BLACKWATER XE
THE WORLD'S GREATEST AND RICHEST TERRORIST MERCENARY ARMY KILLING MACHINE!
Blackwater: the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army
Privatizing the US Military
Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army by Jeremy Scahill (2008 with 2013 epilogue) is an in-depth examination of the systematic privatization of the US military. In 1988, as Secretary of Defense to Bush senior, Dick Cheney initiated the process of outsourcing military training and security and intelligence roles to private companies. Thanks to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and the Rumsfeld Doctrine, this outsourcing would extend to combat roles during the 2003-2008 occupation of Iraq.
Scahill’s book places special emphasis on the US failure to hold mercenary soldiers accountable for human rights violations. It also highlights the total absence of financial oversight, allowing Blackwater, Halliburton and other private military contractors to bilk taxpayers out of hundreds of billions of dollars. Finally it raises the troubling specter of corporations or even wealthy individuals hiring a standing mercenary army, such as Blackwater, to declare war against sovereign states.
Cheney Downsizes the US Military
Scahill begins by discussing the major downsizing of
the US military that began in 1988, even before the fall of the Berlin
Wall and break-up of the former Soviet Union. In his first year as
Secretary of Defense, Cheney reduced military spending by $10 billion,
by canceling expensive weapons systems and decreasing US troop strength
from 2.2 to 1.6 million. As the cuts continued, there was a growing
tendency to outsource various non-combat functions to private
contractors. Clinton continued the trend, when he hired Military
Professionals Resources Inc (staffed by retired military officers) to
“train” the Croatian military* in their secessionist war against
Serb-dominated Yugoslavia.
The Rumsfeld Doctrine
Following George W Bush’s election in 2000, Rumsfeld
pursued even more aggressive privatization of the Pentagon bureaucracy.
The primary neoconservative rationale for shifting both combat and
non-combat duties to private mercenaries was to allow the President to
engage in potentially unpopular overseas military interventions.Other advantages included the ability of private mercenaries to engage in unlawful activities (such as extraordinary rendition**), for which regular forces would be subject to court martial under the Uniform Code of Military Justice – and a massive gravy train of unmonitored, no-bid contracts for wealthy Republican donors. In June 2004, after only fifteen months of US occupation, $9 billion of Iraqi reconstruction funds were unaccounted for.
The Blackwater Lodge and Training Center
Blackwater itself was first formed in 1996. It
felled a big hole in training capacity, particularly in the Navy,
resulting from Cheney’s extensive DOD cuts. Former Navy SEALS Erik
Prince and Al Clark initially established the Blackwater Lodge and
Training Center in North Carolina to offer private tactical training to
Special Forces and local law enforcement personnel. A long time SEAL
trainer, Clark supplied the concept. Prince, who came from a wealthy
conservative Christian family, bankrolled it.In 2002, Blackwater branched out into providing personnel as well as training. Their first contract would be to provide twenty security guards for Kabul’s CIA station in Afghanistan. In 2003, the State Department would award their largest documented (non-classified) contract providing security for US officials in Iraq. This included a $27.7 million no-bid contract to protect Paul Bremer. Bremer, who Bush appointed to run Iraq during the US occupation, quickly became the most hated man in Iraq.
Iraqi Resistance to Occupation
The book provides an interesting historical perspective on the rise
of the Iraqi resistance movement in reaction to the virtual takeover of
Iraq by US corporate interests. Contrary to the US media portrayal of
the Iraqi opposition as al Qaeda terrorists, it was a genuine home grown
movement which formed in reaction to Bremer’s refusal to allow free
elections and his de-Baathification program. The latter instantly
plunged the vast majority of Iraqis into abject misery. In addition to
decommissioning 350,000 former Iraqi troops, it also threw hundreds of
thousands of doctors, nurses, teachers, government workers out of work
(who were required to join the Baath party as a condition of
employment). The loss of these front line personnel would result in the
total collapse of Iraqi society.As Scahill carefully documents, the original Iraqi resistance was peaceful and nonviolent until the US military and Blackwater contractors deliberately fired on peaceful civilian protestors.
Blackwater and other mercenaries are typically paid $600-800 a day for mercenaries. This contrasts with an average of $270 a day for active duty GIs.
