Edited by author 04-23-2004 04:25 PM
No, Kevin, this time I was oversimplifying, as I realized later. Apologies for that.

For the record, the International Police Program which handles Dyncorp's UN obligations and gets the State Department funding is headquartered in Texas. It's a subsidiary of Dyncorp Aerospace in Britain, which in turn is a subsidiary of Dyncorp Inc. (US) (formerly Dynalectron, formerly California Eastern Airways) which has since been taken over by Computer Sciences Corporation Inc (US).

Edited by author 04-23-2004 04:50 PM
Just to be clear, here's a typical Dyncorp police employee abroad.

Would I call this guy a "merc?" Of course not. He's probably a kindly old cop who only did good work, like all the other Bosnian cops I know. But I'm not sure "contractor" works for these people either. And it's certainly fair to call his employer a "merc company," as some of its other staff in South America certainly would be accurately described by it. And yet... that American flag's pretty obvious, isn't it?

People wearing American flags on their shoulder and carrying weapons can be (and generally are) a force for great good in the world. I just think it'd be prudent if Americans had more control over the conduct of their armed flag-bearers than they have had recently in the case of Dyncorp employees.

That's not a prohibition in any sense on the use of soldiers, guards and police-for-hire; that's never been possible or necessary. Just a caution on their excessive or unwise use, a line that I think some "war on terror" taskings (such as guarding Karzai and Bremer) and the "International Police Program" are now approaching.

Kevin: Can I assume that you answered "no" to "Aren't you concerned that all the sacrifices made ... in this war; have gone for naught?" because you feel there is little possibility those sacrifices will be negated by bad decision making?

Thanks.

Look, you may not agree with US policy of contracting out certain services to corporations, but you cannot blame the US for the fact that the criminals activities of certain of the contractors go unpunished. The fact is, civilians are not subject to the military’s jurisdiction. And they cannot be made to be subject to its jurisdiction no matter how much you may want it. Nor are the contractors subject to US federal jurisdiction or the jurisdiction of any of the states of the US. This should be obvious, but it warrants stating: the lack of US-based jurisdiction is not tantamount to the US condoning their acts. There is simply nothing the US can do to bring these malefactors to justice.

However, the malefactors ARE subject to local jurisdiction. Now, that jurisdiction may be deficient or even absent in certain cases, but it should also be noted that, in other cases, local justice may be considerable harsher (see Fallujah) than anything the US could mete out. These men, on the one hand, are somewhat free to do their evil best, but, on the other hand, they are to a large extent on there own.

It is for the contracting parties to decide whether the contractors are worth their costs.

Ask yourself this question: would you really be less outraged if it had been a US soldier who bought and sold prostitutes, had raped under-aged girls, and then were subject to a court martial? My feeling is that you would be only too quick to point to their acts as yet another example of US deficiency. The criticism would be no less as a result of the absence of contractor involvement, I think.

The Bosnia situation, to me, points out one of the principal problems with the United Nations. Three types of organizations could be involved in the type of activities done by the contractors: (1) a Governmental organization, (2) a non-governmental organization (NGO) (such as the UN), or (3) private (or public) companies. It seems to me that (1) is the best choice in most situations, if the task is that organization’s highest and best use. However, this is often not the case. The US military – and in this regard I believe it’s unlike most others – has other tasks for which it is needed or may be needed, which tasks cannot be handled by other countries. (3) is a better option many times for the US because of these limitations. The problem is often the lack of military discipline. But at least when the US government is the contracting party, there is some accountability. (2) is fine for purely humanitarian tasks but less fine for police and peacekeeping work. The UN is also notoriously corrupt, as we’ve seen time and time again. The UN is almost entirely unaccountable. But when (3) is contracting with a (2) (or when (1) subcontracts (3)’s services to (2)), disaster awaits. When you work for the Mob, you get dirty. The lesson of Bosnia is that the UN cannot do peacekeeping. It cannot do security. It cannot protect the innocent. It cannot be trusted in almost any endeavor.

At 07:05 AM 4/23/2004, you wrote:
>But I do think it is in
>its own way a euphemistic disservice not to call soldiers
>soldiers. "Civilian contractors" is confusing, inaccurate PR
>garbage, put out by people that are trying to pull the wool over
>people's eyes; call them PMCs, or "private paramilitaries," or
>even, if you have to, "a new class of mercenaries," as this
>week's New York Times editorial did, but I think it's incumbent
>on us to get some version of the word "military" in there
>somewhere if we want to have the frank discussion you're asking
>for, and which I would also welcome.

How about that old term, actually used in the US constitution,
privateers? It's usage there seems to cover gray area contractors who are under arms perfectly.

RGlasel,

No. I mean as of right now I feel that overall things are going about as well as can be reasonabley expected. I see no reason for panic -- as everyone on the left is, as almost everyone outside of the US is, and as even some on the right here in the US are.

But things could change if we do do something to really foul it up.

Bruce,

Re #4623.

Yeesh! Tell that guy to lose that powder blue hat. Someone might mistake him for the UN.

"For the record, the International Police Program which handles Dyncorp's UN obligations and gets the State Department funding is headquartered in Texas. It's a subsidiary of Dyncorp Aerospace in Britain, which in turn is a subsidiary of Dyncorp Inc. (US)..."

____


If this corporate structure is right, they need some corporate tax advice pronto: A US parent owning a UK subsidiary, which in turns owns a lower-tier US subsidiary is nuts. I hope those knuckleheads at State are indemnifying DynCorp, Inc.’s shareholders for their company’s excess taxes.

