[Skybird]

any special issue or event here? Blackwater is a known thing, it has been mentioned here before, and yes, it has a bad reputations of employing many trigger-happies, and yes, they are mercenaries and compare directly to the Italian condottieri in the 15th and 16th century. Bellum se ipse alet - war feeds itself. This warning of an amok-going soldateska one should not forget when one is putting the operational organisation and execution of war or war-like or war-supporting acts into the hands of private enterprises that live and make their income not from peace, but from ongoing war. There is a reason why in europe i the time after the Thirty Years War, private army-enterprises (mercenary enterprises) more and more were replaced by nation-owned, nation-run standing armies (to whom they proved to be inferior during the franco-Italian wars anyway, they were no match for the determined French attacking). They have massively interferred with politics, too, and sometimes turned against the hand that fed them. The new war-contractors like Blackwater are no step into the future, but several giant leaps back into a barbaric past. cost efficiency is the most weakest of arguments here, and what you save in money in the immediate present, will be presented to you in a culture-threatening long-time bill multiple times as high.