You Rock!! Excellent post (as ususal).

It is not just Koz. "Merc" seems to be the buzzword of the day.

These guys were security for food and supply convoys for the Iraqi people. A mercenary is one that hires his gun to attack and conquer. These were no mercenaries.

They may have been on the edge of "hotdog" types by running their ops the way they did (no clearance from the Corps, CPA not having knowledge of their whereabouts, etc.) but it takes that type of attitude to get the job done over there. This type of attitude is a good thing not a negative unless you are a Corps Commander in their area of operation! ;-)

JMHO.

"The reader will kindly forgive any tendency to rough language or bahavior on the part of the site owner. "Good people sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf."

I seem to agree with your positions, but if you're going to rag on someone's spelling, you need to proof read your own stuff

Bill
I stand corrected, thanks. However, I wasn't ragging on spelling. "Sic" was used to indicate the original spelling from Kos, scare quotes were used because "mercenaries" is the wrong term.

600 a week? 1800 bucks a month, for blog ads? I'd bet Kos would make a wav file of "God Bless America" to play when you enter his site for that money.

I see Jane Mitakides for Congress from Ohio is still advertising there. Her district, Ohio 3, is the one surrounding Wright Patt Air Force Base. Spread the word.

I applaud the 3 Democratic congressmen who did pull their ad from the shameful Daily Kos blog. They are true Americans. Of the 4 candidates only JANE MITAKIDES of OHIO still has an ad on Daily Kos. I sent her an e-mail, like many others. I think we can now safely say she knows about Kos despicable remarks about how the 4 American contractors who died in Falluja deserved to die and she supports his views. I think we should try to make sure this deadly, winking, sniggering, snuggling, chromium plated, scent-impregnated, luminous, quivering, giggling, fruit-flavored, America hating, blood thirsty piece of shit does not get elected. We must all help to defeat this sadistic woman. If you are in this despicable monkey’s constituency, please give us the website and e-mail of her opponent and of the local Republican party chapter. It is obvious this woman thinks that sticking with Daily Kos will get her elected. We must prove her and like minded people wrong. This is not a Republican partisan action. It is about being human and being loyal to fellow Americans who were gruesomely murdered and mutilated while they were guarding food transports to feed the good people of Iraq. We must honor their memory and do our duty in this War of Terror against America. Our duty is to make sure JANE MITAKIDES does not get elected and that the DAILY KOS blog disappears from the blogosphere. We must not falter or fail, because these two people have chosen to align themselves with the terrorists who killed 4 of our fellow Americans. get involved:
http://michael-friedman.com/archives/000311.html

Here is the opponent of Jane Mitakides. His name is Mike Turner.

http://www.house.gov/miketurner/

According to his (Kos') definition, the reporters that died covering the war would be 'mercenaries' too and deserved to die, right? Does that include any Al-Jazeera reporter that die, or are they 'innocent reporters covering an atrocity who got in the line of fire' like St. Pancake?

Re JarheadDad's comments, spec ops is a perfect example of "hot dogging" - a lotta their operations, such as ODA 2025 raiding a Taliban bombmaking cell (as recounted in the 5/04 issue of Soldier of Fortune), wouldn't come off with decision-making and initiative from the ground.

Koz: "They're doing their best to turn me into the devil, and they're making racist comments about my heritage and family and threatening to kick my ass -- you know, typical right-wing shit."

Nevermind the dead people he pissed on....KOZ IS THE REAL VICTIM!

I am going to repeat here a post I originally made on Tom Blair's blog. I wrote it in response to someone who said that, honestly, they didn't feel the outrage everyone else did about Fallujah; they also made the comment that 100,000 people die ever day and they don't feel saddened. I am repeating my post because (a) I can't think of a better way to express how I feel on this subject and (b) I want know if others feel the same way:

'I think the importance of the whole incident was not that they died, or, perhaps, even that they were civilians attacked for no good reason (honestly, what strategic advantage can really come to Fallujah residents from this?). What was important was what happened to the victims after they died: the ritualized robbery of all dignity one might be able to keep in death. The dragging, the beating, the hanging, and the dismembering of charred bodies in front of the cameras.

Sure, umpteen people get murdered every day, and, like you, I rarely feel something about it. Half of the ones I read about in the paper have a context that makes me think, "Well, they had it coming." You know, they were involved in a drug deal with people you could never trust anyway, or they were a physically abusive husband who turned his back one day, ot they were breaking into a house. Of course, their killers need to be pursued and tule of law upheld, but I'm not waiting by my TV to see it happen in most cases.

