Blackwater

Blackwater Security -- The Pentagon is running out of soldiers and has been forced to hire paid mercenaries it calls "security consultants". A major Pentagon contract is held by Blackwater USA out of Moyock, North Carolina. Blackwater Security Consulting, a company of Blackwater USA, has been hired to guard Iraqi oil wells against attack by insurgents.

Thousands of former soldiers and police officers from the US, Britain, Australia, South Africa and elsewhere are being paid up to $1,500 a day (many times a soldiers’ wage) to protect Western dignitaries, oil company executives and construction firm bosses in Iraq. Private security firms are also employing veterans of anti-insurgency conflicts in Colombia and Algeria, former soldiers who fought in the Russian government’s war in Chechnya and Chilean mercenaries trained during the brutal dictatorship of General Pinochet.