PERU: Veteran Soldiers, Police Recruited for Iraq by U.S. Contractors

[deadparrot]

LIMA, Nov 2 (IPS) - "Pirana", a former Peruvian army sergeant who fought the Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) Maoist guerrillas in the jungles of Peru in the 1990s, decided at the last minute not to travel to Iraq with around 200 former members of the military and police recruited by the U.S.-based private security firm Triple Canopy.

"My mom convinced me not to go," Pirana told IPS on condition of anonymity. "She told me she would prefer to see me poor but alive rather than dead for a handful of dollars."

Complaints from the families of former soldiers and police officers hired to work as security personnel in Iraq by private military contractors triggered a scandal in Peru.

"There is no work here, and when you do find a job, you earn pathetically low wages. I'm a factory watchman, and I earn the equivalent of eight dollars for a 12-hour day. To work in Iraq they were going to pay me 35 dollars a day, plus other benefits. It was really tempting, despite the risks," said Pirana, 29.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/oneworld/65731215941130973657

[peacetalksforall]

1. Another example - this is how they do it.

Perpetual war with enslaved soldiers. Fascist imperialism supported by the poor. If our own citizens are so apathetic that they don't know who Libby and Rove are, how is a poor soldier from Peru to know what they are getting in to?

Remember, Bush said that Africans could be used for world soldiers.

And when they don't get killed or kill themself, they can go home to immuni deficiencies, diseases, missing organs or limbs - however, if they return brain washed they can go to work for Hallibruton and Blackwater or Kellogg, Brown and Root or settle down as a border vigilante or a herion trader.

Do you think George is going to include this new 'arrangement' in his speech to South Americans? Will he try to sell it as spreading democracy.

What he call democracy in this country has become liecracy, deathcracy, theftcracy. They laugh hysterically that people find them credible.

THE CHILDREN OF THE WORLD WANT PEACE!

[ananda]

2. That's the spirit..

.. just recruit poor guys from thirdworld countries to fight our battles.

How low can it get...

[soothsayer]

3. $35 a day. sweet!

[Julius Civitatus]

4. Outsourcing war and other dirty business

This outrageous. It really pisses me off: 35 dollars a day for the poor, third-world cannon fodder. Halliburton contractors in Iraq get paid thousands of dollars per day (something that even got our own troops outraged, since they don't fare that much better).

:argh: