Mercenaries
Many of my peers consider security contractors in Iraq to be something like bloodthirsty, greedy mercenaries.
I think that I have a different perspective on security contractors in Iraq because I know just how many people need security, and how few of them are directly related to anything sinister. I also don't assume and impugn the profit motive and severely as my peers.
From Rich Galen's Mullings, here is an example of why :
The bad guys, also wanting to mark the anniversary, blew up a hotel in downtown Baghdad. It was not immediately clear what the hotel had done to anger the bad guys, but they put about 1,000 lbs of explosives into a car, had some poor schmuck drive the car down the street and then blew it, him, and seven innocent people to smithereens.There is a very small part of that story which I want to share with you:
Many organizations here have what are called PSDs - Personal Security Details. These are private companies who are hired to provide bodyguards to various and sundry civilian employees.
One of the guys who manages a PSD unit is named Russ Preston. Russ and his team do not live in the Green Zone, they live in Baghdad proper. As it happens they live near the hotel which was blown up the other night.
When the bomb went off, Russ ran into the building to help pull out victims. This is a photo of that activity captured by Amman Awad for Reuters:
Personal Security Detail guys get paid well. But I guarantee you, Russ ain't paid to do this.
Fern. Bob. Chad. Russ.
Civilian. Reserve. Active Duty. Retired. They each rushed into danger to help, in their own way, people they didn't even know.
The image in question is below the MT cut. Look at it and tell me that Russ is a mercenary and deserves to die for what he does in Iraq.
Comments
My boyfriend is currenly stationed in Kuwait and enters into Iraq frequently as a PSD guard, but is currently in Afghanistan. When he first told me that a lot of people view them as mercenaries hired to kill, I couldn't understand how anyone could believe that. They are bodyguards and are hired to protect their clients, and yes, they do have guns that they use when necessary, but as protection only. Would you go to Iraq and walk around the streets protecting wealthy diplomats and congressmen without a gun??? I think anyone who voluntarily chooses to go to a place like Iraq and risk his life to save another's should be praised. How many people would willingly do that? That says something about those men over there, those PSD guards that y'all call mercenaries. They're protectors, not mercenaries.
Posted by: Stephanie | March 19, 2006 05:53 PM