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Blackwater is the perfect example of why privatization of many government services is a bad idea. Privatization of the military affected accountability, military restraint, fiscal responsibility, and human lives according to Jeremy Scahill.

A private security company's armored truck rolls through Nisour Square in Baghdad. (photo: AP)
A private security company's armored truck rolls through Nisour Square in Baghdad. (photo: AP)

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Comments  

 
+4 # jlohman 2010-03-29 08:43
Now that we've armed them I'd be careful of moving them out of their funding source, the taxpayers. They are now a well-armed militia.
 
 
+6 # Guest 2010-03-29 11:20
jlohman, my thoughts almost exactly. They ARE a well-armed and well-trained militia with only passing allegiance to the US. After all, many of them are from places like Chile, South Africa, Guatemala, Serbia, etc.

History has shown that when a government starts to depend too much on mercenaries for its existence, it isn't too long before the mercenaries ask themselves why they should be working for these wimps and decide to take over on their own. It happened in the Ottoman Empire (janissaries). It happened to the Gulf Cartel (Zetas). It almost happened to France when Algeria won its war of independence (French Foreign Legion).
 
 
+2 # Guest 2010-03-29 10:28
Those who make up the civilised world grow ever more savage, yet wild animals grow ever more civilised. That is the nature of what we have created.
 
 
-4 # Guest 2010-03-29 10:35
The government spending tax payer money on private military contractors reveals a problem with government, not with private enterprise.
 
 
+2 # Guest 2010-03-29 12:47
http:\\www.warisaracket.com

always was and always will be. Government and the Private Enterprise revolving door is part of the problem.
 
 
+7 # Ken 2010-03-29 12:43
Many years ago, a widely recognized precept of government was: "Government has a monopoly on the legitimate use of force." I learned it in Political Science 101 in 1962. Nothing I've encountered, through a Harvard PhD in political science and 48 years of life since, has undermined the wisdom of that precept. We now mindlessly violate it, seemingly at every opportunity. We are paying the price.
 
 
+2 # Guest 2010-03-30 04:27
Violence is a government monopoly.
 
 
+2 # Guest 2010-03-29 14:27
Ken could not agree with you more. The question to basked is why and for what purpose did we privatize the us military? Were our generals inept, or was there a deeper hidden agenda. Time will tell
 
 
+3 # Guest 2010-03-29 15:39
I knew privatization was a bad idea when it started really catching on about 20 years ago in the Navy. The corporations told the Pentagon it would save money and they fell for it hook, line and sinker like they always do. I can't believe some of the scams that have been put over on the military bean counters over the years. It's like they never heard the proverb "if it sounds to good to be true then it probably is" As a Navy veteran and one time civilian employee of the Army I'll tell you this about the military; once they buy into something they will never admit they made a mistake no matter how bad it turns out.
 
 
+3 # Guest 2010-03-30 04:32
The privatization of the L.A. public transit system should be the obvious example. A friend lived there in the 40's and said it was so easy to get around. I lived there in the 90's and it was hell. The difference was that the system had been sold out to GM, BF Goodrich and the oil companies. Government does what the private market cannot, or will not, do.
 

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