How many Mercenaries have died in Iraq. I'm sure they don't 'count'.

[spanone]

I guess this is 'secret' info we may never know.

[aquart]

1. That's another nasty "under the carpet" aspect to this war.

Mercenaries do so much for the American image abroad. People here mostly know nothing about them, but their victims are spreading the word. NOT TO MENTION THEY'RE BEING PAID OUT OF OUR BUDGET.

[billybob537]

2. Mercenaries are expressly forbidden

By US laws and UN treaties
http://www.ilrg.com/subject/lawofwar/15conv-mercenaries.html

[catnhatnh]

3. We have no mercenaries....

...however I recently saw a thread saying we have had approximately 600 "PRIVATE CONTRACTORS" killed....

[papau]

4. About a thousand (may be as low 650) contractor "Security Personnel" are dead - plus

we hired the "coalition of the willing" - as in paying all costs to Poland plus a rental fee.

[seemslikeadream]

5. at least 650 mercenaries killed

http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0108/p06s01-woiq.html

This reduction was also confirmed by a US contractor, who has driven trucks inside Iraq. US Department of Labor statistics show at least 650 American contractors have been killed inside Iraq.

Professor Rodgers says that a more substantial US combat presence in Iraq could cause insurgents to avoid direct confrontation and intensify attacks on supply lines.

"In the longer term, they may respond by attacking the supplies, rather than the troops themselves," he says.

****

Brigadier General Karl Horst

These guys run loose in this country and do stupid stuff. There's no authority over them, so you can't come down on them hard when they escalate force... They shoot people, and someone else has to deal with the aftermath. It happens all over the place.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercenary#Private_Military_Companies_.28PMCs.29

Private Military Companies (PMCs)
A strand of the contemporary mercenary trade sometimes goes under the label of the Private military company or PMC, which provides logistics, manpower, training and other servies. PMCs' contractors are civilians (in governments, international and non-governmental organizations) authorized to accompany a force in the field. Hence, the terminology "civilian contractor" is sometimes used, somewhat euphemistically. PMCs may use force, hence they can be defined as: "legally established enterprises that make a profit by either providing services involving the potential exercise of force in a systematic way and by military means, and/or by the transfer of that potential to clients through training and other practices, such as logistics support, equipment procurement, and intelligence gathering" <2>

It can be argued that paramilitary forces under private control are functionally mercenaries instead of security guards or advisors. However, national governments reserve the right to strictly regulate the number, nature and armaments of such private forces and argue that provided they are not employed in frontline pro-active military activities that they are not mercenaries. That said, the do not enjoy a sterling reputation among government soldiers and officers- several members of the United States Military Command have raised questions about the behavior of such companies in hotzones. In September 2005, Brigadier General Karl Horst, deputy commander of the Third Infantry Division in charge of security in Baghdad after the 2003 Invasion of Iraq, said this of DynCorp and other security firms in Iraq: "These guys run loose in this country and do stupid stuff. There's no authority over them, so you can't come down on them hard when they escalate force... They shoot people, and someone else has to deal with the aftermath. It happens all over the place."

[bobthedrummer]

8. It's not just the PMC's in this fascist empire of BFEE, as you note so well SLAD,

everything that is "privatized" by awards of contracts are hidden by the criminal misuse of security classifications and the arbitrary decrees of the Decider especially the Special Access Programs/SAP's that involve the criminal misuse of our military by blending them into a mix of foreign operatives, and the absolute worst scum of the earth.

The areas of privatized society include corrections and police, which people like war criminal and profiteer Henry Kissinger's former chief of staff and BFEE's head of the Iraq Coalition Provisional Authority war criminal and profiteer L. Paul Bremer delegated to sources like this torture administration's Department of Justice's International Criminal Investigative Training Program/ICITAP.

ICITAP sent people like Terry Stewart, Gary DeLand, John J. Armstrong, Lane McCotter and others to Iraq where they went about their well paying business in many of the police stations and jails that have been attacked. What ICITAP employees were doing was also being done by people in CACI, Titan, and the SAP's overseen by people like General Richardo Sanchez, Geoffrey Miller, Pappas and others that have name recognition larger than the torturers and human rights abusers of ICITAP.

So we're not just talking about the racists, death squads, rapists and human traffickers in PMC's like Custer-Battles, Vinell, Blackwater, DynCorp and the other mercenaries-we are also talking about law enforcement and corrections of a society thrown into civil war (by design imo).

Here's a bit of history about ICITAP-not as well known as Abu Ghraib but doing the same things for a good salary awarded by BFEE.
http://www.talkleft.com/story/2004/10/17/129/58126

Yeah, mercenaries have died-their crimes created hatred and vengence attacks on Americans especially our military who were ordered into an illegal war based on lies and have also been abused by the mercenaries that Rumsfeld et al's failed revolution in military affairs "contractors" hired to support them.

Woe.

[seemslikeadream]

9. MERCENARIES FOR HIRE

MERCENARIES FOR HIRE
All this firepower, trained on a public which places its trust in uniformed guards, raises a variety of concerns: The private security industry is largely unregulated; its employees are often poorly trained, underpaid, and inadequately screened; and they serve only those who hired them. While rent-a cops are legally limited to observing, reporting and attempting to deter crime a power which falls short of the authorized use of force or the right to make an arrest the distinction is apt to be lost on most citizens accosted by a uniformed private guard waving a gun and security badge.
The history of businesses hiring security firms and using them like a private army is long and rife with abuse. Pinkerton, the nation's oldest and second largest security company, earned its spurs in the late 19th century when its guards served as a private army for robber barons intent on wiping out unions. Pinkerton provided the firepower when Ford Frick issued the order to gun down striking workers at Andrew Carnegie's Homestead steel plant in 1892.

