There are at least 50,000 mercenaries are working in Iraq, making
them the second largest military force there after the occupying United
States.
The case of Iraq "is a new manifestation of the use of mercenaries that
has caught the US by surprise", Spain's Jose Luis Gomez del Prado, a
member of the UN working group on mercenaries, said Friday during a
visit to Peru. The United States has 130,000 soldiers in Iraq, he noted.
Britain has 10,000 troops.
Who Are They
Gomez del Prado told a news conference thousands of Peruvians,
Chileans, Colombians, Hondurans and Ecuadorans had been contracted to
work as mercenaries in Iraq, thanks to an array of legal loopholes.
What Do They Do
Gomez del Prado's Colombian colleague, Amada Guevara, told the news
conference that in some cases, workers were contracted by existing
companies who exploited legal loopholes. But in other cases, they were
taken on by ghost firms who arrived in a country, opened an office for a
month, contracted workers and then disappeared without trace.
Who Controls Them?
Bush and Blair let them roam free.
How Does It Work?
Cohen food catering gets a $100 million contract to supply US Army
bases. They hire mercenaries to guard convoys. Izzie Stein sends a truck
with a $100,000 merc from Peru to a local market to pick up dates, and
suddenly his truck goes boom. The family of Paco Mendilquez gets his two
week check of $3,600.
