Iraq: 5 British ‘hired guns’ abducted

Five British ‘security contractors’ were abducted by persons unknown in Baghdad today. This comes after the May 12 incident in Mahmoudiyah in which three US soldiers were abducted. (The body of one member of this latter group was found later.)
The apparent increase in the use of abductions of members of western fighting formations in Iraq is significant. For the anti-western insurgents, killing members of the occupying forces (and their ‘privately’ organized sidekicks) is much simpler. To do an abduction you need a larger ambushing/assault force, a get-away plan, and a relatively extensive safe area to retreat to.
The pro-western forces in Iraq must be losing control of significant swathes of land, if these assailants can undertake these abductions and then simply melt away into the landscape.
Plus, these assailants either had access to huge quantities of Iraqi police materiel, or themselves included a large number of police officers.
That Reuters report notes these details about today’s abductions, which took place in an Iraqi Finance Ministry building not far from Sadr City:

    A ministry official who witnessed the kidnapping said it took place as several computer experts gave a lecture on organizing electronic contracts.
    The gunmen entered the room led by a man wearing a police major’s uniform, the official said.
    The gunmen shouted, “Where are the foreigners, where are the foreigners?” she said.
    Police said gunmen in a large convoy of vehicles, typically used by police, had sealed off streets round the building.
    It was the first reported kidnapping of foreigners since the Baghdad security plan began in mid-February and the first time Westerners had been taken from inside a government building.

Ten US soldiers were killed in Iraq today, bringing the month’s total so far to 114.
It is urgently time for the UN to convene an authoritative international peace conference at which all parties to the bloodshed in Iraq will negotiate the speedy, orderly, and complete withdrawal of all foreign fighting units from the country and the restoration of its true sovereignty.
In addition, surely all governments should reach agreement on making it illegal for their nationals to travel around the world as ‘guns for hire.’

13 thoughts on “Iraq: 5 British ‘hired guns’ abducted”

  1. It seems that despite the “surge” the insurgency is gaining ground. The attack on a US forward outpost and abduction followed by this adbduction of British mercenaries shows that the insurgents are now planning and executing sophisticated attacks with platoon size forces. How long before they orchestrate an attack on a military base overrunning that fortified location?
    Clearly the US will have to withdraw at some point. Why does this Administration and the Republican and Democratic congressmen have to wait until the situation becomes like the last helicopter leaving Saigon?

  2. Helena,
    It is urgently time for the UN to convene an authoritative international peace conference at which all parties to the bloodshed in Iraq will negotiate the speedy, orderly, and complete withdrawal of all foreign fighting units from the country and the restoration of its true sovereignty.
    Thanks well put and agreed.
    BTW, some news said those five Brits are 4 bogy guards and one Britt civilian (financial advisor / given presentation) in the Iraqi ministry of finance.
    Also reported five Germen abducted but not confirmed yet.

  3. It is four security guards who were protecting their principal. Who the principal is hasn’t been revealed. Possibly a British diplomat.
    The British government reacted in the same way the other day when several Brit diplomats were kidnapped in Ethiopia on the Eritrean border: they refused to say who the diplomats were although it was obvious they were diplomats. The refusal seemed perverse then; it’s just confusing the picture here.