Private security companies today have kept that union-busting tradition alive and well. As corporations faced with labor disputes turn more and more to so-called permanent replacement workers, guard firms are utilized to crush militant opposition from unions. A rapidly expanding subset of the industry specializes in strikebreaking.

At the forefront is the Special Response Corporation (SRC), based in Towson, Maryland, SRC's ads feature a uniformed agent wielding a riot shield beneath a headline which proclaims: A Private Army When You Need It Most. SRC promises prospective employers that we can provide the security and control measures necessary for the continued operation of the business in the event of a strike. SRC vouches for the professionalism of its agents, stating that they all have prior military or law enforcement experience. In 1990, SRC helped precipitate a melee when its guards used martial arts sticks against striking newspaper workers in New York City.

http://mediafilter.org/caq/CAQ54p.police.html

Tales of the strike-busters
Unionized workers knock heads with controversial security firms that specialize in picket-line intimidation
BY BRUCE LIVESEY
For Edwin Godinez it was a case of déjà vu. Prior to emigrating from the Philippines six years ago he'd grown accustomed to seeing soldiers dressed in riot gear beating up protesters and strikers. But when Godinez and 450 fellow workers went on strike last October against their employer, Mississauga-based CFM Majestic Inc., it was as if he had never left home.

As soon as the strike began, the workers were confronted by burly security guards outside the factory where CFM Majestic manufactures fireplaces and stoves. The guards had shaved heads, were dressed from head to toe in black uniforms and wore black caps and military boots. As the workers tried to block buses filled with replacement workers -- or scabs, as they're traditionally known -- from crossing the picket lines, the guards shoved the picketers out of the way. Aiming video cameras, they also filmed the strikers. These guards worked for an outfit called London Protection International Inc. (LPI), a security company that specializes in "labour unrest management" situations.

If LPI's intention was to frighten the workers -- the majority of whom are from the Philippines -- it didn't work. "Most of the Filipino workers had been college students back home and were used to this sort of police presence," says Godinez, a 35-year-old father of a baby daughter. "We were not really intimidated."

Even before negotiations with the United Steelworkers of America union broke down last fall, the company hired both LPI and Bill McFadden Ltd., an outfit owned by a former U.S. Navy SEAL who leases trucks and buses for transporting scabs (later prompting workers to brandish signs reading "Dump the Seal"). On CFM Majestic's behalf, LPI recruited scabs, herding them onto buses at a Mississauga baseball field while their guards cleared a path through picketers into the company's plant. "The people were constantly pushing and shoving picketers," says Garnet Penny, a Steelworkers area coordinator. The union responded by launching an effective corporate campaign that, after four weeks, compelled CFM Majestic to grudgingly offer a better first contract.

http://www.eye.net/eye/issue/issue_04.13.00/news/busters.html

[bobthedrummer]

12. What a wonderful rich history of terrorizing working men and women

outfits like Pinkerton's and Wackenhut have.

on edit
Pinkerton's (now Pinkerton-Burns)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinkerton_National_Detective_Agency

Wackenhut
http://www.eyeonwackenhut.com/

Mercenaries will do anything-if the price is right.

[seemslikeadream]

14. PRIVATE MILITARY COMPANIES! MERCENARIES! NEW AGE PINKERTONS!

When 300 Pinkerton Detectives came ashore at Andrew Carnegie's Homestead mill on July 6, 1892, they had no idea of the extreme violence with which locked-out steelworkers would greet them. A hail of stones, then bullets, ripped the air. Steelworker William Foy and the captain of the Pinkertons fell wounded.

On June 29, despite the union's willingness to negotiate, Frick closed the mill and locked out 3,800 men. Two days later, workers seized the mill and sealed off the town from strike-breakers. Frick summoned a private police force, the Pinkerton Detective Agency, to protect the non-union workers he planned to hire.

Virtually the entire town flooded to the mill to meet the Pinkertons, weapons in hand. "To be confronted with a gang of loafers and cut-throats from all over the country, coming there, as they thought, to take their jobs, why, they naturally wanted to go down and defend their homes and their property and their lives, with force, if necessary," recalled one worker.

For twelve hours, a fierce battle raged. Outgunned by the Pinkertons' Winchester rifles, Homestead's citizens scoured the town for weapons, pressing into service everything from ancient muzzle loaders to a 20-pound cannon. A local hardware merchant donated his entire stock of ammunition, which workers carried to the mill in wheelbarrows. As workers built barricades on shore, the Pinkertons cut rifle ports in the sides of their barges. Meanwhile, news of the battle had reached nearby Pittsburgh. By 6 am more than 5,000 curious spectators lined the riverbanks
http://www.horizonshelpr.org/socsci/labor1890/handouts/homestead.html

The strike ended with the intervention of the United States Army. The passenger trains also hauled mail cars, and although the workers promised to operate mail trains so long as Pullman cars were not attached, the railroads refused. Pullman and the carriers informed federal officials that violence was occurring and that the mail was not going through. Attorney General Richard Olney, who disliked unions, heard their claims of violence (but not the assurances of local authorities that there was no uncontrolled violence) and arranged to send federal troops to insure the delivery of the mail and to suppress the strike. The union leader, Debs, was jailed for not obeying an injunction that a judge had issued against the strikers."
http://www.horizonshelpr.org/socsci/labor1890/handouts/pullman.html

[Mnemosyne]

6. Here is a link to info on "contractor" deaths at icasualties:

Contractors - A Partial List
Total: 379

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

[lonestarnot]

7. They are not on my count list.

[MyNameGoesHere]

11. Do you have a link

to your list? I am dense i guess i don't understand what list you speak of.

[Vidar]

10. Not nearly enough.

[lies and propaganda]

13. just like katrina deaths...