I read the NY Post on most days so no one else here has to suffer thru it. Actually I enjoy it, it's a fun paper, despite its conservative views. Anyway today I was reading Ralph Peters' column titled "Lose the Mercenaries: `Contractors' wreck Iraq progress." Follow me below the fold for more...
I was shocked at the title, knowing it was referring to Blackwater and the other "contractors" in Iraq who apparently can shoot and kill anyone they want with impunity and have now been ordered to leave by the Iraqi government. This made me write a diary b/c this is what Kos called them- mercenaries- a few years ago and he got into a lot of heat, and still takes flack for doing so. Peters calls them "armed-to-the-teeth psychos". He says Blackwater "gave us the cowboys who got lynched in downtown Fallujah in early 2004-prompting" a "response that defined the entire year." He also says, straight up, "if you take money to bear arms for a private corporation, you're a mercenary. If you want to bear arms, enlist (or stay in)."
Anyway here's the link, just wanted everyone to know that Kos was correct in calling those guys who got lynched in Fallujah mercenaries, which they were. Peters, a conservative, acknowledges the same thing. Howard Dean said a gaffe is when you say something true that people in Washington don't want to hear (or something like that). I agree.
http://www.nypost.com/...