  5. I’ve always objected to the use of “contractor,” as a euphemism for hired-gun, dogs-of-war mercenaries — or “contemporary Hessians,” as I more honestly like to call them. The way I view matters quasi-military: if a man drives a truck and has a license to operate a motor vehicle, I call him a contractor; if he carries a gun and has a license to kill, I call him a mercenary. To paraphrase George Orwell, clear language (and the thinking it makes possible) has no greater enemy than insincerity. So, whenever I hear Orwellian euphemisms from my government and its military (and I hear little else from them) I suspect lying consciously concocted to deliberately deceive me, if not simply to keep in practice. (What I like to call Manufactured Mendacity and Managed Mystification.)
    And for those who feel compelled to place modifiers like “true,” or “partial,” etc., in front of superlative words like “sovereignty” or “virginity,” I suspect unclarity or insincerity regarding the basic concept covered by the respective noun. If America had indeed transferred “sovereignty” to the Iraqi people years ago when announced, no American military force would now occupy Iraq and no American government would now arrogantly presume to issue “benchmarks” to its hapless “partially sovereign” puppets running between buildings wearing helmets and flak-jackets inside the “secure” Baghdad Green Zone Castle.
    Ditto regarding the semantic evisceration of meaning through the transmutation of superlative adjectives like “vital” into adverbs like “vitally.” “Vital” used to mean “a mater of life and death” (like oxygen and water). Hence, nothing exceeds in importance things labeld “vital.” Therefore, calling something “vitally important” amounts to a useless redundancy, and thus calling Vietnam and Iraq “vital” or “vitally important” to America’s security means that America would die (or could not go on living) “without” whatever one means by “Vietnam” and “Iraq” — clearly an absurdity.
    As Confucius once said, the previous dynasty in its last, decaying days usually corrupts the language so thoroughly that any new government needs first to “rectify the names” so as “to make language in accord with the truth of things.” Absent such a program of linguistic clarification, he said, no government could even begin to carry its legitimate affairs through to completion. And here in the last gasping throes of the late great American Republic, no project more desperately needs implementing (before we can form a new type of government) than the rectification of English words now grown pathologically Orwellian: which means completely divorced from reality and the truth of things. If we citizens cannot speak, write, and think clearly about our government and its activities because we lack the linguistic means to do so, then we have no means of holding our shizophrenic Lunatic Leviathan accountable — precisely the contemporary semantic crisis that our government has assiduously worked to create, foster, and maintain to its advantage and our detriment.

  6. Frankly I have not he slightest sympathy for these mercenaries.
    They went to Iraq to make big bucks from the plunder of that nation’s people and reasources.
    What goes around sometimes comes around.

  8. It is easy to underestimate the importance that the occupation of Iraq has on the economy of a coutnry like the UK: these mercenaries are part of a huge army of expatriates making fat livings from the oil industry in Arabia, the occupation of Iraq and, of course, the furnishing of arms, munitions and training to all concerned. My guess is that the money British firms and individuals receive from this business far exceeds the cost of the occupation force. There is no doubt that a, largely unstated, reason for Britain’s willingness to coalesce was the anticipation of profits. The current situation is far from being as cozy as Blair and his freinds had anticipated (the famous Baghdad Bounce of legend) but it still has a very silvery underside for ex-Army types and truck drivers ready to gamble. Together with the vast company of intellectuals and scribblers making a living out of Islamophobia and terror related industries they, their dependants and those who invest in them constitute one of the most dynamic sectors of the economy.
    I mourn the death and lament the pain of any man but these kidnappings do constitute a disincentive to taking part in this disgraceful trade which is completely unregulated by law.

  9. What I find amusing about these stories is the ubiquitous description of the perpetrators as “gunmen in police uniforms” or “gunmen in Iraqi Army uniforms” or the like. Have these reporters noticed all the “gunmen in U.S. Army uniforms” wreaking havoc throughout the land?

  10. It looks like “bevin” and I are soulmates, except about money.
    As a financial advisor, I shouldn’t choose to engage anybody who supposes that the Poodlestan of Mr. Blair has made a killing in the aggression market thanks to “Britain’s willingness to coalesce.”
    I’d really like to see the bottom line that props up that claim, spreadsheetwise. Tony talks to Ms. Windsor: “Here at Point X, Your Majesty, is where we would have been financially, had we not collaborated with the aggressors. Over here, at Point Y, is where we stand now, having collaborated. Can’t you see the difference, ma’am?”
    But God knows best. Happy days.

  11. The suprising thing about statesmen is not all their secrets that they manage to keep but all their misdeeds that they meticulously record. As if we will someday be impressed.
    I guess a lot of chats could have been had at the palace over the last few years:
    “What, there’s oil there, just like Churchill said nearly a century ago?” http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/oil/2003/0425byzantine.htm
    “What no WMD after all? But you had incontravetable evidence Tony”
    “I’m confused Tony, why are the americans builidng permanent bases, if they dont expect to stay permanently?”
    “Will my grandson be safe?”
    “Well Ma’am I must advise that am really not certain.”
    All reasonable, but I bet only one of the above was said. Both Tony and the Windsors know how the army and armaments business community feels without looking at a spreadsheet to find out.

    To belive that UK/US politicians believe their own propanda is harder to believe than the idea that Martians shot down the WTC with lasers.

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