Rep. Jan Schakowsky Trying to Stop Blackwater War Profiteers

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AMY GOODMAN: How do you respond to those politicians who have said, to the private security firms, what many call “mercenary” firms, have said are -- these are highly trained people, often former Navy Seals, etc., that provide the kind of security that the US military cannot provide?

REP. JAN SCHAKOWSKY: Well, that’s a pretty serious condemnation of the US military, if we now have to rely on these private companies, some of which are actually skimming the most-trained people out of our military, offering them salaries that can’t be matched by the military. And that’s, by the way, creating a big morale problem among our uniformed servicemen and women who are also risking their lives and yet being paid a fraction of what these guards are being paid.

But, absolutely, we can have people of equal quality. But you know what? They also have people who worked under the Pinochet government when there were death squads, who formerly worked for Milosevic, or people who were graduates of the School of the Americas or pro-apartheid fighters from South Africa. These are often the people that populate these private military companies.

They're not all cowboys, but, you know, in fact, the four Blackwater employees who were killed in Fallujah were very skilled people. They should never have been sent on a mission by Blackwater that was doomed to failure from the beginning. And their killing in Fallujah changed the entire direction of the war in Iraq, helped promote and spark the insurgency there, created the battle of Fallujah, where twenty-seven Marines were killed. They are changing the mission. They’re changing it for the worse and endangering our troops, who, all of them, I think, should be out of Iraq. But these private companies are making it worse.

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