How can you have a poll question like this and not have at least one choice where someone can vote to support the use of private security forces? Why shouldn't we use private companies to protect the oil fields, to protect contractors who are working on reconstruction projects and to guard remote facilities where we do not want to deploy military troops? It is quite possible that the death and casualty totals would have been much higher if it were not for these paid security forces. Your polls would be a great deal more effective and revealing if you did not allow your partisanship to ensure that you get the results you want, rather then all sides of a question. In effect, you are doing exactly the same thing you often criticize the Bush administration for doing.

Posted by bean22 at 09/22/2007

Yes, American Troop casualty counts are much lower because we're not counting contractor dead or wounded. Funny how that works.

Posted by D1od1o at 09/22/2007

We have a vigilante president and veep who don't care a bit about the Constitution, although one doesn't even know it. So why not a vigilante 'security force', a palace guard to protect Bush when he declares martial law. Vest full of bombs anyone?

Posted by alicecbrown at 09/22/2007

Bean22...feel free to join one of the US Private Mafias and Contract Military units. Nobody is stopping you!!

The Neos have been using more and more CMs. Before the CM's it controlled by the was the CIA and US Military or Armed Forces doing much of the clandestine work.

Then the Neos started using CM's like Osama bin Laden. For some reason he was called a paid Privateer..a legal Pirate..makes you wonder if Tim McVey was a paid Privateer?

IRAN Contra was the first massive use of US Clandestine Private armies. How do you think we got all those pictures of gassed Kurds on to the News Organizations?

The US Military and Armed Services are actually angry about this. Because they are the recipiants of the failed policies and have no control over to prevent their actions.

Posted by Isador at 09/25/2007

The use of private security forces is just one more way to limit the citizenry's knowledge and control of our foreign policy.

Posted by Joel Levitt at 09/26/2007

You see Izzy, The U.S. has been using mercenaries in conjunction with traditional armies in every war we have ever fought. Some have functioned better then others, some have been successful, some have been an embarrassment. My point is that if The Nation is going to conduct a poll on the question, then they should at least have one choice that allows a vote to support mercenaries that are used properly. The poll actually reveals a great deal more about The Nation and its readership then it does about the use of mercenaries.

Just like the question of torturing prisoners. We, like every other country in the world, have been torturing prisoners ever since we had prisoners. In every war, by every president, without exception. The Nation's readers would say that you can't trust the info you get from a tortured prisoner. Actually the only info you can't trust is a confession. Anything else is verifiable in a very short time. The policy of the U.S. has always been: deny, deny, deny but do whatever it takes to save American lives. When we were in basic training at Ft. Dix, they made it very clear that if we were captured in battle, we were going to be tortured. And although officially we were told to only give our name, rank and serial number, we were unofficially told to tell them what they want to know if it would avoid having our testicles hooked up to a set of batteries. War is hell. And your country, whether under a Republican or a Democrat knows that no country survives moral in an immoral world. Sorry Izzy.

Posted by bean22 at 09/26/2007

I find it fascinating that you provided a choice stating: "The fix is in. This is Bush's shadow army--war profiteers will operate with impunity and legal immunity as long as Bush is in the White House" when we all know that no Democrat within reach of the White House is advocating anything but indefinite occupation. Obama says we'll need military to protect our bases. Clinton is a pure bred right wing pandering war monger, doing everything she can to look like she's tough as a man. The only people calling for an unambiguous withdrawal are Kucinich, Gravel, and Richardson.

So we need another choice in this survey: "The fix is in, it's only a question of which party's cronies will be the war profiteers after 2009. Blackwater ain't goin' nowhere under any possible scenario."

Posted by trippin at 09/27/2007

CONGRESS SHOULD REFUSE TO FUND ALL PRIVATE SECURITY COMPANIES IN IRAQ...

That would be a great "back door" way to get us out of there damned quick, and the Dems couldn't be accused of "not supporting the troops" because security contractors AREN'T "the troops." Plus, after the revelations of the Blackwater atrocities, there's not a lot of sympathy for them either. "Support our mercenaries"? You gotta be kidding....

Posted by w_m_bear at 09/29/2007

Hope springs eternal but it will have no impact on military or "security" operations in Iraq or elsewhere that the US is engaged in the near term. Only direct and focused congressional action can start to arrest the downward spiral that is most patently manifest in Iraq. The slim Democratic majority has been ineffectual in effecting a change in course as a function of several dynamics. These include a lack of political courage among the Democrats who characteristically take a measure of the political winds before acting and never do so on principle or passion, being the risk-averse, cautious (Some might fairly say cowardly) political beings that they - in the aggregate - have proven to be. In view of the lock-step insanity akin to Nazi Germany with which the Republican delegation continues to support the initiatives or obstacles erected by the executive branch, it must be a Democratic congress that acts. The country's best hope is that the majorities in both houses are increased to levels that can defeat the status quo. This is so because it is increasingly likely that Republicans will maintain a hold on the executive branch of government for at least another five years. In another show of political naivete and ineptitude, Democrats have gleefully invested in two unelectable candidates. While both of the two leading candidate might have proven to be effective leaders if elected, neither will be. Those who dispute this eventuality need only recall the nastiness, deceit and guile the Republican machine brought to bear against John McCain, Max Cleland, Michael Dukakis, John Kerry and many others who were successfully assailed for their crimes of reason, caution in international affiars, circumspection, valor, a propensity to question noveaux conventional wisdom or hesitation in committing the country's youth and treasure to the political imperatives of the far right and ultra-rich. Forgetting that the ultimate bastion of Justice, the Supreme Court is now politicized tot he right and would interject itself to achieve their politically expedient result as they did in Bush V Giore, imagine what the likes of Karl Rove could hurl at a black man with a Muslim surname or a woman who happens to be as polarizing as George Bush? Why won't these campaigns be successful in Kansas, Montana, Alabama, Kentucky, and elsewhere, not in changing opinions among voters, but in mobilizing the inactive electorate to prevent what will be characterized as a surrender of American values? They will be very effective. The election result will be a function of all Republicans voting along party lines, Most Democratic men voting against their party's candidate or failing to vote at all, and a solid bloc of recently registered or awakened voters turning out en masse to prevent the hyped tragedy of a Muslim or female presidency. The fact that one of the prospective candidates would be the most reviled American woman since Lizzy Borden would only serve to further agitate the electorate. So, unless there is a big development that results in the rise of an electable Democrat in an election year that should be a lay-up for the Dems, our 44th president will be one who is of a mind to continue with, and to improve on Republican successes achieved since their 1994 contract with America, reversing fifty years of progressivism and reducing the country's might and reputation to levels not seen since the American Revolution. Therefore, it will behoove those in Congress of a mind to change American direction in the Middle-East and elsehwere to begin that process in earnest. They very well could be the only hope for change for generations.

Posted by Gemini4 at 10/2/2007

It's been said "There is only one party in the United State half of them are Republican and the other half are Democrats

Posted by larjean at 10/2/2007

when will blackwater be used to police all of the streets of our once great couuntry

Posted by scummi at 10/3/2007