Guess Who Investigated Blackwater for the State Department?

Turns out that the State Department contracted that little job out to (surprise) Blackwater.

Mercenaries historically are a bunch of evil bastards who cannot be trusted. That little fact has been known for centuries.

"Mercenaries and auxiliaries are useless and dangerous; and if one holds his state based on these arms, he will stand neither firm nor safe; for they are disunited, ambitious and without discipline, unfaithful, valiant before friends, cowardly before enemies; they have neither the fear of God nor fidelity to men, and destruction is deferred only so long as the attack is; for in peace one is robbed by them, and in war by the enemy. The fact is, they have no other attraction or reason for keeping the field than a trifle of stipend, which is not sufficient to make them willing to die for you." -- Nicolo Machiavelli. He wrote those words in 1505 and they are as true today as they were five hundred years ago.

The plain fact of the matter is that having the mercenaries do security work in Iraq is harming the interests of the United States. In a counterinsurgency campaign, one of the most important things to do is win the trust of the population. The mercenary companies are working against this, whether out of sheer arrogance or out of design, in that a peaceful environment is not a moneymaker for them, is not known.

But since the owners of those companies give oodles of cash to the GOP, I guess it doesn't matter. Even our national honor is for sale by the Chimperor, and at prices that have been rolled back!