Half-price Colombian fighters offered for Iraq

[Judi Lynn]

Last Update: Saturday, August 13, 2005. 9:00pm (AEST)
Half-price Colombian fighters offered for Iraq

A US company operating out of Ecuador says it has signed up about 1,000 Colombian police and military staff to work as hired guns in Iraq, for less than half of their US counterparts' salaries.

Colombians "have been fighting terrorists for the past 41 years and are experts in their respective areas" such as explosives and guerrilla warfare, Epi Security and Investigation says on its website, iraqijobcenter.com.

The company based in the Ecuadoran city of Manta is run by American Jeffrey Shippy, who is in Baghdad, according to his Ecuadoran wife.

He works out of his home not far from the Manta air base Washington rented from the Ecuadoran Air Force to relocate some of the troops and planes it used to have in Panama.
(snip/...)

http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200508/s1437039.htm

[Julius Civitatus]

1. Outsourcing war

Disturbing. Very disturbing.

Who will these mercenaries respond to? Who will be responsible for their (very likely) future atrocities?

This is spiraling into pure, surrealistic chaos.

[slay]

7. Can't we just outsource the ENTIRE war to them?

I just mean, you know, if they want it that bad. :evilgrin:

[LSU_Subversive]

27. i immediately thought exactly the same thing. outsourcing thugs.

[Julius Civitatus]

29. This should be called IRAQ-CONTRA

They are basically subcontracting para-military thugs (akin to the Central-American contras of the 8os) but this time to clean the mess in Iraq... and will probably leave an even bigger mess behind.

Neocon world politics and their consequences.

[oneighty]

2. Gee

Blackwater gonna be upset about the unfairness of foreign competition. American mercenaries will be in the unemployment lines talking shit.

180

[ashling]

28. IDoes CAFTA apply to Ecuador?

I can see the headlines now:

Thousands of American mercenaries out of work as their jobs are outsourced

[mikehiggins]

3. You can't make this crap up

We are slipping right into surrealism. Now mercenaries are going to have to join the wage race to the bottom. Why not rent out our convicts to sweep for mines? They work cheaper than Colombians.

[IndianaGreen]

4. Colombian death squads to Iraq, for the price of beans!

Like mikehiggins said, you can't make this shit up!

[mom cat]

14. Welcome to the wars of the future...more mercenaries, less oversite,

creeping corporate control and less govt oversite (for all of the good that it does now).

[SpiralHawk]

5. Our Mercenary War in Iraq - Republicans are profiting

You can be sure

[whosinpower]

6. I read somewhere

That Bush was going to offer amnesty to illegal aliens who volunteer in the military. They were apparently expecting 50 000 of them and that General (the 4 star guy who just got fired) was supposedly complaining about having to train troops that could not speak english and possibly had criminal backgrounds.

No idea if it is true or not.

[Judi Lynn]

12. Not long ago one was given citizenship posthumously.

He was given his big break after being killed in Iraq. I'm pretty sure there was a thread in D.U. LBN about it.

Very sad.

[TheFarseer]

24. I thought they were getting amnesty for free

under his plan. Myself, I think a better idea is to offer freedom and clean records to drug offenders and other petty criminals that are now overflowing our country's prisons in exchange for service in Iraq.

[neweurope]

33. Hm. That could mean the death sentence for smoking pot.

-----------------

Remember Fallujah

Bush to The Hague!

[nookiemonster]

8. Contractor casualty stats.

Iraq Coalition Casualty Count.

http://icasualties.org/oif/Civ.aspx


Competition is tough, indeed.

[54anickel]

9. They were trained with our tax $$$, and we'll pay to train their

replacements AND pay EPI as a contractor in Iraq

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x1664676

Worry Grows as Foreigners Flock to Iraq's Risky Jobs

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/iraq/la-fg-forhire30jul30,0,3163322.story?coll=la-home-headlines


snip>

Shippy, who formerly worked for DynCorp International, a major U.S. security contractor, said the Colombians were willing to work for $2,500 to $5,000 a month, compared with perhaps $10,000 or more for Americans.

snip>

Rep. Jan Schakowsky, an Illinois Democrat, worries that U.S. government contractors are hiring thousands of impoverished former military personnel, with no public scrutiny, little accountability and large hidden costs to taxpayers.

The United States has spent more than $4 billion since 2000 on Plan Colombia, a counter-terrorism and counter-narcotics program that includes training and support for the Colombian police and military. Last month, Congress moved toward approval of an additional $734.5 million in aid to the Andean region in 2006, most of it for Colombia.

"We're training foreign nationals … who then take that training and market it to private companies, who pay them three or four times as much as we're paying soldiers," Schakowsky said.

"American taxpayers are paying for the training of those Colombian soldiers," she said. "When they leave to take more lucrative jobs, perhaps with an American military contractor … they take that training with them. So then we're paying to train that person's replacement. And then we're paying the bill to the private military contractors."

more...

