Should any one be interested, Google Blackwater, and find out how big a force of Mercinary 'Christian' soldiers the US is deploying in Iraq and around the world.
One small account. There were 6 Blackwater Merc's deployed to protect a base where the US was holding a colonel of Al Sadr's militant wing, after ill-advisedly capturing him, outside Najar. The locals, both Shiite and Sunni, marched in protest to the holding site. Seems there were also 2 marines and 2 cooalition soldiers there too, and they all took defensive positions on the roof. Of course, the protesters had guns, everyfreakingbody does, and a few warning fireworkswere sent from the roof of the building. One marine(documented) had targeted a person in the crowd, but could not fire without an order. This marine was without a CO. The Blackwater CO granted permission, and between 20 and 200 were killed in the firefight.
This US Marine took a command from a non US military source.
There is a lot more.
Did you know that almost 100,000 contract soldiers are fighting in Iraq and elsewhere?
Oh, and these guys get paid 300 aday. The gov't pays 1000 a day for each. Seems Mr. Prince found more money than his dad make in Detroit, making lighted vanity mirrors for Fords.
Cheney got his wish all right.
See, when Cheney was SecDef under Bush1, his outgoing order was to look into contracting out all the military. Then he took over Haliburton.
Not related to what you said in general but me and my dad did some work for blackwater. That place is crazy. We couldn't actually go inside but we saw a little of it. All day long you could hear guns going off everywhere. What we saw was very interesting