Security Private Contractors and what they give to you each and everyday!!!

OK Folks here we go again, today while reading my weekly intelligence dump from Blackwater Inc. and found something that personally disturbs me coming from the Private Protection side of the house. There was an article in regards to the U.S. contractors are going to lose immunity from Iraqi law under a new pact with Baghdad, as of January 1st, now this does not only go for personnel providing security but to other private contractors working in construction to providing meals to others.
http://www.iht.com/articles/reuters/2008/11/21/africa/OUKWD-UK-IRAQ-USA-CONTRACTORS.php ( This is the link where you can read the full article if you like)

Now personally I can tell you that this article has made me sick to my stomach, simply because these men and women do not wear the US military uniform any longer does not mean that we should not take care of our people over there putting their lives on the line each and everyday. I am a alumnus of Blackwater Worldwide and to say that all who serve over there as security professionals are mercenaries is false. Most of these men and women who serve over there are military professionals from all walks of life and countries. They do what they do because we as a country do not have enough man power to provide adequate security for VIP's and dignitaries. You have Law Enforcement officials from the US providing proper training in Law Enforcement Procedures to the Iraqi Police Officers, you have construction and laborers over there building schools, mosques and hospitals. These people put their lives on the line every day that they step out of the Green Zone and into hostile territory, whether it be to go to their build site or to escort someone to another location. Each time you step out, you never know if that day will be your last or not. No one is to be trusted when it comes to the safety of your Protectee, only you and your men who you have trained with and in some cases fought with can be trusted.

Let me give you an idea of what goes into running a Protective Detail to give you an idea of what it is like. First you plan, once you have found out where you are taking your Protectee you begin your planning, you link up with local law enforcement to let them know that you will be operating in their area, so if you need backup they will be there to help. Who are you protecting, is it a single person or a family or a group of VI P's with a one way trip, all this is factor into your Warning Order, you need to look at your resources that you have available to you. Where you will be staying, for how long, what route you will take to get there, alternate routes that you can take if something goes wrong. You need to know the lay of the land once you are on site, with Egress routes planned as well. This is only the tip of the ice berg in planning for a operation.

Once your on site, and link up with your advance team, if you even have one, depending on the size of the detail, it might only be you. For the first two years that I worked in Protection it was only me protecting my client. He traveled all the time, so depending on where we were going, in country or out of country would dictate whether I would travel ahead or call in some friends from my time in the military who would go out and scout the locations for me. It was taxing work getting my client to follow very simple but strict guidelines that I had in place for his safety. Once I had my client set up in his hotel, we would install cameras throughout the hotel floor that we stayed on, usually we would buy up all the hotel rooms so that we could control the access to the floor. It was not always the case but most hotels were more than happy to take our money and provide us the privacy that we needed.
You have to do your research into the people that you working for, find out who his or hers enemies are, what type of work are they into, I mean you really have to dig into their background and into the closets to find them. This work is not for everyone, most who do this work come from a military background or a LEO background. They are not gun toting trigger happy people, they are PROFESSIONALS, who take their jobs very seriously and the lives that they are protecting very seriously.
Until you have served in the Military, LEO, or as a Executive Protection Assignment do not call these people mercenaries. They deserve our respect and our thanks for doing the jobs that nobody else wants to do and nobody has the experience and knowledge to do. These people need to be given the same treatment that our Military receives over there and they need to be protected as well. If we start allowing other countries to dictate to us what our policy will be when we are there to save their asses they we are lost. These are Americans over there doing what needs to be done. Stand Up People and Wake Up!!!








http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RL32419.pdf

Tis The Season of Giving Let Us Not Forget Our Homeless and Homeless Veterans

According to the Department of Veterans Affairs Homeless Division http://www1.va.gov/homeless/page.cfm?pg=1 on any given day there are 154,000 male and female homeless veterans on the streets at night. These men and women who have served our country with due diligence and sacrifice can not even live in a home or an apartment. They have been forgotten by us and this is an atrocity. When you walk downtown and come across a homeless person, most people's first reaction is that of disgust and then pity. Some people will give them money and others will shout obscenities. What right do we have to treat any homeless person with such contempt that we look down our nose at them.

