Comment by yardie | Hacker News Reader

Comment by yardie | Hacker News Reader

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> he provided the US government with unique capability that they desperately needed, and things would have probably been far messier if he hadn't been involved in Iraq.

I have many friends and family that have participated in Iraq II and Afghanistan. They see PMCs as morale destroyers. While they are getting paid E-4 rates, or higher, the PMCs are getting paid 4-5x that for doing the same damn job!

They've had to learn to do more with less while the PMCs show up with shiny new toys all the time. And if that wasn't enough they were getting calls or letters from home saying their benefits had been cut, allowances were down, etc. Then the DoD was "winding down" it's campaigns by replacing enlistees with even more PMCs. Suddenly, guys that wanted to make a career in the armed forces, and had planned to stay 10-20 years, couldn't re-up. In the end few of them felt they had no choice but to join Academy or Blackwater since job prospects back home were so meager.

They were making things so much better in Iraq the PM wanted them out of his country because of the unaccountability and civilian deaths directly attributable to them. Shooting civilians in the street is the first thing I think of when the word Blackwater comes up.

Your first three paragraphs are criticism of defence policy, not of PMCs.

What an Iraqi PM claims to want publicaly is likely to contain at least three levels of indirection, or the person filling the role wouldn't be qualified for the role.

Is there some statute I missed that declares that PMs should have ~3 mis-directions in everything they say, at all times? Or are they able to settle at two?

It would be much easier to declare where the misdirections are if you expect them, than to postulate the law that would make your syllogism work.

PMCs are also generally former SoF operators, who generally got out of the military with > E4 rank. I know, I was a 96U (UAV Operator) in OIF II and worked with a lot of SoF (Seals, Spooks, Delta, Rangers, Mercs/PMCs, etc). My experience might be different than your friends/family, but I saw them as a necessary evil.

While that is true I believe most of the PMC jobs are security and truck drivers. Something the US Army already does. Most PMC work is not as mercenaries.

If you were a corporal driving trucks making $30k and saw a contractor doing your job making $100k what would you think?

I would think the obvious thing. I signed up to serve, not to make a ton of cash, however I would not re-enlist and would become a civilian for better pay.

Note that is pretty much what I did after my 4 years were up sans the deployments!

That is noble of you but even you must have figured out most of your buds were in it for the job training and GI Bill.

I think those that wanted to reup were from high unemployment areas and were afraid to find out what they would do next.

But I don't have first hand experience. This is just relayed to me over BBQ and beer talk.

I know it wasn't your intention, but you just made the argument that a private company operates more efficiently and is better for the worker than the equivalent government entity... with money coming from the same taxpayer budget.

I don't think he made the argument that a private company operates more efficiently. They just make more money but that doesn't mean they are more efficient.

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