Private

Listeners to Democracy Now are aware of the role that mercenary troops are playing in the Iraq occupation.

We are of course talking about mercenaries working for the US. You weren't thinking working for the insurgency were you? No no.

Take a spin around the website of Blackwater to get a feel for it all yourself.

The use of mercenaries AKA a privatized army is one of those "remaking the military" projects that Rumsfeld and neo-con PNAC folk are so gung-ho about.

One of the advantages of a privatized army is that it bypasses all of the "democratic" values that the military ordinarily embraces.

Privatization of the military gets rid of some of those little subtle details like a need to follow the Geneva Conventions.

No need to uphold any of those folksy rules like upholding the constitution either.

Now our neo-con cohorts are proposing some additional privatizing features

Privatize the CIA

You read that correctly. This is from the American Enterprise Institute, another neo-con think tank.

I shudder to think of the possibilities this would produce.