Obama and the PMCs

Barack Obama's campaign is eager to point out that they've been hitting on the PMC issue for a while now, citing press releases as far back as September 20, plus this one, and this one, and this one too.

Most of all, they emphasize that Obama introduced the "Transparency and Accountability in Military and Security Contracting Act of 2007" back in February before this was a hot issue. The Act contains, among other things, a provision to clarify the legal status of contract personnel and subject them to the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act.

Comments

What does "PMC" stand for?

Posted by Antid Oto | October 3, 2007 2:05 PM

Private military contractor. It's the mercenary companies' preferred term for themselves.

Posted by KCinDC | October 3, 2007 3:35 PM

PMC is an obfuscatory Beltway-style acronym, meaning "mercenary," which Matt has unfortunately seen fit to adopt.

The word "mercenary" has become controversial because mercenaries don't like to be called what they are; that's bad for marketing.

The acronym expands to Professional Military Company, or Professional Military Contractor (Wikipedia).

Posted by lambert strether | October 3, 2007 9:53 PM

Gack -- Private Military Company. It's late...

Posted by lambert strether | October 3, 2007 9:54 PM