Reply #20: It is getting very difficult to keep up [View All]

with the mercenaries who are registered and employed by the Coalition.

So I might just have to let a few other bloggers take up the slack.
We start with XYMPHORA, who as always, is truly a delight to read.

Saturday, April 03, 2004
......The latest version has it that the American victims were civilian 'contractors' working as private security guards for a shipment of food (they must have had to restrain themselves from claiming it was a shipment of baby formula). So let me get this straight. Falluja is so dangerous for Americans that the American military decides to ship its food through there, and hires security guards traveling in an unarmed, unarmored vehicle to protect it? This, through country that is so dangerous that when the Americans were attacked the U. S. army wouldn't go in to try to save them?
Yeah, right.

SLIGHT DIGRESSION HERE
After promising a new approach to the resentful population of Falluja, US Marines seem to be making the same mistakes as their predecessors, the US 82nd Airborne who moved out of Falluja on Wednesday. Last April the 82nd killed 18 protesters over two days of fighting. In the first six months of the occupation, it killed at least 40 civilians and police in and around the city.
The Americans have never recovered the trust of the people following those deaths, and within a few months a full-scale insurgency had erupted across the province of Al Anbar. By early autumn, the US army had virtually lost control of the area around Falluja and has not managed to regain the upper hand. American soldiers are now rarely seen outside their vehicles without helicopter and tank support.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1179692,00.html

Leaflets littered the city, which Iraqis believed the Marines left behind in an ominous message that more is more to come. "You can't escape and you can't hide ... the coalition will find you and bring you to justice," said the Arabic message printed over two steely green eyes that stared out in this nation where most Arabs have black eyes.
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/special_packages/iraq/8293451.htm

"We do bring this 'small wars' capability with us," Hagee added.
He pointed as well to the effort to obtain information from Iraqis in the area, relying on techniques dating back to the Vietnam war.
"Establish that relationship – 'hearts and minds' was the term used in Vietnam. I think that's still accurate ... where the people will come to you and say 'Hey, the bad guy is around the corner here and I want to show you where he is.' That is starting to happen now," he said.
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/world/iraq/20040218-1007-iraq-usa-marines.html

The Marines issued a statement Saturday, saying they were ``conducting offensive operations ... to foster a secure and stable environment for the people.''
``If they find more than one adult male in any house, they arrest one of them,'' claimed resident Khaled Jamaili, 26. ``Those Marines are destroying us. They are leaning very hard on Falluja.
House raids have been a sore point with Iraqis, and are viewed as a violation of women's privacy. Many believed that the Marines would drop the tactic and apply a ``soft touch'' to win over Iraqis, showing more cultural sensitivity than their predecessors in Fallujah.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-3923513,00.html

Deaths Startle Marines, but They Remain Determined
Marines charged with bringing peace to Fallujah, Iraq, reacted with shock and determination after the bloodiest day of rebel attacks in months left five U.S. soldiers dead and saw an Iraqi mob drag the burned bodies of four civilian workers through the city.
Iraqi police brought what was left of the mutilated bodies back to the Marines' base closest to Fallujah — formerly known as Forward Operating Base Volturno and now called Camp Baharia.
http://www.mca-marines.org/Leatherneck/lneck.html
BACK TO XYMPHORA

The way the story is presented is that these poor unarmed American civilians were set upon by a bloodthirsty and completely unprovoked mob of savage beasts. What has just come out, however, is that the marines were already one week into an operation intended to 'pacify' the civilian population of Falluja by attacking them with the might of the American military (as was done in Vietnam, with remarkably similar failure). In other words, the context of the Falluja attack on the Americans was that the civilian population of Falluja was in the middle of a military assault by American forces.
http://xymphora.blogspot.com/

WIPE FALLUJAH OFF THE MAP
Saturday April 03, 2004
I know I will get panned for this but I must present my view. The mob in Fallujah dragged our dead through the streets and hanged dead bodies.The killing of American troops must stop. This cannot be allowed to go on.
I know there are some innocent people over there. Guess what? Those dead Americans were innocent people also.
What to do? Send in the Marines. Send them in to kill or capture every last person in that place and then send in the bombers and level Fallujah.
Those people have been living with violence all their lives. That is all they know. We tried to be diplomatic, and it didn't work. Wipe Fallujah off the map and ask, "Who's next?"
Al Robinson
Kenner
http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/index.ssf?/base/news-3/1080980776249390.xml