Most homeless suffer from both mental and physical diseases such as alcoholism and drug abuse, most homeless veterans suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and are Vietnam Veterans. At the time of release from the military after Vietnam, PTSD was not considered a actual mental disorder until years later. They could not receive treatment from the Veterans Affairs department, and at the same time these men could not actively reintegrate into our society after spending many years in the jungles of Vietnam and Cambodia where they saw atrocities that you could only imagine.
At my job I try to treat each and every homeless person with respect, although that does not always work it is still worth the time and effort to try. The reason for this is not only kindness towards others but I am a firm believer in Treat others and you would like to be Treated. This philosophy will go a long way and not only that you do not know whether the homeless person you are talking to might be a veteran or not. Not that is should make any difference to you.
This coming Thanksgiving Holiday, instead of throwing out your leftover food, if it is still canned or wrapped why don't you take it to a Food Bank, this year our Food Bank is getting smaller because there is less money to fund it. If you have extra blankets or clothes don't take it to Goodwill (you have to pay for the clothes there) instead take it to the Veterans Home where they have stores there for Veterans who can get the supplies they need.

There are numerous programs that you could look into below I am adding some links for anyone interested in seeing what you can do to help the homeless:
http://www.neighborhoodproperties.org/Housing%20Services.htm
http://jfs.ohio.gov/veterans/homeless/orgDirectory.stm

EMTS are the Greatest

You know, I work with some of the best EMT's in town from Life Star Medical Services. They are a great professional group of people, but they can get a bad wrap sometimes. They are underpaid and overworked and they do it not for the money (cause they really are underpaid) they do it cause they love the job, the job of helping others and saving lives. Here's the thing though, in the military a EMT is trained in all types of medical services everything from patching up a sucken chest wound to performing feild surgery to save the life of a fellow soldier, the problem is when they get out of the military they can't even get a job as a EMT and if they do they can't even give an IV. Folks something needs to be done here, first off there shouldn't be any difference or levels of EMT's, they should all be trained accordingly, I don't want to hear I'm sorry sir we need to wait for a EMT-I to give you a IV or a shot of morphine, cause you never know you might be dead before they show up. It's time for the policy to change, start supplying our medics with the proper training and support that they need to do thier jobs and start paying them for what they are worth.

So here is another day and another day of letting my feelings all out for everyone to read.

So here in Toledo our great Mayor has decided that in order for us to get out of our 10mil deficit for next fiscal year there will have to be cuts in City jobs in order to drop the deficit. Our great leader will even take a pay cut in order to facilitate that, WOW I am really freakin impressed, not really!!! Seriously folks, it is bad enough now that the response time for a police officer to respond is dramatically slower than most other cities, and now we have police officers who will lose their jobs and others will lose overtime. I don't know about u but that is an atrocity, the city is not any safer now than it was last year, if anything the crimes have went up not down. We deal in my building alone, with vagrants who steal and break into vehicles without any issues, because there aren't enough patrols out there to respond when they are called. Houses burn down because we don't have enough Fire Fighters out there to help fight and have to call for additional trucks from neighboring townships to help out. I mean seriouslly people, we spend more money in our taxes on new ways to bring electronics into this city than we do on the resources and the willing people out there to do the jobs that we already have. WAKE UP TOLEDO AND START FIGHTING FOR YOUR RIGHTS, we have the right to be safe at night, we have the right to be safe when were going to our vehicles after work, no person at any time should feel like they have to run to the car in order to be safe when they are downtown. It's not right, don't take the money away from the Police and Firefighters we need to get more out there.

To Each Thier Own

So here I am feeling the need to express my discontent for the people who judge others and still call themselves Christians. I personally am a cross between a Zen Buddhist and a Christian. You ask how that is possible and I will tell you how.

Before I joined the military I was raised as a Pentecostal, I was firm in my belief and the teachings of the ministry and at one point I even wanted to be a minister, but then one day there was a fateful mistep for me, I was accused of something for which I had nothing to do with, I will spare everyone the detail for the they are inconsequential, the outcome of the situation however was every bit consequential for me, I was stripped of all my rights to be a part of the youth group, I was banned and shunned with in my own friends. I left the church for a while, had my wild times and then found harmony in church once again somewhere else. But a friend of mine called me up and told me that the person who had accused me of that issue had been caught bragging about it and was made to apologize to the entire congregation, you know the funny thing is though, I never received that apology from that person. Such as life those that are accused and found not guilty will never receive the apology even though they have been found innocent.

So needless to say when I first joined the service I still had my faith in the religion, that is until the day that I was on my first deployment and saw things that will never leave my mind for as long as I live. Needless to say when I came back my brain was scrambled I couldn't get a handle on what I had saw and done and it left me lost. I went to talk with the minister of my church and instead of listening to what I was feeling and trying to help me, instead he opted to preach at me for my mistakes and wrong doings, I'm sorry folks but that doesn't work for me.

