the guy by the door …

… is a corporation called Blackwater USA. [Wikipedia*] It is headquartered in North Carolina. Being unnoticed by the American public is an essential part of their business model. We are not supposed to notice that the number of “private security contractors”** in Iraq, for example, is comparable to the number of U.S Armed Forces personnel. The war effort is twice as big as what we’re supposed to see.

Amy Goodman ’85 of Democracy Now! showed an excerpt from a PBS documentary, “Private Warriors“. It showed a Blackwater mission near Fallujah protecting two empty flatbed trucks. They were not properly prepared and they all died.
Jeremy Scahill has written a book, Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army. Amy had him on for a good part of the hour this morning. He described the context of the PBS clip. The families are suing Balckwater to find out what happened to their loved ones. Scahill also claims that the principal of Blackwater has funnelled to several luminaries of the religious right. He names names. Blackwater sent Scahill a Cease and Desist for his website. He has no immediate plans to take it down. Y’all in the North Yard hearin’ this.
Riddle: If Blackwater is now the world’s most powerful mercenary army and it is comparable to U.S. Armed Forces in Iraq, how long before it’s the world’s most powerful army [PERIOD]

Question: Is this really a good idea?

*Earlier I said, “Despite being the most powerful private army, it does not yet meet the standard for inclusion in Wikipedia. It is not ‘notable'”. I was mistaken. Their page is quite good. It’s listed near the bottom of the disambiguation page. My apology to ‘Max rspct’ et. al.

**Another locution from the Department of Euphemism Advancement. These folks do the same work as folks known as “mercanary soldiers” or “mercs” for short. “Contractor” also uses the veneer of corporate respectibility to replace the apparently no longer useful romanticism, “soldier of fortune.”