Blackwater: global mercenary network

Blackwater was founded in 1997 by Erik Prince and Clark in the American state of North Carolina in 1997. It, perhaps, is the world's largest network that trains 40,000 mercenaries a year, mostly from the US or foreign military and police personnel. It was assigned military assignments by the Bush Administration in Iraq, when the name Blackwater became synonymous with torture and murder of Iraqi citizens. Its training consists of military offensive and defensive operations under the tag of a private security agency. It has nine business units spread over the world. Its Aviation Worldwide Services (AWS) provide services to the CIA, and its aircrafts have also been used in CIA's "extraordinary rendition" escapades.
Blackwater first came to notice in 2003, when it received a dollar nine million 'no bid' contract from the US administration for guarding L Paul Bremer, nicknamed Jerry Bremer, as Washington's head of the 'Coalition Provisional Authority' in Baghdad. Within few months, Blackwater drew much notoriety over the trigger-happy killer instinct of its guards who indulged in wanton killing of unarmed civilians without any respect for human rights/international law. The public anger was exhibited on March 31, 2004, when four Blackwater mercenaries were ambushed and killed and their charred bodies were hanged over the Euphrates Bridge.
It is evident from the published reports that since June 2004, Blackwater had been paid more than $320 million out of a $1 billion budgetary grant for five years by State Department for protecting US and foreign officials in the war zone. It had also been granted a contract to protect the US Embassy staff in Baghdad. And to augment its so-called security measures, Blackwater drew contractors from its international pool of professional mercenaries to commit war crimes without being accountable to the Geneva Conventions and International Criminal Court (ICC). It was estimated by the Pentagon and the company reps that there were 20 to 30 thousand lethally armed security contractors working in Iraq who had no locus standi.
It seems Washington is less inclined to oppose a war that is being fought by hired mercenaries, even when public money is being squandered to fund it. "The increasing use of contractors, private forces, or some mercenaries makes wars easier to start and to fight; it just takes money and not the citizenry," said Michael Ratner of New York's Centre for Constitutional Rights. He reasoned that the growing use of private armies not only subjects target populations to savage warfare, but makes it easier for an invading country to subvert domestic public opinion against wars.
In fact, the Pentagon had learned the perils of conscription from the massive public resistance it provoked during the Vietnam War. Presently, it prefers and is working towards an electronic battlefield where the fighting would be done by robots guided by highly sophisticated surveillance system that would minimise the US casualties. In addition, it has deployed the mercenary contactors to help fight its battles.
Iraq offers an extremely distressing example of a war in which contract fighters so inflamed the Iraqis they were supposedly sent to 'liberate'. The hate-killing of four Blackwater mercenaries and desecration of their dead bodies was globally televised to give US an excuse to make a punishing retaliatory military assault that caused widespread death and destruction. Just as the Americans despised the German Hessian mercenaries during the Revolutionary War, Iraqis came to hate Blackwater and its kindred contractors worse than the American soldiers. The Blackwater mercenaries knew that they were looked upon as evil thugs, and they wanted to keep it that way. They never spoke to anyone using words and only used the language of absolutely brute force. The people of Iraq were outraged by the mere idea that a global superpower like the US would hire mercenaries to do their unpleasant work instead of employing their own soldiers who believed in their country and its mission.