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Two months ago I sat with Mr. J. from Black Water in Kuwait over a cup of a tea – it was coffee for Mr. J. and when the subject of the Iraqi army and government readiness was brought up Mr. J. said the following:

[Iraqi government, ha, are you kidding me? There is no such thing as an Iraqi government. The entire set up there is privately contracted. We protect them, train their men how to defend themselves and how to fix their hardware; we tell them how to take cover and shoot insurgents (resistance) in hostile environment. In fact, we own their forces and the Iraqi government work for us and not the other way round. We are men mostly in our late 40s and got retired from the army, what you expect us to do, open some restaurant to make a living? For your own information both the democrats and the republicans (parties) pay for us, and they can’t do jack shit without our help as we did elsewhere. The US government is in firm contract with us which gets renewed periodically to protect VIPs, train armed forces and provide various logistics and ‘even to kill’!!!]

Next to me there was one Kuwaiti man who was listening too, and when Mr. J, finished the Kuwaiti man turned around to me and said in Arabic: you know I am not inclined towards Iraqi militias but if there is one man I wish they could get it is this son of a bitch Mr. J.