Reply #54: If they're also 'combatants' and not nationals of the U.S. ... yes. [View All]

Blackwater and other PCMs recruit people, mostly former military, from other countries - Chile, Columbia, Mexico, and other countries. Since they're engaging in hostilities as combatants, they're mercs.

Once upon a time, it'd be unthinkable for the U.S. to engage in war without sufficient citizen-soldiers to assume all the combatant roles, including logistical and support. In Viet Nam, only 40 years ago, grunts drove the trucks and cooked the food and handled supplies and performed 'security' for VIPs. Indigenous personnel were hired to do strictly non-combatant work - helping the local economy. Cheney/Bush 'discovered' a modern flavor of an old, old approach to profiteering from war. They realize that Americans are more than willing to put up with it as long as much of the dirty work is hired out - like all our dirty work - and the rest done by the economically-coerced. It's a blessing to the war profiteers - trafficking in humans to kill humans.

But we sure wouldn't want a draft, would we? Democracy is just too much trouble - just hire it out.