The Ambush in Fallujah
Blackwater devotes five chapters to the horrific
ambush in Fallujah on March 30, 2004, in which a local mob killed,
burned and dismembered four Blackwater contractors before hanging them
from a bridge. It was this event that would bring Blackwater to world
attention, while setting off a chain of events that would compel (due to
an overstretched enlisted force) the Pentagon to hire Blackwater and
other private security contractors* as mercenary soldiers in Iraq.At a pay rate of $600-800 a day (in contrast to an average of $270 for active duty GIs), private security companies had no difficulty recruiting mercenaries. In fact, the worse the violence got, the more profits rolled in for Blackwater.
By June 2004, there were 20,000 private mercenaries in Iraq. By the time Rumsfeld resigned in 2006, there was a one to one ratio between troops and mercenary soldiers maintaining the US occupation in Iraq (100,000 mercenaries vs 100,000 troops).In 2004-2005, the Blackwater role expanded to guarding the US oil industries pipeline in Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan, to “protecting” FEMA reconstruction contracts in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina and to providing immigration security at the Mexican border. By 2007, Blackwater had 2300 private soldiers fighting in nine countries, as well as a database of 22,000 former troops, special forces operatives and retired law enforcement officers who could be deployed at short notice.
Immunity from Prosecution
As of 2013, when Scahill published the revised edition, no Blackwater contractors had ever been prosecuted for criminal human rights abuses. Under an edict Bremer enacted in 2004, US mercenaries were immune from prosecution under Iraqi law. Prosecuting them in American courts is extremely difficult owing to the difficulty of transporting foreign witnesses to the US. However in October 2014, a Washington DC federal district court found four of them guilty of murder and manslaughter for the 2007 shooting of seventeen civilians in Baghdad.Erick Prince sold Blackwater in 2010 and it has since merged with its main rival Triple Canopy to form Academi. Although Blackwater was banned from Iraq in 2009, Academi still provides security for State Department personnel across many countries.They also continue to receive contracts from the Defense Department and US intelligence agencies.
Links to free epub and kindle versions of Blackwater are available at Blackwater the Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army
*In the mid-1990s, the Croatian military was dominated by right-wing Nazi sympathizers similar to those in the present Ukrainian government.
** Extraordinary or irregular rendition is the US sponsored abduction and extrajudicial transfer of a person to countries known to practice torture. It’s also known as torture by proxy.
***Other companies that entered the lucrative mercenary market in 2004 include Control Risks Group, DynCorp, Erinys, Algis, Armor Group, Hart, Kroll and Steele Foundation. British security contractors were also extremely pro-active in Iraq. By October 2006, there were 21,000 British mercenaries in Iraq, in contrast with 7.200 conventional duty troops.
Dr Stuart Jeanne Bramhall
Dr. Bramhall is a retired American child and adolescent psychiatrist, activist and political refugee in New Zealand.
Her first book The Most Revolutionary Act: Memoir of an American Refugee describes the circumstances that led her to leave the US in 2002. She has also published two young adult novels about political activism: The Battle for Tomorrow: A Fable
View All Books by Dr. Bramhall >>>
She is involved in the national leadership of the New Zealand Green Party and has a political blog at StuartJeanneBramhall.com
Her first book The Most Revolutionary Act: Memoir of an American Refugee describes the circumstances that led her to leave the US in 2002. She has also published two young adult novels about political activism: The Battle for Tomorrow: A Fable
View All Books by Dr. Bramhall >>>
She is involved in the national leadership of the New Zealand Green Party and has a political blog at StuartJeanneBramhall.com
Murder, Inc?
Blackwater accused of murder in 'crusade to eliminate Muslims'
By Keith Olberman and Jeremy Scahill
MSNBC Broadcast August 04, 2009 - See Part 2 Below Broadcast August 05, 2009
Blackwater accused of murder in 'crusade to eliminate Muslims'
By Keith Olberman and Jeremy Scahill
MSNBC Broadcast August 04, 2009 - See Part 2 Below Broadcast August 05, 2009
Transcript For August 04, 2009
OLBERMANN: The slaughter of civilians for sport, weapons smuggling, destruction of evidence, wholesale corruption and finally murder. In our third story on the COUNTDOWN, a full-fledged criminal enterprise executed by the military contractors known formally as Blackwater, according to the sworn testimony of two of its employees. "The Nation's" Jeremy Scahill, who broke the story, joins us in a moment.
