{"id":666,"date":"2004-03-31T19:19:03","date_gmt":"2004-04-01T02:19:03","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2004-03-31T19:19:03","modified_gmt":"2004-04-01T02:19:03","slug":"american-mercenaries-killed-in-fallujah","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2004\/03\/31\/american-mercenaries-killed-in-fallujah\/","title":{"rendered":"American Mercenaries killed in Fallujah"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.msnbc.msn.com\/id\/4551230\/\" target=\"_blank\">Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt said<\/a> at a briefing in Baghdad that it was not known what the coalition contractors were doing in Fallujah \u2014 apparently without a military escort \u2014 when the attack occurred.<\/p>\n<p>U.S. officials, who spoke with NBC News on condition of anonymity, said that <strong>all four contractors were Americans who worked for Blackwater USA of Moyock, N.C.<\/strong> The officials did not confirm reports from the scene that a woman was among the dead.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Blackwater USA supplies security guards to the Coalition Provisional Authority<\/strong> and has provided protection for Iraq administrator L. Paul Bremer, among other coalition officials. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>That would explain why some Iraqis reported that dog tags were removed from some of the corpses.  <a href=\"http:\/\/www.alternet.org\/story.html?StoryID=18193\" target=\"_blank\">These people<\/a> were not &#8220;civilians&#8221; or &#8220;contractors.&#8221;  They were <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theage.com.au\/articles\/2004\/03\/05\/1078464637030.html?from=storyrhs\" target=\"_blank\">private troops hired by the CPA &#8211; mercenaries.<\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The US is hiring mercenaries in Chile to replace<br \/>\nits soldiers on security duty in Iraq. A Pentagon contractor has<br \/>\nbegun recruiting former commandos, other soldiers and seamen,<br \/>\npaying them up to US$4000 a month to guard oil wells. Last month<br \/>\nBlackwater USA flew about 60 former commandos from Santiago to a<br \/>\ntraining camp in North Carolina. Many of them had trained under<br \/>\nthe military government of Augusto Pinochet.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/international\/story\/0,3604,1162392,00.html\" target=\"_blank\">The Guardian March 24, 2004<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><small><i><\/p>\n<p align=\"right\"><a href=\"http:\/\/ancapistan.typepad.com\/unfairwitness\/2004\/03\/american_mercen.html\" target=\"_blank\">Crossposted at UnFairWitness<\/a><\/p>\n<p><\/i><\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt said at a briefing in Baghdad that it was not known what the coalition contractors were doing in Fallujah \u2014 apparently without a military escort \u2014 when the attack occurred. U.S. officials, who spoke with NBC News on condition of anonymity, said that all four contractors were Americans who worked for [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[676],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-666","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-antiwar-movement"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/666","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=666"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/666\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=666"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=666"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=666"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=666"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}