representaion. Iraq is still a war zone, and civilian contractors have no place there.

[leftchick]

22. LOL... you are apparently a selective reader....

"most contractors are actually ex-special forces soldiers"

(and by the way I have a BIG heart) Now if you actually read the article, and many others on the topic I might add, you would be aware of the "Bubba Tier"! People you may be aquainted with!
from the article....

"THE DEMAND FOR SECURITY IN IRAQ IS SO HIGH THAT THE SUPPlY SIMPLY DOESN'T MATTER!"

Blackwater is the WORST!.... And supporting these mercenaries, as they LIKE to be called, undermines our own military! Support our troops indeed. Now go away....

[wickywom]

21. They consider themselves Crusaders...

when the war first started my sister inlaw Fund. Catholic dressed her 4 year old as one for halloween sword and all don't know is it was on purpose but still.

I guess it's perfectly acceptable to kill non-christians for the right reasons.
scary sh*t.

[skygazer]

23. And these guys make top dollar

While our military makes squat. AND by their actions, these Rambo wannabes make it more likely that out military is hated and attacked. And killed.

Great idea, Dubya.

[leftchick]

26. $20,000 US Taxpayer dollars a MONTH!

at the least... this particular fella "Wolf" makes more!! :grr:

[LibertyorDeath]

25. Just what the World needs another emotional Retard with a Big Gun

[leftchick]

27. Where the Hell is Congressional Oversight?!

The part that must be sent to our reps in congress.... WTF?!

<snip>
"Iraq is the biggest marketplace in the short history of the privatized military industry," says P.W. Singer, the national security fellow at the Brookings Institution and the author of Corporate Warriors. "Private militaries are playing a pivotal role in warfare to an extent not seen since the advent of the mass nation-state armies in the Napoleonic age."

The boom has happened so quickly -- and with so little oversight -- that the Pentagon can't reliably count the private troops in Iraq, let alone monitor their conduct. For-profit contractors are pretty much making up the rules of engagement as they go along -- and breaking them, too. Weiss recalls one rainy winter night right after he arrived in Iraq. The company team, which was then led by another director, had headed north with a large convoy of trucks. Along the way, Weiss says, the boss kept lighting into the truck drivers for no good reason. When they finally reached their destination, Weiss got a frantic call from his superior, who needed a first-aid kit. Weiss rushed over with it, only to find that the director had stabbed one of the drivers in the heart. "I did keep the guy from bleeding out," he says. The director was arrested, Weiss adds, but never wound up serving time for the assault.

and this...
<snip>
Weiss takes me around to the second Yukon to have a look at the "rear security." Under Coalition regulations, the belt-fed machine gun perched in the back is supposed to be off-limits to private security companies. So are many of the other weapons in the SUV, including the shoulder-launched rockets and the fragmentation grenades. "I need to match the firepower that is out there," Weiss says with a shrug. He declines to tell me exactly where he gets his weapons, but it is not hard to guess. Many, if not most, security companies buy their weapons on the black market, providing cash to the same arms dealers who supply the Iraqi insurgents who are killing American soldiers, to say nothing of the mafias that are killing average Iraqis and the religious militias that are getting ready to kill one another. Operators know that a Kurdish arms trader with an SUV full of high-quality, value-for-money armaments is just a phone call away. An American contractor named Ken Walker bought some AKs in a hotel parking lot in Kurdistan but allows that obtaining rocket-propelled grenades would have been no problem. "It's easier to get an RPG than a receipt," he told me with a laugh. It's as if Coalition authorities had banned all recreational drug use in Iraq -- and then paid enormous sums to private contractors to identify and enrich all the drug suppliers they could find. I once spent an afternoon in one of the wealthiest parts of Baghdad visiting a prosperous arms dealer who basically was running an all-day, all-night implements-of-destruction sale out of his house. Outside, there was a line of cars waiting for deliveries, which the man's pre-adolescent son was carrying out to the customers like groceries. The phone was ringing so incessantly with fresh orders that the arms dealer finally took it off the hook.

......It is worse than the Wild West!

[leftchick]

28. kick

:kick:

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

29. kick for another great leftchick post

[MisterP]

30. can anyone help me find another story on mercs?

it was linked to on DU, but was about smirking, horrible mercs in Afghanistan ("we're just tourists") and from an Arabic website.

[saigon68]

34. SUPPORT THE TROOPS

Every One of these murdering thugs was trained by the "military". With those credentials these murderers will jump in a lake and fuck fish for the money, if told to do so.

[Reverend_Smitty]

35. Who would Jesus kill?

Surely these guys are doing the will of God...<sarcasm off/>