CheneyBush's "Mercenary" Legions

By Bernard Weiner
Co-Editor, The Crisis Papers
August 28, 2007

http://www.crisispapers.org/essays7w/mercenary.htm

"Outsourcing" jobs overseas is only the tip of the iceberg.
How about the CheneyBush Administration "outsourcing" our
military, our intelligence-gathering, our nation's soul?

Taking private enterprise way beyond what is reasonable, or
desirable, or safe, the CheneyBush Administration has turned
over a huge raft of national-security functions to those not
adequately trained, not accountable to the public or the law,
not showing up on the political radar.

In short, CheneyBush have created what amounts to their own
private legions -- soldiers, intelligence analysts, security
guards, construction experts, supply specialists, et al. -- in
effect, a "mercenary" force bought and paid for by the
American taxpayer.

That's why there will probably be no draft: There is no
guarantee of loyalty from those dragooned into service.
Besides, many draftees have politically-connected
constituencies. But when one's mercenary "volunteer" forces
are totally beholden to the paymaster for their livelihood and
under-the-table payoffs, they will dance with them that brung
'em.

These are no small numbers. It's estimated that in addition to
the 160,000 regular troops in the field in Iraq, CheneyBush
control anywhere from 60,000 to 100,000 private assets
("independent contractors"). Nobody's even sure under what
"rules of engagement" these guys -- many in security and
reconstruction fields -- operate, or whether they are
accountable to anyone other than their corporate bosses' and
the financial "bottom line."

History shows us the dangers involved when leaders have large
extra-institutional forces at their command, such as the
Praetorian Guards and Legions of ancient Roman Caesars,
Hitler's Brownshirts, Saddam's Republican Guards, the private
militias of political and religious leaders today in Iraq,
Blackwater forces in control of New Orleans after Katrina,
etc. By and large, these mercenaries swear allegiance to their
employer, not to the rule of law, not to any constitution. The
catastrophic damage done to democracy by the existence, and
power, of these private forces can't be over-stated.

News flash: Blackwater, the huge corporation that CheneyBush
rely on for most of the non-military functions in Iraq and
elsewhere, is buying combat aircraft. Do we really want a
private air force, effectively operating under the aegis of
the Executive Branch, conducting secret ops in our names?

PURCHASING INTELLIGENCE

In America's current case, there is also this ominous danger:
Accurate intelligence is an absolute necessity in warfare and
war-planning, but CheneyBush are increasingly going outside
the usual intelligence channels and hiring private intel
corporations. Even with the mass purgings in governmental
intelligence agencies of those not sufficiently "Bush-loyal,"
Cheney in particular doesn't trust the CIA and the State
Department's intel analysts, never has and never will. So we
get this recent story from veteran Washington Post reporter
Walter Pincus:

"The Defense Intelligence Agency is preparing to pay
private contractors up to $1 billion to conduct core
intelligence tasks of analysis and collection over the
next five years, an amount that would set a record in the
outsourcing of such functions by the Pentagon's top spying
agency.

"The proposed contracts, outlined in a recent early notice
of the DIA's plans, reflect a continuing expansion of the
Defense Department's intelligence-related work and fit a
well-established pattern of Bush administration transfers
of government work to private contractors.

..."The DIA did not specify exactly what it wants the
contractors to do but said it is seeking teams to fulfill
'operational and mission requirements' that include
intelligence 'Gathering and Collection, Analysis,
Utilization, and Strategy and Support'."

By outsourcing, CheneyBush, of course, get the intelligence
they pay for, rather than risking that some CIA or State
Department analysts might tell them intel-truths they don't
want to hear, as was the case with Iraq.

LOWERING THE RECRUITING BAR

How did CheneyBush begin to assemble their mercenary forces
for the reckless misadventure in Iraq? At first, they started
out with an all-"volunteer" army of sterling patriotic
recruits, high school graduates, many from lower- and
middle-middle circumstances, not well-connected politically,
many underemployed and desirous of a stable career. But the
brutality and criminality and constant fear of the Iraq War
(never knowing for sure if civilians were good guys or bad
guys, U.S. death rates going up, horrific injuries to body,
brain and psyche) took their toll on the troops, suicide and
post-traumatic rates mushroomed, and recruitment of top
prospects plummeted.

As a result, the U.S. military felt forced to relax its high
standards in order to even come close to meeting its
replacement quotas. High schoolers and dropouts were prime
targets of unscrupulous recruiters. Don't have a high school
diploma? Don't need one. Felony record? Don't worry about it;
we've got "moral waivers" now. Poor physical health? Here,
have some more pizza and desserts. A gang member on the
streets of L.A.? Here's your assault rifle, soldier, and
welcome to the brotherhood.

And when lowering the standards still didn't yield the
required numbers, the military went to simple bribery. Sign up
now and get a $25,000 signing bonus. Not enough? How about
$30K?

The military also is trolling for mercenary recruits among
non-citizens in Latin America and elsewhere; those who sign up
with the U.S. military are told that it could take them six
months to become a U.S. citizen rather than 12 years.