So now we enter back into the realm of Buddhism, after I left my unit I transfered over to Korea, where I began to study and meditate at the temple there, I never forgot that God is real so don't get your panties in a bunch however I did start to find peace within myself. Change does not happen over night it takes time, time of reflection and understanding of your mind your heart and soul. But it was a start, it was a start that I am still on, trying to find myself in this messed up world that we live in.

For Those that Served and For Those that Support and for all others that aren't sure than SCREW YOU!!!

For those that have served, for those that are currently serving in Law Enforcement, Military and Emergency Services, there are those who have not forgotten. The war has went on for a great while, I remember sitting in my police academy at FT. Leonward, Miss when our Instructor leaned forward to the 20 some inserts and say "Men and lady we are now at war with an unseen enemy", I remember looking back at the instructor and telling him in a joking manner to shut the hell up, until he turned his cell phone towards us and I saw for the first but not last time that day the planes slamming into the World Trade Center in NY. I remember my reaction was that of shock and anger as was that of many, but what I remember the most was listening to a young private jumping up and down for joy that he was a National Guard guy and that he was going to get recalled to his unit and he was going to get to war. I don't know which part pissed me off more, the fact that someone had the nerve to attack the greatest country in the world on our own home turf or the fact that I had just heard a young dumb ass who knew nothing of war or killing jumping up and down about going to war. I remember literally grabbing the kid and choke slamming him against the wall and yelling at him, until my instructor grabbed me and told me to chill out.

That was the beginning of a new age in war, something that our men and women in uniform had never experienced before, a enemy that could not be seen, a enemy that did not have the nerve to fight face to face, but did so in the darkness, a enemy that once again would use religion as their reason for wanting to kill us infidels. What cracks me up about this is that these knuckleheads say that they are the true religion that all others are infidels, well let me say this now THEY ARE NOT THE FIRST RELIGION if you want to get technical with that JUDASIM IS THE FIRST RELIGION Islam was not founded until the two sons of Abraham. One son went on to be the leader of the Jews while the other shunned by God and Abraham for being the bastard son born by his hand maiden was turned away from the family and disowned, thus creating the seperation and the beginning of a war between to cultures that have waged battle in secret and in the open for thousands of years. Now to make this very clear to all people reading this, I am not racist towards any religion, I have very good friends who are Muslim, some of which I served with in the military at one point, but those who take and corrupt the true meaning of the Koran are not welcome in my house anytime.

So to all of you who just read the newspapers and read or hear of all the nasty things that our GI's do overseas, let me say this to you, SCREW YOU if you believe it, if you believe everything that you read or hear than hey I own the Brooklyn Bridge and I am having a special price this week, 1,000,000 dollars all to go to chairity for vets, seeing how nobody wants to take care of them when they come home, someone has to do it.

Yes, I will admit that atrocities occur overseas, but hey it is war people, war is not pretty nor is a glamorous life, its nasty, its down and dirty, people get hurt some die and others live, it is a reality, and for all of you who look down your noses at them, here's an idea, bag you people up throw you on a C-130 transport place and parachute you into one of the most hostile areas with a M-4 carbine, 80lb rucksack, 30lbs worth of Kevlar, and another 30-40lbs worth of weight coming from all the ammo that you are carrying and lets see you make out in one piece. By the way thats the standard load that a combat soldier carries into the field of battle on any given day. People have called these soldiers murders or rapist, and yes there has been some of those cases over there where men and women should not be there anymore and can't take it anymore and they snapp, but for the most part the men and women there are good kind hearted people who joined the military to do the right thing and they are there. If not for these people, we who are here would not be able to sleep at night. Theres a old saying from those overthere, We do want we do that nobody else will do so that people like you can sleep at night knowing that the PEACEKEEPER is on the job 24-7 360 days out of the year.

I heard a story the other day from a young marine who was in his uniform, walking thru the airport, he had not had anytime to get money out of the bank before getting on the plane and had already spent what he had on him, he went into one of the resturants there and sat down and ordered a water, it was all he could get, when a older gentleman walked by him and dropped a 100 dollar bill on his table and continued to walk by him, the young marine got up with the money and chased the older man down and said sir you dropped this, the older man turned around and said Son, I didn't drop it I gave it to you, the young marine was dumbfounded by this and was going to refuse when the older man said to the young marine, I lost my son last year in Kabul, he was a strong man and a good man, I made a promise to him that no matter what, when I saw a man or woman in uniform what ever money I had on me I would give to them to help them out. The words that came from this older mans mouth brought tears to the young marines eyes as well as myself when I heard the story. For those who care about our soldiers you are heroes in our eyes for you care for the lives of the men and women who you have never met, so at least from myself I Thank You!!!