The details come straight from two sworn affidavits filed late last night by persons who identities have been sealed to protect their identity, men who have previously cooperated with federal prosecutors in the criminal inquiry into Blackwater. From John Doe number two, a former member of Blackwater's management team, quoting the affidavit, "it appears that Mr. Erik Prince, Blackwater's founder, and his employees murdered or had murdered one or more persons who had provided information or were planning on providing information to the federal authorities about the ongoing criminal conduct. On several occasions after my departure from Mr. Prince's employ, Mr. Prince's management has personally threatened me with death and violence."
John Doe number two also stating that Mr. Prince, pictured here, smuggled unlawful weapons into Iraq, including sawed-off, semi-automatic machine guns with silencers and illegal hand grenades. The affidavit also says that Prince, quote, "views himself as a Christian crusader eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe. To that end, Mr. Prince intentionally deployed to Iraq certain men who shared his vision of Christian supremacy. Many of these men used call signs based on the Knights of the Templar, the warriors who fought the crusades. Mr. Prince operated his companies in a manner that encouraged and rewarded the destruction of Iraqi life. Going to Iraq to shoot and kill Iraqis was viewed as a sport or game."
Striking similar allegations made in the affidavit of John Doe number one, a former U.S. marine who worked for Blackwater in Iraq. He alleges that incidences of unjustified deadly force were initially videotaped and watched in a session called a Hot Wash. Blackwater, now known as XE Services, spelled XE, maintains that Mr. Prince and the company are innocent of any wrongdoing and performed their duties on behalf of their employer, the State Department.
Joining me now, as promised, the contributor to "The Nation Magazine" and author of "Blackwater, the Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army," Jeremy Scahill. Good to see you. Thanks for coming in.
JEREMY SCAHILL, "THE NATION": Thanks for having me back, Keith.
OLBERMANN: As horrific as all this sounds, it's just part of what you described in the piece today. Flesh it out for us.
SCAHILL: Obviously to hear the term murder and Blackwater in the same sentence is no great surprise, particularly to people who have been following the history of this company. It's been at the center of some of the worst violence of in Iraq, killing civilians repeatedly. Five of its men are going to be tried on manslaughter charges for the Nisr (ph) Square Massacre in Baghdad in September '07. Another one pled guilty.
The Congress is investigating. The IRS is investigating. This is a scandal-plagued company.
What is explosive about what's happened here-and you just went through some of the most explosive of these details-is that you have two former Blackwater officials. I have learned from sources that's John Doe number two was actually in Blackwater management and was privy to some of the inner workings of the company.
Erik Prince, the owner of Blackwater, remains the sole owner of the company, no matter that he stepped down as CEO and founder of the company. He micro-manages every aspect of Blackwater's operations and that's been well known.
On the Christian supremacist angle, let's remember that Erik Prince viewed Blackwater as a neo-crusader force and has from the beginning. This is a guy who comes from the powerhouse of the radical religious right. His father was a major bank roller and gave the seed money to Gary Bauer to start the Family Research Council, James Dobson, Focus on the Family.
And then we have his force employed in Iraq as part of a war against a Muslim nation that George Bush characterized as a crusade. What we have here, Keith, is a confirmation from insiders at Blackwater that, in fact, Erik Prince did have a neo-crusader agenda, and, most explosively, may have murdered or facilitated the murder of individuals who were intending to or did cooperate in the federal government's criminal investigation of Blackwater.
This is deadly serious.
OLBERMANN: To the murder in a second. But you mentioned something in here that strikes an obvious question. How could the Bush administration's State Department have missed this crusader element here, or was that what they were looking for?
SCAHILL: Missed it? I think it was considered a plus in the Bush White House. Remember, Keith, what we had here was the Bush administration essentially create a force that acted as an armed wing of the administration, not subject to the military command, not subject to the Uniformed Code of Military Justice, that reported directly to George Bush's secretary of state and then to the president.
These were his men, his private force in Baghdad. And the allegations that they were running around shooting Iraqis as part of a war to eliminate Islam globally, as is actually what one of these individuals said, is extremely disturbing to anyone who believes in any semblance of Constitution, law or human rights.
OLBERMANN: Some specifics, to what you know about them. This is a strong term murder in court documents. This is under oath. This is not somebody throwing something up against a wall to see if it will stick. Are we talking about something related to the 2007 Baghdad Massacre or something here?
SCAHILL: It's unclear but I will tell you what I do know about this, Keith. The fact of the matter is that these individuals, in these sworn depositions, provided those depositions to lawyers, Susan Burke and the Center for Constitution Rights, that are suing Blackwater on behalf of Iraqis killed by Blackwater operatives in Iraq. They are suing them in civil litigation.
