Once upon a time I had a photo, clipped from a newspaper, taped to my PC monitor. It was a picture of a young entrepreneur in some conflict region, former Yugoslavia I guess, sitting behind a big stack of open cannisters of black-market gasoline, a lit cigarette dangling rakishly from the corner of his mouth.
I threw it out along with a bunch of other crap when I moved offices, but I’ve been thinking about that picture a lot lately.
Also, complete change of topic, I’ve been wondering when we stopped calling them “mercenaries” and started calling them “contractors”. My mistake, I know, but when I first read that expression, I imaged guys with shovels, bulldozers and cement mixers, rebuilding Iraq, you know? And it turns out they’re mercenaries. Why does the US military need mercenaries all of a sudden? And what are they doing in US-run “prisons”? Rhetorical questions, I guess.
I try instead to think about the decent young soldiers who reported the abuse to their COs.
Very good point–i thought they were the shovel bulldozer, cement-type contractors, too.
They need contractors so they can say, they didn’t know about it and it wasn’t us…it was them. Let’s call it “Contractual Blame”.
Sounds that way. I can’t think of any other reason to use them.