World's Most Notorious Merc to Oversee Blackwater? (Wired)

[kpete]

World's Most Notorious Merc to Oversee Blackwater?
By Noah Shachtman October 31, 2007 | 1:59:11 PMCategories: Mercs

One of the world's most notorious mercenaries may soon be overseeing all of the State Department's security convoys in Iraq.

The New York Times is reporting today that the Department of Defense is taking control of the State Department's convoys of security contractors, like Blackwater. The Pentagon already coordinates its outsourced security details through a single, Defense Department entity, the Reconstruction Operations Centers, which tracks movement of security convoys to make sure they and the military don't trip over one another. Most likely this existing mechanism will be expanded to monitor Blackwater, Triple Canopy and DynCorp convoys for the Department of State.

But here's the interesting twist: The Reconstruction Operations Centers are themselves outsourced, through a recently renewed $475 million contract to the British firm Aegis. And Aegis is run by the infamous old-school gun-for-hire, Tim Spicer. He's the guy, you may recall, who tried to use his mercenary army to launch a counter-coup of the government of Sierra Leone -- and plotted the overthrow of the authorities in Equatorial Guinea. Later, in Iraq, his boys filmed a rather nasty “trophy video,” in which contractors took video of themselves shooting at civilians, set it to the Elvis song "Runaway Train," and put it on the Internet.

Kind of ironic, dontcha think, that this could be the Bush Administration's way of bringing greater accountability and oversight to Blackwater?

Heckuva job, Condi!
http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/10/worlds-most-not.html

[SpiralHawk]

1. "Don't ya just love it. Smirk, smirk, smirk." - Commander AWOL

"I'll bet you a double toot of blow that never, ever in your wildest dreams did you imagine that me and my cabal of corrupt republicon cronies could pull this kind of occult EVIL shit. Bwaaa ha ha ha ha. Smirk, Smirk, Smirk."

- Commander AWOL,
Official Connecticut Preppy Cheerleader to the Skull & Boner Division of Occultist Chickenhawks,
and Supreme Hero to Legions of corrupt republicon homelanders

[annabanana]

2. Aw Geez! Once again it seems

that NOTHING is so fucked up that this administration can't fuck it up worse...

It's just astounding.

[Solly Mack]

3. What a low-life government we have

[spindrifter]

4. When it comes to standards for mercenaries/

oversight, we can count on our decision-makers to abide by the highest of standards. Yes...

What we have to understand, of course, is that only a trained, highly experienced mercenary is able to truly tell when a lethal action is warranted. We will never understand that if people don't respond instantly to a thrown water bottle they must accept the consequences.