(23.4.04 10:38) You are turning into the one man news factory. I love reading your posts, it's so refreshing in this world of distorted media. Don't want to be sycophantic but you're a fantastic journalist. Keep up the good work.

(23.4.04 12:59) Hear, hear selfish, well put....this is almost always my first read of the day. It's always well written and presented. BLACKRAT your a gem of truth in an uncertain world, keep it up.

(23.4.04 13:00) Once again, top post, really informative. I didnt realise those civilian contractors were carrying assult rifles at the time, kind of changes the way it sounds, what was done to them was still equally as vile, but they werent exactly inncoent bystanders as some quarters of the press would have us believe.

(24.4.04 01:03) i saw an American TV news story this morning about the family anguish caused by soldiers having to stay another 150 days, I think it is. A year was the time set, and now that's kaput. The families are grieving...it was awful to watch.

(24.4.04 02:49) I am sad to say that your description of the American contigent is right on the money. It sure as hell doesn't do the soldiers over there any good. We have a slang term for them - Rent-A-Soldier. I am sure you have heard it on more than one occasion. I think they are necessary, but their bullshit attitude and "gung ho we are so fucking great" ego can certainly use a bit of adjustment. I don't blame anyone for having a bad idea about them.

M (24.4.04 12:17) I'm claiming phrase copyright on 'gung ho, we're so fucking great' and all derivations. Continued usage will attract sweetie royalties. War is a dirty business and soldiers of fortune was a term coined for good reason. As I've always maintained, the war was ill conceived and this simply serves to underline that. Excellent post, it's refreshing to see the fetid underbelly exposed for once.

(24.4.04 20:02) M - so I should give you a sweetie everytime I use it? LOL

M (24.4.04 21:22) AmericanAttitude, yup, dig deep in that thar jar. You'll have to dish them out to Ratty as I quit 20six some time back and no longer have a site here.

(26.4.04 02:43) Can I be you when I grow up!??!?!?!? Your story of being an accidental journalist is amazing. I have wanted to be a journalist since I was young. At the moment I'm about to go and start a Journalism Degree at LCP in London, which many people have criticised me about but I don't care. It's something I love and I wouldn't do it otherwise. I'm concentrating mostly on magazine and music journalism at this precise time, merely because I've not sorted out my own personal views on politics at 18 years old.(Plus there's no cash in music journalism!) Going to Iraq must have been scary, my dad goes to Afghanistan on a job for the UN on Tuesday. I'm kind of worried but he used to be in RAF, so he'll be fine. Thank you so much for setting up this blog and being so precise. It is a real golden nugget to find the whole mass of crap that is on the Internet. Thank you, I'll be back! Dani

(26.4.04 14:20) Selfish: What can I say, fella? Thanks - the tenner's in the post ;-) Blue Pixel: Ditto! Peter: It was interesting seeing how the news was being portrayed to the world from inside Iraq - there, it's like a news vacuum and although there were many of us on the ground writing the news, there was little access to it other than online. Many quarters of the press are reporting a very sanitised version of what's going on out there, with the reports of 'contractor' fatalities a prima facie example. BFBC: I've heard of soldiers who were at Camp Wolverine in Kuwait awaiting flights home at the end of their tours in Iraq redeployed without notice - there can be no worse feeling than having home in reach only to have it snatched away without warning. AA: Sad but true - it takes a certain type of person to want to do close protection work anyway but the closed sub-culture within which the guys exist - coupled to the unreal world which is Iraq post-Saddam - makes for many of them believing their own publicity. Already arrogant, they feed off their own press and become parodies of themselves. M: Cheers, fella - it's refreshing for me too, having access to the raw intelligence which makes writing these stories possible. AA: Mukiwa's right on the money, throw your confectionery this way! Dani: Tough call, I haven't grown up myself yet ;-) And all credit to you for sticking to your guns - if journalism is what you want to do, follow your own heart and do the course; it will pay dividends later on. To be honest, there are a million people out there who can write the news, but features and magazines are a different matter entirely and are as much about your ability to write entertaining copy as anything else. Keep an open mind, network like mad and stay focused - you'll carve your own way. Thanks for the compliments - and the sweeties. Much appreciated.