"He that is good, will infallibly become better, and he that is bad, will as certainly become worse; for vice, virtue and time are three things that never stand still." --Charles Caleb Colon
There has been a rash of cheap shot stories about the growing boutique industry of security professionals. Just about everyone has it way wrong.
CAVEAT: I have personally trained at Blackwater’s extraordinary facility in the boondocks of North Carolina. I have very dear friends who work for Steele Foundation, and once upon a time, long ago and far away, after I graduated from the Infantry Officers Advanced Course at Fort Benning, I ‘almost’ signed a contract with Vinnell Corporation to train the Saudi army.
Just as Fox News has filled the vacuum created by mainstream malfeasance and bias, Risk management companies are meeting a growing need that has been exacerbated by terrorism and voids in security requirements.
http://mensnewsdaily.com/archive/m-n/metcalf/2004/metcalf040304.htm

History repeats itself.
http://www.refuseandresist.org/war/art.php?aid=820

As does Faux.
One resident displayed what appeared to be dog tags taken from one body. Residents also said there were weapons in the targeted cars. APTN showed an American passport near a body and a U.S. Department of Defense identification card belonging to another man.
Some of the slain contractors were wearing flak jackets, resident Safa Mohammedi said.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,115703,00.html

The Marines enter Fallujah only on days when they conduct a military operation in the city. The Marines were apparently not in Fallujah on Wednesday when mobs dragged the mutilated and burned bodies of the four Americans through the streets.
Apparently fearful Iraqi police in the city stayed away from the mobs, and picked up the bodies hours later only at the request of American troops.
On Thursday, police manned roadside checkpoints and remained at their posts but were not conducting raids or operations related to the killings. Two officers told The Associated Press they were afraid, while a third said: "Why should we interfere? It's none of our business."
It was unclear why the American contractors were traveling unescorted in such a dangerous area. The four worked for Blackwater Security Consulting of Moyock, N.C., which provides training and guard services to customers around the world.
The firm is a government subcontractor providing security for the delivery of food in the Fallujah area. It is also a subsidiary of Blackwater USA, whose range of paramilitary services include providing firearms and small-groups training facilities for Navy SEALs, police department SWAT teams and former special operations personnel.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,115822,00.html

FALLUJA, Iraq, April 1 — Marine commanders defended their decision today not to send troops into Falluja to quell the macabre disturbances that followed after four American civilians were killed and their bodies dragged through the streets.
More than 4,000 marines are stationed near the restive town in the Sunni Triangle but when the violence broke out on Wednesday and the streets of Falluja exploded in mayhem, Marine commanders decided not to intervene.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/01/international/middleeast/01CND-IRAQ.html?hp

"You've got a whole host of fly-by-night and disreputable companies," said Mr. Custer. "They're terrible. They get people killed." With that in mind, industry professionals said that the most important factor in the risk-management trade was choosing and training the right people. All candidates are subjected to a rigorous vetting in order to weed out people with a history of everything from domestic violence and drug use to committing a felony. And yearly salaries - which insiders say can range anywhere from $70,000 to $250,000 - are set high enough to compensate the best in the business. Hotheads and swashbucklers need not apply.
Christopher Beese, a director of ArmorGroup, which reports 800 employees in Iraq, described typically promising candidates this way: "They don't expect to win medals; they don't expect to win glory. They expect an opportunity."
Which is why some in the business object to terms like "soldier of fortune" or "hired gun" in reference to the work that they do. "There's no romance there at all," said Alastair Morrison, chairman and C.E.O. of Kroll Security International, a new subsidiary of Kroll Inc., which counts among its clients the United States Agency for International Development - the agency behind much of the rebuilding effort in Iraq.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/04/weekinreview/04glan.html

And that is just Iraq.

The latest incident involving one of these relatively new mercenary companies occurred in Haiti. There the Steele Foundation, a private security firm based in California, was protecting the palace when Jean-Bertrand Aristide was summarily rushed to the airport at Port-au-Prince and onto a mysterious plane that took off with no listed destination—raising the inevitable question of their involvement with American intelligence. According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, Aristide feared that the Steele people would abandon their jobs and leave him to be killed by the rebels. Subsequent press reports noted that an extra detail of Steele people requested by Aristide for added protection were blocked by American officials from leaving California for Haiti.
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0401-14.htm

