[mburbank]

Well, dubya says we have plenty of troops for Iraq and Katrina. So, he's lying or no one told him we hired Blackwater.

Seriously, these private security firms scare the crap out of me. Yes, it says on their website they 'train police', but the main thing they do is hire out paramilitary to foreign wars. This is not a war, it's disaster relief. And I really, really don't like the idea of the government sending private soldiers into US cities. It's a precedent I don't like seeing.

As we've already found out in Iraq, private contractors, even when involved in activities like fighting and interrogating, are not required to answer to the same rules as soldiers. The US army has done some fairly shady stuff in the last couple of years and hs been less than accountable, but that's different than not accountable at all. File a Freedom of Information Act query and the army and govt. can stall you to the best of their abilities, but Blackwater does not have any obligation to respond. They don't have to tell you who's there, they don't have to tell you what they are there for, they don't have to tell you who hired them.

And if we truly need them there, then it's a load of crap that the war in Iraq and the gaurd members over there and their equipment that's over there haven't affected our ability to respond to catastrophes. If privtae paramilitaries are part of our homeland security strategy, that needs to be on the table so voters know.