(27.4.04 12:41) I had absolutely no idea about the Private Security Forces and as such had given them no thought! You definitely get a sweetie for such an informative post Blackrat - Thank for that. )

(27.4.04 19:08) all that stuff just to get home early for dinner really i ask you lol??,

(28.4.04 00:40) Rat - My sweeties only go where they are deserved. I hoard them like a greedy child who has never had candy. I give them out only when it was earned. Sorry! You'll have to do better than American bashing to get one. While I agree that Rent A Soldiers are arrogant, brash and loud...many of my fellow citizens are not...and it seems no one can make that distinction.

(28.4.04 11:24) Mark: Thank you! Smegger: Probably the fact that so many of them have a background in the police - having been used to a siren to get them back for tea, I guess the guns and the helos were just the next logical extension. AA: Wind your neck in, girl. Nobody's America bashing here, and we must be reading different blogs because one of the things that's impressed me with people's comments is their ability to draw a distinction between the Bush Administration and the American people as a whole.

AmericanAttitude / Website (28.4.04 22:26) Rat – I think you may want to take a good hard look at how you paint Americans as a whole in not only the blogs you post here at 20six, but also in articles you have written in the past that have been published. I think your commentators should take a good hard look at the opinions they have, and how they were formed. The only thing I have ever seen you write is that the “Americans are loud, brash and arrogant,” without noting that you are talking about the government or the wanna-be heroes that plagues all citizens in all nations. When you re-read these words of yours, instead of Americans, substitute Brit/British/Europeans. Then you may have an understanding of how we see you painting us. Mukiwa is the only one who has acknowledged that he painted with a broad stroke. It is because of this I give you the following challenge. I am daring you to take a good hard look at Americans themselves. I am challenging you to get to know Americans on their own turf, with an open heart, and open mind. I dare you to take out your extensive knowledge of my homeland - its history, its geography, its own way of living - and your endless amount of American friends of all backgrounds, and find out what my country, and my people, are truly like. I challenge you to wade through media hype, European myths of Americans and dig deep to find who we are, what we are about, and how we truly believe. And I dare you to leave behind your long held assumptions, and approach us with the same journalistic mindset that you approached the Iraqis. I am challenging you, and your Anti American readers, to do something that so many refuse to do – learn about the true America and its citizens. Until you do this, you are only criticizing with little knowledge of the truth, other than what you read in the media. You are taking sucker punches, and cannot fully back up what you spew as “the truth.” Then I dare you to write a blog with the truth of what you have found. Or am I asking too much? Is that too much of a challenge for you and your followers? Can you, and your loyal readers, truly discern between our government and us? Are you truly willing to find the truth? Or will you continue to call us “loud, brash and arrogant?"

(28.4.04 23:05) AA, what always gets me is that so many Americans fail to see the other side of this argument. I see what you are saying here, and there are of course many, many good americans. Thing is what gets me is that every european who dares criticize america is immeadiatley denounced as being some anti-american, terrosrist lover. Think of how France was treated by America, and rounded off on by many americans, called all sorts of things. Then america wonders why many europeans get sick of it. Its not about individual people, because regardless of race people define themselves, it is about societies as a whole. I'll admit it here and now, I am pig sick of America's governement its behaviour on the world stage is ridiculus, and George bush poses more of a threat to the world than UBL could even fantasise about being. I am sick of being called anti-american because I say this. I am sick of being told that I am a terrorist supporter because I stood up and debated the fact that there was no vaild reason for war. I am sick of the abuse i have came in for from so many Americans merely for expressing an opinion opposed to theirs. Its swings and roundabouts, cos while you say that we are doing that to you and your country America is constantly doing it to us. Such is life, get over it.

