Iraq - How Much More Needs To Break?

Via the International Herald Tribune, AP informs us that the African nation of Namibia has just ordered the deportation of two American citizens working for a private security (mercenary) firm in Iraq. The two are apparently being deported for trying to recruit Namibians supposedly to work as guards in Iraq.

The Namibian Cabinet has also recommended that the local office of the company be closed down.

The company had aimed to recruit at least 3,000 Namibians to work in Iraq and Afghanistan through a local employment agency, with promised salaries of US$1,000 a month, local newspapers reported. It is not clear whether anyone had been recruited yet.

A lousy grand a month? These people are being hired to step into a meatgrinder, shot to death or blown up. Shouldn't their lives be worth at least at much as Blackwater's or any other mercenary's white U.S. employees?

Local media quoted Grimes as saying the company had the blessing of the country's labor and safety and security ministries. "We are looking for noncombatant security guards to guard dining facilities, gyms, military base hospitals in Iraq," Grimes was quoted as saying in one newspaper.

Given that the Green Zone is being shelled daily, I daresay they're in just as much danger disirregardless of what they're supposedly guarding. And why the fuck do dining facilities, gyms, and military base hospitals need guarding? Who from? Can't the military guard itself?

... Last week, [Namibian Information Minister] Nandi-Ndaitwah warned citizens that they risked prosecution if they were recruited by the company.

The sooner all nations giving shelter and facilities to these mercenaries realize that they can be prosecuted for complicity in war crimes, the better. They need to be put out of business. For more information about some of the mercenaries' crimes, go here. Or here. Hell, here's the pertinent piece:

In video shot shortly after the episode, the child appeared to have burned to the mother's body after the car caught fire, according to an official who saw it.

What kind of people do this? Open fire on unarmed civilians, a mother and an infant child? Not in my name, you filthy shits. If this is how you defend my freedoms, just fuck off. I'd rather not be free than have to live with the mental picture of a small child burned to its mother's body.

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