Outsourcing the war. Welcome back my friends to the war that never ends, We're so glad you could attend, come inside, come inside.

The grand daddy of all criminal empires.

Lately, we've been hearing the name Blackwater in the news; who are they, and what do they do?

Technically, they are a subcontractor to Haliburton. Halliburton has been paid at least $16 billion to provide food, lodging and other support for troops in Iraq, and $2.4 billion to work on Iraqi oil infrastructure. Blackwater is Haliburton's mercenary army.

The easy answer is that Blackwater is the administration's private army of goons and thugs. Laws do not apply to them, when they die, they are not counted, when they kill people, those deaths are not counted.

DynCorp International is a United States-based private military contractor (PMC) and aircraft maintenance company. DynCorp receives more than 96 percent of its $2 billion in annual revenues from the federal government. Most recently DynCorp has publicly expressed interest in patrolling the border between USA and Mexico.

The company, based in Falls Church, Virginia, has provided teams for the U.S. military in major theaters, such as Bolivia, Bosnia, Somalia, Angola, Haiti, Colombia, Kosovo and Kuwait. DynCorp International also provided much of the security for Afghan interim president Hamid Karzai's presidential guard and trains much of Afghanistan's and Iraq's fledgling police force. DynCorp was also hired to assist recovery in Louisiana and neighboring areas after Hurricane Katrina.

KBR, once a subsidiary of Halliburton Co., (and still connected, but not publicly) provides logistics support to troops, the single largest contract in Iraq.

KBR is an American engineering and construction company, formerly a subsidiary of Halliburton, based in Houston. After Halliburton acquired Dresser Industries in 1998, Dresser's engineering subsidiary, M.W. Kellogg, was merged with Halliburton's construction subsidiary, Brown and Root, to form Kellogg, Brown, and Root. KBR and its predecessors have won many contracts with the U.S. military during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, as well as during World War II and the Vietnam War.

Another Halliburton sub.

CRG's four main operating areas are: Political and security risk analysis, confidential investigations, security consultancy, and crisis response. The majority of their clients are large multi-nationals; they state that more than 90 per cent of the FTSE 100 use one or more of their services.

CRG has a long history of working with the energy sector, covering ground in Algeria, Angola, Congo, Nigeria, Russia, Indonesia, Pakistan, Colombia, Ecuador, Venezuela, Dubai, Sudan and Yemen. The main services they provide include political and security risk assessments, supplying site security managers for dangerous projects and kidnap and evacuation consultancy. In Iraq the UK Department for International Development (DfID) and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) have used CRG to provide armed guards for staff in Baghdad, Basra and elsewhere.

Triple Canopy is a U.S. private military company (PMC) based in Herndon, Virginia. The company integrates assessment and analysis, technical surveillance countermeasures, tactical training and full-scale security and protection operations; its marquee client is the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, which it has served since September 2003. It has provided security services to the US Department of Energy, and training services to various foreign governments and domestic law enforcement agencies, and was one of three PMCs chosen to provide supplemental security personnel at U.S. embassies worldwide. It has as subsidiaries Global Solutions 3D and Gesecur SAC, which it contracted to search for mercenaries in South America[1][2]. It is rumored that leadership at Triple Canopy has roots from the 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment - Delta (commonly referred to as Delta Force).

The name Triple Canopy was initially chosen to refer to the layered canopy jungle where some of the key founding members received their training; it also refers to the distinction among U.S. Army personnel of wearing the Airborne, Ranger, and Special Forces tabs, if authorized, when assigned to Special Forces units.

Triple Canopy is a member of the Private Security Company Association of Iraq.

The Hart Group was established by Richard N. Bethell in July of 1999 and registered in Bermuda after his departure from Defence Systems Limited in 1997. Bethell, a former SAS officer and recently elevated to Lord Westbury, is a veteran of the private military industry.

They have hired from the South African pool of soldiers as was revealed when Gray Banfield, an employee and former member of SA's Apartheid era Project Barnacle, was killed in Iraq in April 2004. The increase in live fire initiated discussions to allow security forces to up their firepower.

Hart has operated in Kenya. They are currently providing armed protection in Iraq.

Bethell went on to address the range of security needs that became so apparent after 9/11 by launching the marine security company Global Marine Security Systems Company in a partnership between Hart, Tufton Oceanic Limited and Energy Transportation Group, Inc. The new company will address the dangers imposed on the transportation of hazardous and explosive materials like Liquified Natural Gas.

Aegis Defence Services is a London, U.K.–based private military company with overseas offices in Afghanistan, Bahrain, Iraq, Kenya, Nepal and the United States. Aegis provides specialist security and risk management solutions to counter extreme threats. Its services are tailored for international clients including governments, international agencies and the corporate sector. It is a registered and active UN contractor, a major security provider to the U.S. government and security adviser to the Lloyds Joint War Risk Committee.

In 2004 the International Peace Operations Association, an industry body, asked Aegis to apply for membership, but the application was rejected by a British competitor. It is a founding member of the British Association of Private Security Companies (BAPSC), a body lobbying for the regulation of the British PSC sector.

These guys are assasins for hire.

Erinys International is a British security company founded in 2001. From 2003 to 2005, it had an $80 million contract with the Iraqi Ministry of Oil, guarding installations in Iraq against attack as part of Operation Task Force Shield. In 2004, the company was responsible for an Iraqi security force of 14,000 personnel.

Former staff include Alastair Morrison, a former SAS officer who also founded Defence Systems Limited in 1991. Morrison left Erinsys in March 2004 to join Kroll Inc., the U.S. security company.

It was reported in November 2006 that traces of Polonium 210 were detected at Erinys's Grosvenor Street premises in London, following the death by poisoning of former KGB officer, Alexander Litvinenko.

Armor Group International PLC describes itself as "a leading international provider of protective security services, security training and weapons reduction and mine clearance services, primarily to Governments, major inter-governmental organizations and multinational corporations."

In Iraq, ArmorGroup has a 876,000 pound ($1.54 million) contract, that rose by 50% in July of 2004, to guard the Foreign Office. They also use about 500 Gurkhas to provide protection for the Baghdad headquarters and transport depots of Bechtel and Kellogg Brown and Root.

ArmorGroup Land Mines won a subcontract from Bechtel in Iraq.

In April 2003, the U.S. Agency for International Development announced that Bechtel won a cost-plus-fixed-fee contract worth up to $680 million to rebuild Iraqi infrastructure such as schools, roads and sewers, as well as perform "institutional capacity building" to maintain the improvements and create "roadmaps for future longer term needs and investments." The contract had been awarded after Bechtel and five other companies, including Fluor, Louis Berger Group, Parsons and Halliburton's Kellogg, Brown & Root, were privately selected by the agency to bid. The contract also allows indemnification of the company against chemical or biological weapons, mines and other perils, according to the contract, obtained by the Center for Public Integrity through the Freedom of Information Act. In September 2003, USAID announced that, due to the poor infrastructure and deteriorating stability in Iraq, Bechtel would receive an additional $350 million on the contract, raising the contract's potential ceiling to $1.03 billion.