(28.4.04 23:35) AA: Once again, you're wrong - I don't want to take "a good hard look at how you paint Americans as a whole in not only the blogs you post here at 20six, but also in articles you have written in the past that have been published". Quite simply, you assume a preoccupation with the US which I simply do not possess. I have merely spoken as I see things, principaly on the issue of Iraq which I happen to have experienced first hand. There, I have seen with my own eyes the evidence of American influence, listened to the anger, the hurt and the resentment of the occupied Iraqi people, and seen the effects of American largesse forced upon a people who neither sought, nor desired the corrupting influence of Uncle Sam's hand. This is my blog, and it reflects my opinions. You don't have to like or agree with them - that too is your perogative. You too are welcome to express your own. But I am a little sick of you beating the same drum over and over, like some self-appointed guardian of North American integrity, when you repeatedly miss the point by a country mile. I have not sought to denigrate America as a whole - nor its people. It's too vast a nation, encompassing too many variables, for sweeping generalisations - what is 'American' anyway? But your government, and some of those representing it, does deserve criticism, in the same way that my own government deserves it. And those elements of America's forces who have occasioned my vitriol deserve it also; they have brought the spotlight on your nation for the way in which they, as ambassadors have behaved. My opinions and preconceptions of Americans as a people are the same as those I hold of any other nation - I speak as I find. I have seen more of the US than many Americans I know, have experienced the hospitality of the South, the west coast, and my favourite, the Eastern Seaboard. Never have I experienced other than a warm welcome from a diverse group of people. Frankly, I'm pig sick of you hijacking my blog to espouse your badly formed opinions of me and the way in which you deign to assume how I think. You don't - and you don't even come close. Take your insults - "...you are only criticizing with little knowledge of the truth, other than what you read in the media" and sully your own blog with them - don't accuse me of unsubstantiated drivel which has no basis in fact. So far as I'm concerned, this is an end to our discourse on the subject. This blog entry was intended to spark debate on the dubious merits of the use of mercenaries by the coalition - the only person to see it as a slight on Americans generally is yourself. Is it too much to ask for you to do me the courtesy of commenting appropriately?

(28.4.04 23:36) Peter: Good points, well made. Couldn't have put it better myself, fella.

(28.4.04 23:48) Cheers ratty, likewise your comment above. I would like to also pick up on something that you said there, you are, as far as I am aware the only one on this thread who is coming from personal experience of Iraq since the invasion, its clear that your opinions have came from personal experience and first hand look at the situation, and arent just rash comments. Well said!

(29.4.04 16:11) AA, you're making a grave mistake if you choose to make a judgement call on me based only upon some comments which you took out of context. For some reason, you jumped on your high horse and had me singled out as an America-hater; something that I clearly am not. Despite my protestations to the contrary, my attempts to put you straight, you've continually ignored the context of my comments and taken my attack on US foreign policy as a blanket attack on the US as a whole. Nothing could be more wrong. My criticism of your president and his administration, and on certain representatives of your nation did not constitute criticism of the US and its people, a country which I both know better than any other outside of the UK, and love. For what it's worth, every nation has a reputation at odds with its reality, but all are based upon some element of truth. The UK's reputation in certain parts of Europe is as a country of drunken thugs. That may be true of a tiny minority, but it does a dis-service to the rest of us, yet we don't walk around with a chip on our shoulder attempting to argue to people we don't know that we're not like that. We leave it for people to judge us upon ourselves. The other thing I'm not entirely clear upon is your comments about knowing what its like to live in an occupied country. I suspect this alludes to your forefathers who as Native Americans, fought bloody battles with the English, Spanish and everyone else with a claim in US soil but again, that smacks of desperation. We can all make that claim if we want to live in the past - My people have been invaded - first by the Roman armies, and latterly, in 1066 by the bloody Normans. I might as well claim that I too know what it's like to live under occupation, for all the relevance that fact has. If you really want to know what living under occupation feels like, talk to my grandmother (your husband has her number), who as a Wallonian, lived in German occupied Brussels throughout World War II. She travelled to work on buses where men were taken off at random and executed in the street by German soldiers as retaliation for attacks by the resistance. That's living under occupation - not some wooly claim about ancestors who are long since dead. But then as a long-established nation with a rich history behind us, we don't feel the need to reinforce our identity through living in the past - there's more of a future in looking forwards. I didn't intend to say anything further on this issue, but then I didn't realise you were going to continue to insuate that I harbour a dislike of all Americans on your own blog. There's little point in me carrying on trying to convince you otherwise, since you clearly have no intention of being objective and listening to what I have to say, so consider this my last word on the matter.

