Mercenaries still in Iraq

This video from the USA is called Mercenaries Made At Least $85 BILLION From Iraq War.

By Tom Mellen:

Mercenaries may stay beyond 2011

Thursday 13 January 2011

US Vice-President Joe Biden visited Iraq today to discuss the future of the US presence in the war-torn country.

Some 47,000 US troops are still deployed in Iraq, as well as around 3,000 Western mercenaries or “private security contractors.”

The US troops are scheduled to leave by the end of the year under the terms of the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) negotiated between then-US president George W Bush and Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki in 2008.

But the mercenaries are not bound by the agreement and the US intends to ramp up their number as the soldiers go home. …

The Obama administration intends to maintain control of several key military bases and a significant portion of Baghdad’s Green Zone.

The bases house a force of about 8,000 mercenaries.

Ongoing negotiations between the US and Iraq will determine the exact number of contractors and bases as well as the number of US soldiers that will stay in the oil-rich country to train Iraqi forces.

Veterans of the first Gulf war are facing poverty and illness due to government cuts to war pensions and benefits, a charity warned today: here.

Britain: Peace activists will be blockading a US military base from midnight tonight. The Campaign for Accountability of American Bases activists are seeking to expose the role of the “intelligence-gathering base” in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars: here.

Ann Jones, TomDispatch: “Most hot wars of recent memory, little and big, have been resolved or nudged into remission through what is called a power-sharing agreement. The big men from most or all of the warring parties – and war is basically a guy thing, in case you hadn’t noticed – shoulder in to the negotiating table and carve up a country’s or region’s military, political, and financial pie. Then they proclaim the resulting deal ‘peace.’ But as I learned firsthand as an aid worker in one so-called post-conflict country after another, when the men in power stop shooting at each other, they often escalate the war against civilians – especially women and girls”: here.

An Iraqi soldier opened fire on US troops during a training exercise in Mosul on Saturday, killing two and injuring another: here.

Yesterday, two more American soldiers engaged in “non-combat activities” were shot to death in Iraq, and a third was wounded. They were killed by an Iraqi soldier who smuggled live ammunition into a training exercise and then turned his gun on his trainers: here.

Blackwater coming to Israel: here.

K.T. Cox, Truthout: “Muhammad Zahid Chaudhry, a decorated disabled American veteran, is the victim of a witch hunt that has been ongoing since the 9/11 attacks. Chaudhry is being deported to Pakistan, where he will ‘inevitably be murdered by the Taliban for his service in the US Army,’ says Seth Manzel, executive director of G.I. Voice. Chaudhry came to the US legally over 13 years ago and has been married to a native-born citizen for nearly ten years. The suit Chaudhry and his wife filed against the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) in US district court to press for his citizenship was dismissed on October 26, 2010, on summary judgement, without any trial or opportunity to further present their circumstances”: here.

An appeals court Friday potentially revived the prosecution of four Blackwater Worldwide security guards accused of killing 14 Iraqis in a controversial shooting in a busy Baghdad square more than three years ago: here.