At 03:21 PM 4/23/2004, Kevin Smith wrote:
>"For the record, the International Police Program which handles
>Dyncorp's UN obligations and gets the State Department funding
>is headquartered in Texas. It's a subsidiary of Dyncorp
>Aerospace in Britain, which in turn is a subsidiary of Dyncorp
>Inc. (US)..."
>____
>If this corporate structure is right, they need some corporate
>tax advice pronto: A US parent owning a UK subsidiary, which in
>turns owns a lower-tier US subsidiary is nuts. I hope those
>knuckleheads at State are indemnifying DynCorp, Inc.'s
>shareholders for their company's excess taxes.

Not necessarily. It depends mostly on where revenue is earned/
repatriated to. And the parent and subsidiary of the UK subsidiary may very well be considered one entity for tax purposes (you have many choices about such matters, and some complex SEC/IRS rules
to navigate in any event). Large corporate accounting/financial
software packages, such as Oracle Applications and others of such ilk, even have features to handle these issues (and if the subsidiary/ affiliate companies share facilities or administrative personnel, the IRS will probably force you to treat them as one entity for tax purposes anyway).

The boundary of one legal entity and another is most certainly not the only, and in many cases not the most important, consideration involved in how corporate taxes are calculated.

David,

You said, "If the subsidiary/ affiliate companies share facilities or administrative personnel, the IRS will probably force you to treat them as one entity for tax purposes anyway)."

___

I don't think so. There are technical reasons for this that I am sure no one else here wants to here about, but I think this is wrong -- if I understand what you are saying.

The bottom line is the US will tax the lower tier subsidiary's income, the UK will tax the UK subsidiary corporation on its income, and the US will tax the US parent entity on both its own income and the income from its UK sub, including the UK sub's share of the lower tier sub's US income. The tax treaties and foreign taxes provision of the US won't necessarily prevent all double taxation that could result from this mess. A better structure would be for the US parent to have two subsidiaries: one US and one UK. This avoids the messy in-the-US out-the-US in-the-US structure. I can think of no tax advantage to such a structure -- or any other advantage for that matter.

Then again, I am not an international tax expert.

What do the rest of you think?

Bruce: As far as I can determine, Louis Riel never performed priestly duties, even though Archbishop Taché presumably funded Riel's seminary education in Montreal in the hopes that Riel would return to the St. Boniface diocese in such a capacity. As it turned out Riel concentrated on studying law, and other than a stint teaching at a mission school in Montana, he never worked for the Roman Catholic church. It appears that his mental illness first expressed itself during a mass in Washington D.C., but I won't bore everyone here with a rehash of the traitor/hero argument.

Edited by author 04-24-2004 02:45 AM
BruceR:

This is not "Peacekeeping". This is not about the UN. That model is on the scrapheap of history.

The model is this:

U.S. Soldiers Re-Enlist in Strong Numbers

If you think Ft. Campbell fucks around, you're dead wrong.

Obviously Canada intends to sit this one out. It's all blah blah blah. At least until the serious attacks come, which they most certainly will. "Multiculturalism" is a deep sham. All radical--and many moderate--Imams preach that it is the ultimate duty of Muslims to kill, convert or enslave infidels.

Don't blame be for saying this. I've seen too much to fall for "political correctness". I didn't create that reality. Centuries of backward, aggressive culture focused on conquest did.

I guess people thought I was being flippant when I told you below that we are doing the biggest recruiting drives since WWII. The Draft may well come back.

This is not Vietnam. If you mistake it for that you have totally missed the big picture. This is WWIII. It will take many years to win, but the American people are roused to fight, and the "little dogs" have to stand aside and stay in the yard for a while.

Virtually nobody on this board really "gets it" (I don't mean that as an insult, just a statement of fact). Even if the Democrats win in November (which is exceedingly unlikely), the branches now have serious momentum, and will be very difficult to recall at this point.

Stay tuned. We are going to mount the largest, most effective military force since Troy.

I like and respect you, BruceR, but your blog contains little of any weight any longer. World events are millions of times weightier than what blogs can deal with much longer. This could well go badly, depending on whether we decide to take down lit reactors (and I don't know if the Iranian plants are lit yet).

Diplomacy has been given every effort to succeed with the Islamists. Fallujah will fall next, I guarantee you that. I only wish I was there tonight.

Minigun

There are probably 1 - 1.2 billion muslims. Just so you have some idea of the scale of your task.

  PenGun
 Do What Now ???

TM Lutas

 Apple is just apple. There was essentially no real network functionality that ment anything until OS X. Now OS X is really freebsd 4.2+.

 You move the appleness out of the way, run it all from a terminal and lo the spiffiest tcp/ip network stack in the business (just ask M$) and all the rest of the BSD legacy, where networking was added to unix, is largly available.

 The problem here is freebsd does not scale really well as yet, so for 4 - 64 way machines you need linux or a *nix that will scale for the more ambitious applications.

 As for the VMS etc boys looking down their noses, well that _would_ be dumb. The reason all that stays where it is is that moving it is such a huge problem that they are gonna let the mainframes rust before they move ;).

  PenGun
 Do What Now ???

Wasn't the Mahdi's skull made into an inkwell?

Edited by author 04-25-2004 08:29 AM
It'll turn up on Antiques Roadshow someday and then we'll know for sure. (And CBC Newsworld will then finally have done something useful.)