What we do know is that these same individuals say that they gave this identical information to the federal government, one of them in Grand Jury testimony, as part of the on-going criminal investigation. When I called the Justice Department and asked specifically, are you investigating Erik Prince on allegations that he was involved with murder, the Justice Department interestingly said that they would not confirm or deny any action that they may or may not be taking against uncharged individuals.
Erik Prince, according to the lawyers suing Blackwater, could be eligible for murder charges in both Virginia and the state of North Carolina under this existing law. That's the argument they're making in their motion that was filed late last night in the Eastern District of Virginia.
OLBERMANN: Jeremy Scahill, who has been the watchdog on Blackwater, now Xe, of "The Nation," who brought this story to everyone's attention today. Great thanks for doing so and great thanks for coming in.
SCAHILL: Thank you, Keith.
Update - MSNBC Broadcast August 05, 2009
Blackwater Founder's Visions of Christian Supremacy in Iraq
By Kevin Gosztola
Open Salon --- Explosive allegations concerning Blackwater have recently become public in a bombshell of a story published by Jeremy Scahill, a man who has been on the Blackwater beat for years now.By Kevin Gosztola
Two individuals, a former employee and a Marine who used to work as a security operative, allege that Erik Prince, the founder of Blackwater, may have murdered or assisted in the murders of individuals who were helping federal authorities investigate his company.
What’s striking isn’t that Blackwater and murder is in the news. Blackwater has a history of being linked to allegations of murder (for example, the Nissour Square killings on September 16, 2007).
The most salient part of this news are the words written in a five page declaration by a former member of Blackwater’s management team, who is being referred to as “John Doe #2” because he fears he may face violent retaliation if his identity is found out.
Doe #2 alleges that Prince “views himself as a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe":
To that end, Mr. Prince intentionally deployed to Iraq certain men who shared his vision of Christian supremacy, knowing and wanting these men to take every available opportunity to murder Iraqis. Many of these men used call signs based on the Knights of the Templar, the warriors who fought the Crusades.That Erik Prince may have been involved in murders of people cooperating with investigations of his company isn't as important as the fact that if this is true he murdered because he felt compelled by a higher power to do so.
Mr. Prince operated his companies in a manner that encouraged and rewarded the destruction of Iraqi life. For example, Mr. Prince's executives would openly speak about going over to Iraq to "lay Hajiis out on cardboard." Going to Iraq to shoot and kill Iraqis was viewed as a sport or game. Mr. Prince's employees openly and consistently used racist and derogatory terms for Iraqis and other Arabs, such as "ragheads" or "hajiis."
Jeremy Scahill, a journalist for The Nation and the man who broke this news story yesterday, discussed Prince’s Christian supremacist ideology on Countdown w/ Keith Olbermann yesterday night.
“…let`s remember that Erik Prince viewed Blackwater as a neo-crusader force and has from the beginning. This is a guy who comes from the powerhouse of the radical religious right. His father was a major bank roller and gave the seed money to Gary Bauer to start the Family Research Council, James Dobson, Focus on the Family.When asked how Bush could have missed the “crusader element,” Scahill rightfully explained that Bush viewed this as a “plus” and did not miss it.
And then we have his force employed in Iraq as part of a war against a Muslim nation that George Bush characterized as a crusade. What we have here, Keith, is a confirmation from insiders at Blackwater that, in fact, Erik Prince did have a neo-crusader agenda, and, most explosively, may have murdered or facilitated the murder of individuals who were intending to or did cooperate in the federal government`s criminal investigation of Blackwater…”
Scahill said, “These were his men, his private force in Baghdad. And the allegations that they were running around shooting Iraqis as part of a war to eliminate Islam globally, as is actually what one of these individuals said, is extremely disturbing to anyone who believes in any semblance of Constitution, law or human rights.
Robert Weitzel, in an article titled, “U.S.’s Military Crusade for Christ,” writes that “Prince envisions an evangelical “end time” role for his warriors, “Everybody carries guns, just like Jeremiah rebuilding the temple in Israel—a sword in one hand and a trowel in the other.””
Prince has served on the board of directors of Christian Freedom International, a “crusading missionary organization operating in the overwhelmingly Islamic countries of Sudan, Somalia, Afghanistan and Iraq.”