(29.4.04 16:23) "The UK's reputation in certain parts of Europe is as a country of drunken thugs. That may be true of a tiny minority, but it does a dis-service to the rest of us, yet we don't walk around with a chip on our shoulder attempting to argue to people we don't know that we're not like that. We leave it for people to judge us upon ourselves." Great example ratty.

Fred Schoeneman / Website (1.5.04 00:17) I think you made this up: "They act like they're God's gift to combat operations" complained one soldier to me, "Swanning around with weapons and equipment every bit as powerful as anything in our armoury, but without any of the legal framework that we have to work within. They're rude, aggressive and to be honest, their attitudes piss us guys off so I dread to think how the Iraqis view them". Was this an American soldier or or a British soldier? And if it was a British Soldier, as evidenced by his use of the word "swanning," then in what capacity was he working and where?

Robert Green / Website (1.5.04 04:10) very well written story, blackrat. as for the american aspect--i, as an american citizen who lived in England for years, understand one key element of this issue that seems to be ignored by many of my fellow Americans. Namely, that when you both HAVE and EXERCISE power over others, you are (quite rightly) judged on a different scale. The bully can be benevolent, or he can be chaotic and vindictive. In the case of Iraq, that bully (to extend the metaphor into infinity) has been both, as evidenced by this story. What isn't questioned from our side is that we indeed ARE a bully. Now, some on the neo-conservative side are honest enough to say "yes, the US should be the policeman of the world", but most just hem and haw and bullshit on this topic. One cannot be surprised that others in the schoolyard either don't like the bully, or only like him through fear. the most extraordinary thing i find in some (particularly right wing) attitudes towards the French in the US is that Chirac was merely reflecting the sentiments of his people in his actions towards the Iraq war. over and over, i ask such people--"what is a democratic leader supposed to do in such circumstances? Ignore his people? Spit in their eye?"--both for survival reasons (pace Aznar) or for fundamentally democratic ones. end ramble.

tcia11 (1.5.04 05:00) Getting back to the topic of mercs....no good can come of it. I shudder to think about all the things they are doing that we don't know about. Around the time of 4 murdered/burned mercs that set off the whole recent mess, someone (I think it was Rummy) said (again) " We WILL find WMD." Of course you will! Your mercs will find them for you! The involvement of mercenaries it inexcusable and as others have pointed out, of dubious legality. Shouldn't governments fight wars? How are the mercs different from terrorists? Does this melding of capitalism and war signal some kind fascist leanings in the US government? Or am I just paranoid? Mussolini said: "Fascism should more properly be called ‘corporatism,' since it is the marriage of government and corporate power." Maybe the only way to end this war if is everyone loses too much money. Slate & WSJ say Halliburton is losing $ in Iraq http://slate.msn.com/id/2099680/ More articles about fascism for anyone who is interested. Umberto Eco's 1995 Essay Eternal Fascism: Fourteen Ways of Looking at a Blackshirt http://www.themodernword.com/eco/eco_blackshirt.html Ornicus' (journalist David Neiwart) treatise on fascism and the people who 'transmit' it (like Rush Limbaugh-- http://www.cursor.org/stories/fascismintroduction.php "Fascism Anyone?" Study by political scientist Dr. Lawrence Britt http://www.secularhumanism.org/library/fi/britt_23_2.htm The quick 'illustrated' version http://www.oldamericancentury.org/14pts.htm And btw, agree with what you've written about being anti-American foreign policy is NOT equivalent to being anti-American. That's the same tripe that the Bushies use. Anyone who doesn't agree is a 'traitor' or 'unpatriotic'.