But every so often there is a killing which is so horrific that it indicates that we have a deeply disturbed, violent, and dangerous person in our midst. The killing might even be of an animal, not a human. In any case, what has clearly been done to the body by the killer -- some sort of mutilation, posing or other postmortem pleasure-taking -- raises one's adrenaline and gives everyone a sense of emergency: "Get whoever did this, and now!"

To not have this feeling after seeing what was done in Fallujah is creepy. To cheer it on is ever more disturbing. Likewise, the scenes of Palestinians cheering after 9/11 or the dragging in Somalia. It betrays a mentality reserved in this country for serial killers and other entities too horrible to tolerate.

Some weak analogies have been made to the killing of Uday and Qusay, but these are only superficially similar. In those cases, their killings had practical purposes (they were murderers who were trying to continue their careers), they were given chances to give up (and would surely be sitting well-fed in a jail now if they had), and it was important to prove to the Iraqis that they were dead. To equate the two acts would be to say that (a) these brothers were innocent and their deaths unworthy of some relief or even rejoicing and (b) the people who killed them and prepared the bodies for viewing made an effort to rob them of dignity and take pleasure in humiliating their victims. I did not see this at all, and moreover, if I were to see a video of a US soldier doing those sorts of things to the bodies of even two as horrific as those brothers, I would want them out of the service, and away from my neighborhood.

The fact that Kos cannot see the horror in what happened in Fallujah and even sympathizes with the residents is some real food for thought. The fact that one of his sposors, Jane Mitakides, still advertises there and thinks (I guess) that this'll all just blow over, is telling. The fact that this the Left's "blog poster child" and that, overall, what happened on 9/11 and in Fallujah is apparently is within the realm of acceptable behaviour in the Left (you know, if you had suffered the same "injustices" you'd do the same) is the core of my opposition to the Left.

Such behavior -- this pleasure in death, celebration of taking the dead's dignity, and targeting those who can provide the easiest access to blood -- cannot stand, it cannot be tolerated, supported, excused, ignored, or rationalized in any way other than as a psychological phenomenon. It is what makes terrorism terrorism, and we must fight it or run the risk of losing our own lives in the same undignified fashion.'

Brett:

Bingo. It's the behavior after the fact that defines the atrocity. These were, after all armed men, by definition they knew what they were doing could lead to their deaths. And they were being paid accordingly. Those are facts beyond dispute. It's the pictures and video that followed that separate the perpetrators from humanity.

By the way, those pictures, which the media displayed in admitted hopes of turning American public opinion against the war (see here: http://www.mudvillegazette.com/archives/000827.html) will likely have the opposite effect and galvanize public opinion in America, Iraq, and even the rest of the Arab world against the beasts that committed the crimes.

By the way, another thing Kos was dead wrong about: he referred to mercenaries as the second largest force in Iraq. (After the American military, we assume.)

The American military is the second largest member of the coalition of the willing.

Iraq is the largest.

This would not have as big as it has become if Kos had not first tried to cover up the deed, and then act like he's the victim.

Even though I am not a part of the Air Force (rather, I am a Cadet in the United States Army), I live almost right next to the Wright Patt Air Force base. Jane Mitakides will certainly be getting some messages from me about her support of Kos.

At the risk of being accused of attacking, in looking at the two Kos pictures, is he getting collagen shots to give his lips that rich, full, pouty look? I don't see it in the old shot.

Thanks for posting the contact info for Mitakides. I've sent an email.

Has anyone else had trouble calling up the DailyKos blog? When I type in the URL I get a blank page, without a message saying that the server can't locate the address.

Mercenaries dangle
ref. http://scari.org/irreverent_Irreverence.html

I'd like to return to the it in, you break it, you fix it

There is more to the story of the grisly mutilation of "Contract Workers." With some twenty to thirty-thousand soldiers of fortune in Iraq, Mercenaries from South Africa, France, England, Blackwater Security in the US and others from Zimbabwe, etc. there must be some tension between the notion of privatization of war and pacification. Hired guns are devoid of any notion of fair play, "We are just doing our job" is the same defense the Nazis used in Nuremberg Trials. There appears to be a conflict between work performance and the public good. Guns for hire are called "Contract Workers" and Mercernaries are not in Iraq and Halliburton works for us to do the public good. Dick Cheney, the draft dodger, has now turned war over to the corperate sphere; the externalities will be absorbed by the growth benefit, "Private Enterprise will provide a profitable means to the end."
http://scari.org/tragedy.html

Just what is the end? This exportation of Democracy feels like walking on fly paper. Sacrifice Democray here to get it in a place where it has never been so the forces of good can commute in aircondidioned 4WD, upwardly mobile smug comfort? –– Remember to support the troops. and follow the Money.

GOK