Prince is and has been one of many leaders who have been using forces and violence because of what they believe. When considering other crusader elements that have played a role in the war in Iraq and Afghanistan and the entire “war on terror,” it becomes more apparent that the U.S. is waging violence in a calculated manner similar to Islamic jihad and many are doing it for religious reasons like Islamic jihadists, aiming to advance a Christian supremacist agenda.
In 2007, Operation Stand Up planned to send “freedom packages” to soldiers and Marines in Iraq that would have contained Bibles and “the apocalyptic video game, "Left Behind: Eternal Forces,” where “Christians carry on warfare against people of other faiths.” (The Military Religious Freedom Foundation prevented the packages from being sent.)
Campus Crusade for Christ (known as “cru” on college campuses) has been providing weekly “God’s Basic Training” programs to the U.S. Air Force Academy so that “‘government paid missionaries’ can complete their training.”
Televangelist John Hagee, a pastor of a 16,000 member church with millions of viewers a week, preaches “that in order to bring about the Second Coming of Christ and the Rapture of true believers, Islam first has to be destroyed.”
In an interview on NPR, Hagee, who Americans may remember from John McCain’s presidential campaign, said on Fresh Air in September of 2006:
GROSS: Pastor Hagee, if you believe that the Bible takes precedence over Washington, D.C., I would assume maybe you'd think the Bible takes precedence over the Israeli government as well. If you use the Bible as the basis of policy, is there any room for compromise? And if you use the Bible as the basis for policy, then should Muslims be using the Quran as the basis of their policy? And again, what possible room for compromise is there at that point?Bush once thanked Hagee for “spreading the hope of God's love and the universal gift of freedom."
HAGEE: There's really no room for compromise between radical Islam and --
GROSS: I'm not talking about radical Islam. I'm just talking about Islam in general.
HAGEE: Well, Islam in general, those who live by the Quran have a scriptural mandate to kill Christians and Jews. Now, I had an Islamic on my television show last week. His name was Walid Shoebat. He was raised as a Palestinian terrorist and at one time was -- placed a bomb and was supposed to walk into a bank. And I said, "Walid, I'm trying to understand the definition of what is a radical Islamic person, because I've read many books, many magazines and I can't come up with a good definition of what constitutes a radical Islamic." And he says these words, and I'll quote them, he said, "Anyone who truly believes the Quran is willing to kill Christians or Jews. That's waging jihad." He said, "Now, those people who are willing to go into another country and start a war will only be about 15 to 20 percent of Islam."
There are 1.3 billion people who follow the Islamic faith, so if you're saying there's only 15 percent that want to come to America or invade Israel to crush it, you're only talking about 200 million people. That's far more than Hitler and Japan and Italy and all of the axis powers in World War II had under arms. That is a massive number of people. So while we may define radical Islam as a minority, because there are so many, it is still an overpowering military potential.
If you recall, in May, GQ got a hold of “briefing covers” showing that briefings from Rumsfeld and elite Pentagon strategists on progress in Iraq came illustrated by “victorious quotes from the Bible and gung-ho photographs of U.S. troops.”
Major General Glen Shaffer, the director for intelligence serving Mr Rumsfeld and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a devout Christian dressed the briefings up with religious themes and Bush read them and accepted that what was happening in Iraq as part of his “mission from God.”
The latest news from Iraq reported by the Jerusalem Post is that Iran’s Fars news agency is claiming the CIA and Mossad have been “actively promoting Christianity in the Kurdish region of Iraq.”
The agency claims Americans and Israelis have been “offering $1,000 to any youngster willing to convert to Christianity.”
To those who have read the opening chapters of Reza Aslan’s How to Win a Cosmic War or for those familiar with the core ideas of his book, you know how dangerous it is that American foreign policy is so entangled with Christian supremacist forces in America.
Aslan argues, for the most part, that the way to win a cosmic war (how he characterizes “the war on terror”) is to not fight it. But, Christian supremacists acting based on what they believe about end times will never choose to not fight.
So long as people like Erik Prince and others with views similar to him influence foreign policy or play a role in carrying out America’s foreign policy goals and objectives, Americans can count on hearing more news of torture and abuse of Muslims, more news of murder and mass killings of Muslims, and more news proselytizing and attempts to convert Muslims.
We can count on a bloody war on Islam to continue under the guise of the "war on terror."
UPDATE 1
For additional reading on how Christian supremacist ideology is transforming the U.S. military, check out Jeff Sharlet's article from Harper's, which was published in May of this year.
Jesus killed Mohammed: The crusade for a Christian military
No comments:
Post a Comment