PMC  Event News:

   •  PMC 2004 Assessment...

   PMC  STORIES:

  Without the services of PMC’s, the US government would be compelled to increase the size of the US military or to consider reviving the military draft.  The logic of empire requires more boots on the ground, and barring conscription, utilizing PMC’s looks like the only way to get them. The 138,000 US soldiers officially stationed in Iraq have been supplemented with at least 15-20,000 private military Contractors. 

At least another 10,000 to 15,000 Contractors from every corner of the globe are performing vital military logistical support roles such as driving, maintenance, training, communications and intelligence-gathering, and it will quadruple by the year 2010.  

  Even so, as recent events in Falluja and Najaf make clear, all these bodies are not nearly enough to sustain the occupation. Therefore one task or another, such as guarding shipments of money or the guarding of hotels, is handed over to private military contractors. 
 
"A Bloody Business"

2006 - Retired army colonel Schumacher polishes the public image of private wartime contractors in this informative if relentlessly glowing account of these "unrecognized and unappreciated patriots" in Iraq and Kuwait. Schumacher gained access to employees from contracting firms MPRI and Crescent Security, and his perspective is one of deep affection and respect—for people who put themselves in harm's way to provide security for diplomats, to move convoys of precious materials and to rebuild the broken infrastructure of war-torn countries. Describing the day-to-day operations of the trucking, training and security contractors he interviewed in Kuwait and Iraq, Schumacher argues that they don't work for the money (MPRI workers' pay comes to under $20 an hour) but out of a sense of adventure, patriotism and expertise. The author's voice is unpretentious but swaggering, tough but sentimental; he's as critical of the Bush administration for its ill-conceived strategies as of the media for what he considers prejudice. There's not much in the way of subtle policy debate or comprehensive analysis ("Department of Defense outsourcing to civilian contractors is an efficient, short-term solution"), but Schumacher writes with a keen sense of justice and empathy as he recounts the harrowing tales of these contractors-for-hire. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

 
 2003 - Keith Stansell, Marc Gonsalves and Thomas Howes -- who worked for the U.S. military via California Microwave Systems, a subsidiary of Northrop Grumman Corp. of Los Angeles -- have been held prisoner by leftist rebels in Colombia since February 2003, when their plane crashed in the jungle while they were on a mission photographing clandestine coca fields. The prisoners' case has drawn none of the publicity that erupted in cases such as that of Jessica Lynch, the Army soldier briefly held prisoner in Iraq.  

2008 - Keith Stansell, Marc Gonsalves and Thomas Howes -- The forgotten CONTRACTORS - FREED!!!!!

  •  NEW! HOSTAGES FREED!

 

 

 

  •  NEW! SLIDESHOW!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

JAN 2004 - A group of American construction executives was traveling in a convoy down a palm-lined highway 30 miles north of Baghdad one January day when gunfire and rocket-propelled grenades suddenly exploded everywhere.

Private security agents riding with the convoy fought off the attackers in a hail of gunfire. Two of the agents died, as did an unknown number of guerrillas. 
MARCH 2004 - The American firm Blackwater has become the best known of the PMC's for an unfortunate reason: four of its heroic employees were ambushed, killed and had their corpses publicly paraded through the streets of Fallujah on March 30. The company has hundreds of personnel in Iraq, supplying security for CPA facilities, escorting convoys, and providing the personal bodyguard for Bremer. "Let us not Forget."

APRIL 2004 - Eight Blackwater Contractors defended the CPA headquarters in Najaf from an attack by Shiite militiamen. In a joint operation with US Army helicopter gunships, the company used two of its own helicopters to re-supply its men with ammunition.

MAY 2004 - An attack by hundreds of Iraqi militia members on the U.S. government’s headquarters in Najaf on Sunday was repulsed not by the U.S. military, but by eight commandos from a private security firm, according to sources familiar with the incident. Before U.S. reinforcements could arrive, the firm, Blackwater Security Consulting, sent in its own helicopters amid an intense firefight to resupply its commandos with ammunition and to ferry out a wounded Marine.     

JUNE 2004 - In London, the British Foreign Office reported Sunday that a British security Contractor was killed and three colleagues were wounded in a drive-by shooting Saturday in the northern city of Mosul. The four worked for Armor Group, a security firm with 1,000 employees in Iraq protecting official buildings and companies.