1. The fighting

2. The aid

3. The health care

4. The reconstruction

are all being carried out primarily by contractors, mercenaries if you will. Now these mercenaries know that the term "mercenary" leaves a bitter taste in the mouth of American citizens- so they have spent a lot of money on lobbyists. That's right the hired guns have engaged hired guns to change their image and erase the word mercenary from the American vocabulary. They tried re-branding on a massive scale so that companies like KBR, Blackwater, Triple Canopy, would become palatable to us. Nevertheless that mission failed because we all know what these contractors and corporations are, pure and simple, mercenaries without conscience.

We never really listened to President Eisenhower's warning on the military industrial complex, or his prediction of a New World Order. Under Bush & Cheney, Eisenhower's feared military industrial complex has warped into the perfect self-sustaining economy of disaster capitalism. A few examples: Lockheed Martin (who at one time had Lynn Cheney on it's board) earns money from the F-22 which drops bombs indiscriminately. Two other players on the team, IAP Worldwide Services Inc., and Health Net earn a profit by taking care of the wounded, both Iraqi & American Contractors. Then a lot of team players swoop in for the reconstruction dollars, to name a few we have Halliburton , CH2M Hill, ExxonMobil, Bechtel, CICA and many others.

As a matter of fact when the Cold War "ended" Lockheed began taking over IT divisions of the United States Government under the public radar. A report in the New York Times in 2004 said..."Lockheed Martin doesn't run the U.S.. But it does help run a breathtakingly big part of it... It sorts your mail and totals your taxes. It cuts Social Security checks & counts the census. It runs space flights & monitors air traffic. To make all that happen Lockheed writes more computer code than Microsoft."

Even more alarming to me is that eighteen months into our illegal occupation of Iraq the State Dept opened a new office that most of us have never heard of "The Office of Reconstruction & Stabilization". Which at any given time pays contractors to draw up detailed plans to reconstruct as many as 25 different countries that "may" at some point in time find themselves "the target of U.S. sponsored destruction." Which makes a lot of sense since the delusional George W. Bush has made statements to the effect that we have the undeniable right to cause unlimited (unwarranted) preemptive destruction anywhere we choose. What he failed to mention was that by year 3 of our illegal occupation there were over 48,000 private soldiers (mercenaries) from around the globe deployed in Iraq. These hired guns were the largest contingent of troops in country except for our American troops. In fact the mercenary population in the fighting totaled more than the combined forces deployed by "the coalition of the willing", combined.

Every wonder why Iraqi citizens get "free" health care while we have the biggest shit hole of a health care in the world? Because we pay for it! We pay taxes which pay Health Net & IAP huge sums of money. While most of the American public is just barely above water, the chosen people, the members of The Family, those who visit C Street often, reap huge profits. Why weren't the victims of Katrina offered at least the same level of reconstruction & medical care that the Iraqi's received? Well, one reason is that we can bomb the crap out of Iran again, setting the whole damn dumb show in action again. We can't very well openly bomb New Orleans. But there was huge disparity in the reconstruction of New Orleans between the haves and the have-nots. "Katrina was not unforeseeable. It was the result of a political structure that subcontracts its responsibilities to private contractors. And abdicates its responsibility altogether." Harry Belafonte. FEMA controlled gated trailer communities for the have nots, and Crystal Palace Gated Communities for the haves, protected by paid security. In fact another new industry popped up from the rubble of Katrina. Check out, Sandy Springs, Georgia (This city is a bold experiment in public/private partnership. Most services are being handled by the engineering and operations firm CH2M HIll OMI.)

This is a future that we are facing. It won't be long before Municipal Government in the U.S. will be touched by disaster capitalism, outsourcing police, fire, EMT's, utilities. An executive for Lockheed Martin has boasted on numerous occasions that what they've done on the streets of Baghdad & Falluja they can do for the police in downtown America. Another player in this game to privatize America is John Robb of Fast Company, who stated in a widely distributed manifesto ; "The end result of the War on Terror will be a new, more resilient approach to National Security. Built not around the State, but around private companies and citizens. Security will become based on where you live, who you work for..." he describes a system based not unlike our present health care system.

While huge sectors of our economy are failing, one is not, one is growing exponentially - the business of Security for Hire On a Global Scale- Companies will have private traveling security provided by companies like Triple Canopy, Blackwater, etc. There are many companies in existence today poised to battle out which one can provide the best globe trotting hired guns for companies and multinationals.