[newscott]

10. It's probably less dangerous than fighting the guerillas and the cocaine

kingpins.

[Judi Lynn]

16. The paramilitaries tend to fare better than the other Colombians

Their reputation for devastating villages, conducting massacres with machetes, chain saws, hammers, etc. is a nightmare. Tons of info. available on it.

Escaped Colombian journalist, interviewed by Amy Goodman on Democracy Now:
"if the U.S. continues military aid, there will not be any journalists left alive who will be able to tell the story of the atrocities committed with that money, the U.S. is supporting fascist cocaine dealers."
(snip)

http://www.socialconscience.com/articles/2002/colombia/

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Up to 30 killed in paramilitary rampage, Colombian official says

February 18, 2000
Web posted at: 11:47 p.m. EST (0447 GMT)

BOGOTA, Colombia -- Rightist paramilitaries killed at least nine people, authorities said -- while witnesses said perhaps 20 more died -- in a three-day rampage northeast of Bogota this week.

Alejandro de la Rosa, a town official in the Colombian state of Sucre, said the final toll could be as high as 30.

"The bloodbath began Wednesday. All the victims are men who were shot and decapitated by the paramilitaries," de la Rosa, the municipal secretary for the northern town of Ovejas, said.
(snip)

http://archives.cnn.com/2000/WORLD/americas/02/18/colombia.massacre/

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

.....AUC fighters routinely induced fear in the rural population by entering villages and rounding up the residents in the town plaza. They would then brutally kill a handful of villagers, often dismembering them with machetes and chainsaws, before ordering the rest of the people to leave the region. By forcibly displacing the rural population in this manner, the paramilitaries hoped to eliminate local support for the guerrillas. This strategy has aggravated the already grossly inequitable distribution of arable lands as large landowners, as well as multinational corporations interested in oil, coal and natural gas resources, have taken over much of the abandoned land. More than 2.5 million rural Colombians have been displaced by the conflict in the past 15 years, many of them fleeing to the impoverished shantytowns that are rapidly encircling many of Colombia's cities.
(snip)

http://www.colombiajournal.org/colombia133.htm

[Barkley]

11. Isn' this how the Roman Empire fell?

[lonestarnot]

13. do I hear a Halliburton undercut....Hey mercinaries you've been outbid

Blackwater are you going now go tear up Columbia and Juan Valdez...

[DS1]

15. If this were a movie, it would be the funniest thing I'd ever heard of

Not even Monty Python could have come up with this crap!

[Johnyawl]

17. If they're such experts...

...then why has the war in Columbia lasted 41 years? How come they haven't defeated the "terrorists" in their homeland?

[fshrink]

18. Cocaine would probably help too.

[bemildred]

19. Dang, we should of used these guys from the first .... nt

[Judi Lynn]

21. I'll bet the true Colombians would love it if we did!

No doubt there'd be no wailing and gnashing of teeth if this paramilitary leader, Carlos Castaño, got his own expense-paid trip to Iraq!

He looks well-balanced, doesn't he? His people DO rip people's heads off, just like the most unredeemable nutcases in Iraq.

[xxqqqzme]

20. '...colombian police & military staff...'

hmmmmmm. 2nd generation negroponte trained no doubt. These 'police & military staff' go 2 Iraq 2 continue the training (putting fine points on the original training) of The Iraqi death squads negroponte set up during his brief tenure as what? 'ambassador?'

I was always curious why he was in 'n out of Iraq so fast.

[mbperrin]

22. Can we get

fries with that?

[Darranar]

23. The "Salvador option" in action. Crush dissent. n/t

[MisterP]

25. unidentified "Central Americans" were already being brought over,

and those poor, poor mercs that those scary brown people torched and dangled were actually South African death squad members who had killed an entire village with a hundred or so people in it, once the Fallujans, rest their hundred thousand souls, found out what was going on at Abu Ghraib.
Salvador Option indeed.

[ignatius 2]

26. Life anywhere means nothing to these neocon bastards. The world is in

turmoil..death,destruction and poverty everywhere..now they hire impoverised people as cannon fodder.

I despise this administration and I find it so sadly ironic that the religious right believe that Bush and co. are so honorable, religious and pro life,freedom and democracy.

Power and money are their gods.

[Jackpine Radical]

30. This is a mercenary army. It's what the Romans did

just before their empire collapsed.

[RSchewe]

31. Are they using the coupon from the Sunday paper too? Buy 1 Get 1 Free n/t

[Voltaire99]

32. Revolting. (nt)

[ngGale]

34. Absolutely frightening ...

:scared:

[Disturbed]

35. RW believes in free Enterprise...

as long as they don't have to pay. It's the loyal Amerikan Middle Class that are paying while their jobs are being outsourced. In the meanwhile are Dems doing anything about this?