The hands of a young Haitian man remain bound with wire behind his back in a morgue in Port-au-Prince Sunday. Residents say five young men were taken away by Haitian police Saturday night and their bound and hooded bodies found dead this morning with gunshot wounds to the head.
http://www.sfbayview.com/032404/usreplaces032404.shtml

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — French troops have begun moving into rebel-controlled parts of northern Haiti while U.S. Special Forces expand their presence in the center and south, the head of the Miami-based U.S. Southern Command said yesterday.
The deployment of international forces outside the capital represents a significant shift in the campaign to quash weeks of widespread political violence that led to the Feb. 29 departure of former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
Armed pro- and anti-Aristide gangs still control most of the countryside, with a U.S.-led multinational peacekeeping force that began arriving the same day so far deployed only in the capital city of Port-au-Prince.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2001883040_wdig19.html

Hans Jaap Melissen also saw elite US troops already in place outside the presidential palace, and that foreign mercenaries – presumably from Haiti's neighbour the Dominican Republic – were also in the city. Also seen driving around the streets of Port-au-Prince were armed civilians, probably linked to the rebel groups which toppled President Aristide.
http://www.rnw.nl/hotspots/html/hai040301.html

President Aristide left Haiti under the guns of a U.S. Naval task force and thousands of U.S. Marines, with Marine helicopters hovering over the presidential palace and U.S.-armed mercenaries surrounding the capital. Haiti's capital is now under U.S. military occupation.
With conflicting reports coming out of Haiti, it’s becoming increasingly clear that the President was kidnapped. The corporate-owned U.S. news media have been dishonest in the reporting of events, claiming the revolt against President Aristide was a spontaneous uprising, in the midst of which hundreds of heavily armed, well-trained commandos just happened to materialize.
<snip>
....The leader of the resistance to the 1915 invasion, Charlemagne Peralte, was murdered by U.S. troops, tied to a door almost fully naked and put on display. U.S. Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler later confessed, "I made Haiti a safe place for the First National City Bank boys to collect revenues in."
http://www.iacenter.org/haiti-022904.htm
http://www.medalofhonor.com/SecondHaitianCampaign1919-1920.htm

Remember those N4610 mercenaries who said that they were on their way to the Democratic Republic of Congo?
Well they might just have been telling the truth.

29 March 2004
KINSHASA : Military bases near the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) Kinshasa came under attack and heavy gunfire rang out across the city, but the authorities refused to confirm reports of an attempted coup.
http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_world/view/77557/1/.html

"Rocket-propelled grenades were fired from the direction of the Palais de la Nation (Presidential Palace) in the direction of the president's house and fire returned," said the UK Ambassador in Kinshasa Jim Atkinson, who also said the incident was an apparent coup attempt.
The government said armed groups simultaneously attacked two army posts, a naval base, and Ndolo military airport and shells also fell on densely populated parts of the town, and a private television station came under attack.
http://allafrica.com/stories/200403290485.html

And now LOOK at what is happening in Nigeria.

Friday, April 02, 2004
Military Coup avoided in Nigeria
The former head of security for the late dictator, Sani Abacha, Hamza al-Mustapha, is said to be involved in a failed coup attempt in Nigeria.
http://africanoilpolitics.blogspot.com/

April 2, 2004
A United States Defense official, Colonel Victor Nelson has refuted the notion that Nigeria may be on the verge of breaking up along ethnic and religious lines.
Responding to a commentary in the Washington Times tagged "Al Qaeda into Africa" where the writer stated "Nigeria is now on the verge of becoming a failed state. It is breaking apart along ethnic and religious fault lines," Nelson said "I do not believe Nigeria is on the verge of becoming a failed state."
http://allafrica.com/stories/200404020221.html

It is late and we have not even begun to grasp the enormity of the situation.

Was Dead "Civilian Contractor" Michael Teague
(of Blackwater, Fallujah)
the former Aryan Nations security chief?
http://www.kathryncramer.com/wblog/archives/000487.html

Please let me wake up and find that I have been sleeping on the couch and the TV was showing an episode of Jerry Springer.
Please do not let this all be real.
I promise not to make any more mean jokes about Bobby Ewing and his very long dream.

There are very many places where the "Private Military Companies" are turning up.
It appears that George has made cowboys out of us all by transforming our planet into a gruesome replica of the Wild West.

I urge you to check in with
http://xymphora.blogspot.com/
http://www.kathryncramer.com/wblog/
http://africanoilpolitics.blogspot.com/
And as Jerry Springer says:
take care of yourselves, and each other.