Ah, fellas? The title of the NY Times article is "Modern Mercenaries on the Iraqi Frontier."

The NY Times calls them mercenaries, so shouldn't we? That is what they are. They are also in Iraq, so the suggestion that the links I provided didn't prove anything because it had no examples from Iraq seems kinda bizarre. artbrooks provided the link to the US mercenaries in Iraq story, and asked for instances of what I was talking about of US mercenaries in Latin America. I provided links on stories from the Clinton years, but you could find them going back decades.

Do a Google on United Fruit Company + CIA coup + Guatemala sometime and see what comes up.