CIA hired Blackwater contractors to try to hit al-Qaida

It's not the stuff about the CIA that gets into the news that you need to worry about...it's the stuff you never hear about that is the greatest danger...

Looks like Blackwater has been an ultimate failure from the beginning. Everything they touched either seemed to fail or they murder innocents. < :-)

I don't see any real problem with this. Despite their questionable recruiting standards (they tried to recruit a former colleague of mine who was passed over numerous times for promotion), it has to be remembered that the core of Blackwater is, or at least was, comprised of former members of some of the world's premier special forces military units. Indeed, having these gun-happy souls search for OBL sounds a much better deal than putting them on the streets of Baghdad.

Timorborder,

I couldn't disagree more. Perhaps the people are the same (as in, former U.S. military), but the standards of conduct are not. Not even a little bit. Blackwater mercs are not held to the same standards of combat, the code of conduct or the UCMJ.

More importantly, the support structure is nowhere near what exists for the uniformed services. Blackwater has no Warrior Transition Unit (which is the greatest thing the U.S. Army has ever done, in my personal opinion)to help their mercs decompress from the stress they dealt with.

Those mercs have nowhere near the support services that the military has to cope with the stress of non-conventional warfare. For that matter, the U.S. military has a long row to hoe. But...they HAVE made huge strides in that regard.

Lastly, what's blackwater going to do when one of their own flips out on the freeway after coming back from Iraq? They'll fire him. That's it.

Using mercs was another in a long line of failures to engage brain before throwing money at political donors by the last administration.

Taka

I don't have any problem with the program. It's Al Queda, after all.

adaydream: Looks like Blackwater has been an ultimate failure from the beginning.

I don't think Blackwater has ever lost a client under their protection? But then again I'm talking to daydream, who often just makes stuff up because he likes the way it sounds.

Sounds like a good program. Nobody goes into blackwater expecting to sit on their arse and this lets the U.S bypass quite a bit of red tape.

I believe the central issue here was the approval of assasinations. Since the Ford administration these had been outlawed.

However, when you drop a 2,000 pound bomb on a house because you KNOW that a person you are loking for is there, how is that different from when a sniper shoots him right between the eyes from 2,000 yards out? The answer of course is collateral damage, but the result is the exact same, the targeted person is assasinated.

I would prefer to use the sniper and the smaller elite crews on the ground, because there would be 0 collateral damage. Predator drone strikes in Pakistan have become the M.O. for assasinations. The fact that the US is not acknowledging those attacks makes them look like terrorists in the eyes of Pakistani or other local people. That will result in a lot of ill will or generations to come.

Good Ol Blackwater. God bless their little hearts. Killing for the government because the government just isn't that into it.

I wonder at what point the pointy heads in the previous admin realized that they were not in a Jerry Bruckheimer film where basically anything goes if you wrap the flag around it? The rule of law is a b!tch, but it is what separates free societies from the terrorists.

SuperLib we'll never know because they'll never tell.

Blackwater murdered their fair share of innocent Iraqi citizens at will and for intertainment. Sure there's a place for mercenaries. But Blackwater had a good ole time shooting innocents on several occasions. They are so proud of their reputation that they changed their name to "Xe".

I have a lot of problems with Al-Quaeda and the Taliban, but this article was about Blackwater's performance. < :-)

CIA cannot do their job by themselves? I guess they watch anime and play cosplay instead of doing their jobs while hiring real men to do the job.

The organization tasked with America's dirty work subcontracted out its dirty work? Must be pretty dirty.

LoveUSA:""CIA cannot do their job by themselves? I guess they watch anime and play cosplay instead of doing their jobs while hiring real men to do the job.""

Bang on, amigo!Often on the anime and cosplay sites I use I get the feeling the C.I.A. must be watching me.You too?

Well, anyways, all of this stupid cloak and dagger stuff is finished now that Barack Obama is in the White House.Good riddance, I say.Blackwater will just have to go back to Texas if you know what I mean.