They get paid shit, get ignored when they come home and have no skin, and never moan about it. Meanwhile these wannabe neo-cons are stepping over the rules of engagement making tons of money and making more iraqis hate white people.

I don’t feel sorry for people who enjoy war enough to try to make a quick buck off the American tax payer……and yes black water gets a ton of contracts from uncle sam.

BTW they changed their name and ran away to the west coast.

Ok, I know you’re being hyperbolic, but I think you seriously mischaracterise the average FSO here.

First of all, most if not all FSOs in Iraq have a basic level of familiarity with Arabic if they are going to spend any time interacting with the population.

Second of all, FSOs are CIVILIANS. And unlike most other civilian contractors in Iraq, they are almost never allowed to carry guns and were forced to rely on Blackwater to provide them with security once the U.S. Army decided it didn’t want to expend any of its resources on protecting what was- to them, anyway- a secondary mission. You can call them a lot of things, but cowards? I think not.

“Too bad none of them bought the farm that day.”

You can sneer all you want at limp-wristed bureaucrats and call them cowards, just remember that 12 FSOs and dependents were killed in the 1998 Africa embassy bombings back when most Americans thought Osama Bin Laden was the dude who managed their local Wendy’s. I was right across the border when it happened. If you’re a career FSO, you’ll spend a hell of a lot more time figuring out how to smuggle some fat, sweating tourist out of the country after he accidentally uninates on a local VooDOo temple than drinking martinis at the Ritz. Unless of course, you’re a Bush donor.

It’s a tough enough job as it is without having your fellow countrymen sitting stateside rooting for you to get killed.

Anyway: Blackwater is the tune of the future. The Praetorian Guard of the new Rome, when the Army regulars are demoralized and unreliable in the coming Depression. Mercenaries will be increasingly used not just abroad but at home, like when they were sent to New Orleans.

But first there should be one for the whole goddamn top of America, like this it is a farce. The very people that have the most to anwser for are going after these - in comparison - lesser criminals.

If you are an American you should read your history and learn that hating mercs is patriotic. Killing for money attracts a particularly shitty individual. Some of them were desperate for the money like the gentleman hanging above and were lied to by the company by which they found employ, but the leaders of these outfits are all the same money-grubbing fucks they have always been.

‘There’s nothing better I like — being a basement-dwelling, hissy-fit throwing faux-peaceful progressive, internet warrior like yourself — than hating on people and wishing them dead.’

I really don’t wish anyone dead. I hate mercenaries end stop. I understand at some level war is always going to be a business, but when that fact becomes readily apparent, you have no choice but to hate those whose profit is directly correlated to the deaths of tons of people.

At some point Somalis will come in contact with mercenaries of all stripes. The mercenaries’ government-backed patrons will demand their property be protected at all costs, and mercenaries will start shooting every boat that has an outboard and a black guy on board. There will be no news stories written about the people who die, because no one in power cares. I really don’t know where you are coming from, protect the powerful, or freedom of commerce, or whatever. But when push comes to shove, it’s all just more dead people under the bridge, and personally I am not in favor of mercenaries massacring freely on the high seas.

It follows that the fact that everybody else does it (SOP) also does not exempt you from punishment for killing civilians.

Gratuitous killing of civilians in the streets of Baghdad should be punished exactly like gratuituous killing of civilians in the streets of New York. And then: Why should *only* these Blackwater guys go on trial? Well, I’d like to see each and every one of the political and military brass be tried for cold-blooded murder of each and every Iraqi civilian killed after April 9, 2003: Colin Powell, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, George Bush, Petraeus … Then, when the big ones are sentenced to the severest punishment in the book, we *might* consider pardoning the grunts. But not before.