But legal definitions are often drawn inside the fuzzy boundaries of common parlance ... and that's the significance here. Its that now it may be possible to charge them with being mercs. I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.
And this giveaway to private armies is a slap in the face to our soldiers. They're paid three to six times what our soldiers are paid to make life even more difficult for them. It's disgusting. Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers. - George Carlin
This was "my" topic for my international law class. I learned a lot about the private military industry researching the paper I presented in that class. Someday I might try to rework it into something publishable.
The importance of the legal definition is that if Blackwater is there in Georgia it undercuts the distinction between lawful and unlawful combatants that the Bush administration wants to make. And I'll give my consent to any government that does not deny a man a living wage-Billy Bragg
