Posted on 06/03/2007 6:28:20 AM PDT by Valin
It’s a big, evil secret behind the U.S. invasion of Iraq - a 100,000 strong mercenary force that the Bush administration has hired to do the U.S. government’s riskiest and dirtiest operations. It works behind the scenes and is virtually above the law.
Its name is Blackwater USA -- and it’s a private army with a license to kill.
More evil still is the fact that Blackwater USA is run by a multimillionaire Christian fundamentalist who has also bankrolled President Bush’s election campaigns. And what makes the whole exercise so frightening is that American mainstream media - supposedly the champions of free inquiry - have never bothered to investigate the issue. In fact, a recent book that reveals stunning information about this massive secret army has received no significant coverage at all.
Jeremy Scahill’s just-published 450-page "Blackwater" (2007) uncovers a story of deception and intrigue whose moral is that some of America’s richest and most powerful have no respect for human lives.
Welcome to George W. Bush’s U.S.A. where secret civilian hired guns can use any means to justify the Administration’s ends.
The idea is devilishly simple: offer killing contracts to privately-run militias and pay them handsomely to do the job - no questions asked. It is a turnkey system in which the Bush administration pays, and Blackwater kills.
And that’s not all. If and when U.S. troops are withdrawn from Iraq, Blackwater operatives can stay.
According to Scahill, the idea of hiring a mercenary army was the brainchild of Donald Rumsfeld. On September 10, 2001 (only one day before the fateful 9/11) he pitched the concept to a high-level Pentagon meeting attended by former corporate executives from Enron, Northrop, Grumman, General Dynamics and Aerospace Corp.
All were chosen by Rumsfeld to work with him as top deputies at the Department of Defense. At that meeting Rumsfeld outlined his strategy for using "the private sector in the waging of America’s wars," a strategy supported by the likes of Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith.
Blackwater is controlled by one person, Erik Prince, described by Scahill as "a radical right-wing Christian mega-millionaire who has served as a major bankroller not only of President Bush’s campaigns but the broader Christian-right agenda."
The 38-year-old Prince is a former U.S. Navy officer who serves on the board of Christian Freedom International, whose mission is to help "Christians who are persecuted for their faith in Jesus Christ."
Price started Blackwater in 1995 at age 27, after his father died and left him a $1.3 billion automobile parts firm. Prince’s first wife died of cancer in 2003 and he has six children.
As Scahill quotes him, Prince speaks proudly about his soldiers-for-hire
company: "When you ship overnight, do you use the postal service or do you use FedEx? Our corporate goal is to do for the national security apparatus what FedEx did to the postal service."
In Iraq, Blackwater is free to hire whomever it pleases -- Iraqis, Americans, Israelis... Its mercenaries get paid $300 to $600 a day, a big contrast to what men and women in the official American armed forces earn.
But there is also another difference: when Blackwater soldiers are killed, they are not heroes. In fact, they are not even acknowledged. They are not added into the American casualty totals, nor are their coffins draped in the American flag.
Whatever they do is secret and there is no accountability for why or how they kill Iraqis.
Paul Bremer, Bush’s envoy in Iraq during the first year of the occupation, issued a decree on June 28, 2004 granting immunity to Blackwater and other military "contractors" from prosecution for war crimes. Blackwater was even able to bypass the Pentagon’s Uniform Code of Military Justice, claiming its soldiers are "civilians."
In a public hearing, Congressman Dennis Kucinich lamented that, "These private contractors can get away with murder. [They] do not appear to be subject to any laws at all and so therefore they have more of a license ...
to take the law into t heir own hands."
As the Administration is planning to increase the size of the army in Iraq at a cost of anywhere from $3.6 billion to 4 billion, Prince has also been talking about building a permanent "contractor brigade" and doing it cheaper.
In praising Scahill, Canadian reviewer Naomi Klein said: "[His book shows] how the Bush administration has spent hundreds of millions of public dollars building a parallel corporate army, an army so royal to far right causes ... [It is] the most important and chilling book about the death throes of the U.S. democracy you will read in years and a triumph of investigative reporting."
(Dr. Mohamed Elmasry is national president of the Canadian Islamic Congress. He can be reached at np@canadianislamiccongress.com)
And when your done stop by the border and show them a thing or two!
Quite a statement from islamdaily. Mr. Pot, meet Mr. Kettle
And he talks like that’s a BAD THING..jeeze
Kinda evens up the score fighting an enemy that we can’t really pinpoint or define now doesn’t it?
I love it! God bless all of our brave your warriors (military and civilian).
Semper Fi’
Jarhead
Yeah, I was just thinkin' the same thing. Some of the real troops might hesitate at the thought of rounding up their neighbors and the guns. But mercs, they don't care...long as they get paid. OTOH, folks who might be reluctant to give up their guns and might have problems shooting at cops or real military might not even hesitate when confronted by mercs.
One thing’s for sure, Americans are a shortsighted bunch.
Blackwater is just another attempt to sell more amway products. They have really nice facial cream and you get a nice 6.8 SPC rifle w/ it.
I'm calling BS. Any legitimate clandestine meeting would have also included Boeing, Halliburton and Bechtel executives.
Some of the real troops might hesitate at the thought of rounding up their neighbors and the guns.
I was a Security Policeman in the AF, and we had no problem at all arresting people walking around in public with firearms.
I sure hope we have a large mercenary secret army at our disposal.
We used mercenaries in Viet Nam and they were quite effective at killing bad guys. If we can employ the same stuff here it would be great.
Actually we were discussing the possibility of using the armed forces to grab guns from the citizens of the USA in their HOMES. We already know they'll do it: Look at Katrina. But those troops had misgivings and aired them on CNN about making comparisons of the USA to Iraq. But I have no doubt that the majority of our military will fail to stand up for the Constitution against an unconstitutional government directive. After all, who was in charge of the entirety of the education those troops got? Gov't funded and liberal/globalist inspired curriculums. You won't defend that which was never instilled as sacred!
So let me ask the question again: Mr. Air Police, I want you to go down this block OUTSIDE the base in the community and I want you to kick in the doors and take all the guns. If anybody offers even token resistance, either arrest them or shoot, whichever seems more reasonable.
Let's say it's the off post apt building in which you live. Will you kick in the doors of your neighbors to forcibly seize their lawfully owned firearms? Float that among your military buddies. Such an order may be just around the corner. There are tons of extremely possible scenarios that might play out, even this summer.
I think you’re moving into Black heicoppterland.
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