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June 08, 2009

Sign of the times: for-profit war

An intelligence contractor was recently buried in Arlington National Cemetary.

Shawn Pine qualified for burial in our nation's most elite military cemetary because he was a former Army Ranger and a Lt. Colonel in the Army Reserves. But at the time he was killed by a roadside bomb in Afghanistan he was an employee of MPRI, which is based in Alexandria, Va.

Mr. Pine, of course, fully qualified to be buried there. That is not at issue here. Rather it is the sad commentary that the circumstances of his death reveal about how war has increasingly changed from what once was about patriotic duty to a for-profit enterprise.

Posted by Kevin at June 8, 2009 08:06 PM