But even with all those waivers and inducements, many
potential recruits stay away; they are quite aware that troops
in Iraq face serial deployments, rotations extended to 15
months each time, a constant high rate of deaths and injuries.
Check out what seven serving NCOs have to say in the New York
Times about the realities of this war. So it's no wonder that
the Administration has taken to increasing the hiring of
"independent contractors," at high salaries, to carry out
tasks often associated with the professional military.

No wonder the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and perhaps even Defense
Secretary Gates, are suggesting, as best they can without
being summarily dismissed by the political lunatics in charge,
that the U.S. military is stretched as thin as it can get in
Iraq and Afghanistan, and that initiating more hostilities
with other countries in the region (Iran and Syria come to
mind) would not make much military or any other kind of sense.

OUTSOURCING EXTREME TORTURE

In addition to outsourcing its military and intel gathering,
one has to mention the outsourcing of interrogation and
torture, especially of High Value Prisoners (HVPs). (Torture,
as we all know by now, under CheneyBush, is
officially-sanctioned state policy.)

CheneyBush send these suspects on CIA planes to secret U.S.
interrogation centers abroad and then often forward the more
recalcitrant detainees and other HVP to countries that
specialize in especially brutal torture, including Egypt,
Morocco, Saudi Arabia, even Syria.

These "rendition" flights abroad are not only to keep the U.S.
vaguely in line with the Geneva Conventions and U.S. law, but
also because those other nations have torturing down to a
science by now, and, as long as these countries get paid off
well, seem to have few moral scruples about breaking down the
minds and bodies of prisoners sometimes even to the point of
death.

"CATAPULTING THE PROPAGANDA"

The Administration sees the same polling numbers as the
Democrats do and realizes that in order to be able to continue
its surge at least through Election Day 2008 -- which would,
they believe, get CheneyBush off the blame-hook for the "loss"
of Iraq -- they need to mount an enormous public-relations
campaign to cancel out the lies and sell the escalated war to
the American public and Congress. Scapegoats for that "loss"
are already being put in place: al-Maliki, the Democrats, the
Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Petraeus, etc. etc. Never Cheney,
never Bush.

When governmental policies stink, no policies are changed;
instead, the common practice is to tell more lies and hire
public-relations firms to disguise the crap being peddled by
dousing it heavily with rose petals. Sell your policies like
soap or perfume; the theory rests on a belief that enough
Americans will buy the fragrant, handsomely-packaged new
product to make politicians think twice about opposing
Administration policy.

And so the Pentagon has set up an Iraq Communications Desk to
coordinate the campaign to sell the Petraeus Report findings,
and, through a covert "cut-out" organization, a new White
House-connected group called Freedom Watch has launched a $15
million pro-war propaganda campaign in various media markets.
The spots already are running, and they often feature Iraq War
veterans and/or their surviving family members delivering the
White House spin ("patience," "we're making progress in Iraq,"
"stop them there so they can't come here," etc. etc.).

In coordination with the Freedom Watch campaign, a powerful
P.R. program has begun to aid in the transition away from the
prickly Iraqi prime minister al-Maliki, to a more malleable,
pro-U.S. figure, most likely former prime minister (and former
CIA asset) Ayad Allawi. Hired to coordinate the campaign is
the GOP lobbying outfit of Barbour, Griffith & Rogers.

CheneyBush are peddling the continue-the-surge idea because
that's all they've got at this stage. That and the
long-discredited attempt to link Iraq and 9/11 in the public
mind. And why not? That latter lie worked for a few years
after 9/11, so why not haul it out again? Haul out anything
again that might confuse the American citizenry and bump up
the pro-surge numbers so as to divide the Democrats and keep
the war going at least past Election Day 2008 and, ideally,
keep U.S. troops in their permanent Iraq bases for another
decade or two.

Or, at the very least, FUBAR the situation there so badly that
a Democratic president in 2009 would be unable to extricate
U.S. forces easily or maybe even at all.

THINKING THE UNTHINKABLE

And, if CheneyBush are unable to keep the U.S. public from
demanding that Congress close down this quagmire of a war,
they might well decide to unleash their ultimate weapon of
mass distraction by finding a good reason to attack Iran
"pre-emptively" (via a false-flag operation?). When Iran
responds in self-defense by attacking U.S. assets in the
Persian Gulf and elsewhere, the American public will be told
that it's imperative that the U.S. must fight in Iraq and Iran
to stop the Muslim hordes from taking over the world, and
controlling "our" oil.

Think it won't happen? Think Iran is not in the planning
bombsights right now? Dream on. The CheneyBush gang is
desperate and will do anything, including using nuclear
weaponry, to maintain its power and control. Former Middle
East CIA specialist Bob Baer says that senior intelligence
officials told him recently that CheneyBush are likely to
attack Iran within six months.

Most Americans didn't think CheneyBush would be crazy enough
to invade and occupy Iraq. We should have learned our lesson
by now; these ideological zealots are unhinged enough to do it
again.

And it looks like the Democrats, who should be forcefully
leading the opposition to stop the Iraq War and to prevent the
Iran War, are going to be enablers of CheneyBush policy once
again, either out of stupidity or political cowardice. That's
the moral tragedy of where we are in late-2007.