(1.5.04 19:04) Fred: What difference does it make as to the guy's nationality? I included his quote because it's representative of the feelings of so many of the soldiers I spoke to out there and the guy I interviewed was so vocal in his criticism. To be honest, as I said in the article, I had no feelings about the issue of close protection either way before I went, but this soldier's quote was instrumental in inspiring me to write the story. Robert: Thanks for the compliment - and I might add, your own comment. Good points well made, and I'm in total agreement. Tcia 11: Thanks for your comments - again, some interesting and valid points made. If I were a cynic, I'd say there's almost no difference between a mercenary and a terrorist except that the terrorist generally fights for a cause he believes in. And nice to see someone else who can idenitfy my anti-Bush/questionable foreign policy criticisms as exactly that without my needing to draw a map citing my pro American people credentials.

(30.9.04 10:37) According to an article in The Independent newspaper on June 6th, Britain's Foreign Office was paying £1m a week for private bodyguards to protect its diplomats in Iraq.  Ministers tripled their spending on personal security after advisers said staff in Iraq were at even greater risk of being targeted by insurgents and al-Qa'ida forces in the run-up to 30 June. The two British Close Protection officers killed in Iraq in May worked for Control Risks and ArmorGroup - the two firms earning that £1m a week courtesy of the Foreign Office. One was a former British soldier hired by Control Risks to protect FCO diplomats and its contractors. Mark Carman, 38, was killed alongside my associate Bob Morgan, the 63-year-old oil expert from Merthyr Tydfil coaxed out of retirement by the FCO to work in Iraq, in a rocket attack outside the coalition's headquarters on 24 May. Six days earlier, an ArmorGroup employee, Andrew Harries, 34, from Aberdare, was shot dead by a sniper when his convoy was attacked near Mosul, northern Iraq. Both Control Risks and Armor Group, which have been working for the FCO in Iraq since July last 2003 were awarded short-term contracts worth £8.2m just for bodyguards and security staff to cover the period May and June this year - staff mainly drawn from former members of the British Army, SAS and Royal Marines. The money funded the provision of specialist personal bodyguards for the FCO's 180 diplomats and junior staff, private security advisers and static guards at its offices in cities such as Baghdad and Basra. That £1m a week bill is roughly three times the value of the previous contracts with Control Risks and ArmorGroup, which added up to more than £14m for the nine months between July last year and April 2004. The UK's Department for International Development (DFID) spent another £9m hiring bodyguards. Its spending leapt again from 1 July when the coalition ceded power to the Iraqi interim administration. The FCO has since taken over all the government private security contracts for Iraq, signing longer term deals. Interestingly, that same month, a little-known company run by Lt Col Tim Spicer - the former Guards officer at the centre of the "arms to Sierra Leone" scandal in 1999 - won a £280m deal with the Pentagon to provide security staff in Iraq. The new contract awarded to Lt Col Spicer's firm, Aegis Defence Services, surprised other private military companies in part because it beat off competition from much larger US and UK firms - reportedly including Control Risks. One industry is reported as having said, "Aegis is a relatively small and unknown company and to pull off a contract like this in the face of stiff - largely American - competition is remarkable." You might recall that Lt. Col. Spicer played a pivotal role in the Sandline Affair, when his firm attempted to fly in weapons to aid the exiled Sierra Leonian government led by Ahmad Tejan Kabbah - in breach of a UN arms embargo. The then Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook, had to fight off allegations the deal was sanctioned by British officials. In 1996, Lt Col Spicer and a mercenary force he was leading was arrested at gunpoint in Papua New Guinea.

Fred Schoeneman / Website (2.12.04 03:05) Blackrat, In a comment above, I expressed some doubt about the veracity of a soldier you quoted -- a soldier who used british slang instead of American. You replied: Fred: What difference does it make as to the guy's nationality? I included his quote because it's representative of the feelings of so many of the soldiers I spoke to out there and the guy I interviewed was so vocal in his criticism. To be honest, as I said in the article, I had no feelings about the issue of close protection either way before I went, but this soldier's quote was instrumental in inspiring me to write the story. It's a matter of professionalism, actually. It's a matter of doing it right. If you're going to quote someone and put that quote inside "quotation marks," then as a journalist -- accidental or otherwise -- you ought to make sure those are the source's exact words. Unfortunately, attributing the word "swanning" to an American, when swanning isn't American slang, immediately marks you as a fabricator. Unless you're arguing that the British Army was in Baghdad at the time you wrote this? Is that what you're arguing? Because it was my understanding that most of the British Army was in Basra. So if this was a British soldier, in Baghdad, hanging out with the Coalition Provisional Authority at around that time, and who came in day-to-day contact with Bremer's irritating bodyguards, then I apologize. Now, I understand that you have confidentiality issues, and that you don't want to give up the name of your source. Perhaps you remember which unit he belonged to? You may have successfully expressed the larger sentiment of your source, and I'm willing to take your word that you're not just some jackoff who manufactures quotes to get laid. I prefer to take a less dim view, and assume that you're simply ignorant of basic journalistic practice. In any case, I encourage you to fix your quote. Fred Schoeneman p.s. -- I know some of the people who work for PMF's and PMC's. They're good people, for the most part, though rough around the edges. But it's their job, and they do it better than the military can do it, so just chill.

(7.12.04 19:56) Fred: You're reading between the lines with your assumption that the soldier I quoted was American. Perhaps as an American yourself, that's understandable. For the record, you are wrong on two counts; that (1)the British army weren't in Baghdad, and that (2) my quote was uttered by an American. He wasn't - he was an English soldier serving with the Parachute Regiment who were deployed to Baghdad as Force Protection. Given the sensitive nature of their deployment and the low profile they had adopted (it was not common knowledge in the UK that the Paras were in Baghdad at the time), I gave him a promise that I would protect his identity and I will continue to abide by that promise. Very noble of you to apologise, although having offered it up, you then go on to accuse me of being ignorant of journalistic practice and encourage me to 'fix my quote. Asa bona fide member of the British press, if I need to take advice on good practice in journalsim, rest assured I will consult my editors or one of the professional bodies that oversee standards in this country - not an American blogger.

(7.12.04 20:11) Fred: Given your obvious intelligence, you do yourself a disservice making ill-formed assumptions about me; all you needed to do was ask - there was no need to gild the lily by casting aspersions on my professional standards. Funnily enough, I included the quote in article that the blog entry was drawn from and which has been published in several defence magazines and a number of newspapers here and abroad. Not one editor or sub saw it necessary to qualify that quote with a name or unit, far less the source's nationality. BTW, for what it's worth, I too know a number of people working in Iraq as PMCs and I agree with you, for the most part they are good people doing a professional job. The issue is not with them; it's with the politics of using them to the extent that both the British and U.S governments are. That is indicative of a sea-change in political and societal acceptance. It might be acceptable to politicians, but the feeling isn't shared by many of those who vote for them.

Fred Schoeneman / Website (8.12.04 23:31) Blackrat, By your own admission, you do not stand by the quote as the source's exact words. Putting it in "quotations," then, is wrong, and you're only going to make yourself look worse if you continue swanning down this particular road. And yes, I encourage you to consult with your professional associations, there's no reason you should take the word of some (dirty, ignorant, whatever) American blogger. And if none of your editors or publishers saw fit to challenge your quote, perhaps it's because they, too, don't know the difference between British and American slang. While I'm quite sure there was some number of British soldiers in Baghdad, I find it difficult to believe they were in such constant contact with Bremer's security detail that one of them would feel qualified to hold the opinion you quoted. Or, as you are suggesting, was the Parachute Regiment doing "force protection" outside of the CPA offices, because the Americans weren't skilled enough for the job or something?

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