Thread: Blackwater, USA: Reaping war racket rewards

While we talk about illegal immigration, SPP, and more, let us not forget about a very real danger to us all: BLACKWATER!

Remember New Orleans?



http://www.proliberty.com/observer/20070707.htm
Blackwater, USA: Reaping war racket rewards

War is a racket. Most people know that but do not understand the implications of wars fought by corporations, with corporate employees, to generate profits for stockholders. War racketeers provide bodies, weapons and supplies; profits are maximized based upon the quantity of bodies killed and wounded, the volumes of weapons and supplies used or destroyed and the amount of property damaged. Enter Halliburton, the Carlisle Group, Science Applications International, Raytheon, DynacorpÂ*and Blackwater USA. Blackwater supplies the services of personnel the mindcontrol media refers to as "contractors." Historically, these "hired guns" are known as "soldiers of fortune" and "mercenaries." The numbers of Blackwater "contractors" on the ground in Iraq is staggering and they choose not to recognize the Geneva conventions. Following is an edited version of an Alternative Radio address given by Jeremy Scahill, author of "The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army."

The U.S. siege on Fallujah, you will remember, was a definitive moment in the occupation of Iraq that changed the course of the occupation. It began on the morning of March 31, 2004, at 9:30 a.m.

When the four Americans rolled into Fallujah in their two Pajero Jeeps, the Iraqi mujahideen in the city of mosques were waiting for them. The main drag that cuts through the city is lined with restaurants, cafes and souks, and on ordinary days throngs of people mill around. But early that morning a small group of masked men had detonated an explosive device, clearing the streets and causing shopkeepers to shutter their stores. From the moment the convoy entered the city limits, the men stood out, driving vehicles known as ‘bullet magnets" and sporting wraparound sunglasses and Tom Cruise haircuts.

Shortly after they entered Fallujah, the Jeeps began to slow. To their right were shops and markets, to the left open space. They hit some sort of a roadblock. As the vehicles came to a standstill, a grenade was hurled at the rear Jeep, quickly followed by a rib of machine-gun fire. Bullets tore through the side of the rear Pajero like salt through ice, fatally wounding the two men inside. As the blood gushed from them, masked gunmen moved in on the Jeeps, unloading cartridges of ammo and pounding their way through the windshield. Chants of "Allah ul Akbar"(God is Great) filled the air.

Soon, more than a dozen young men who had been hanging around in front of a local kebab house joined in the frenzy. By the time the rear Jeep was shot up, the Americans in the lead vehicle realized that an ambush was underway. They tried to flee or turn around to help their wounded comrades, but it was too late. The crowd quickly swelled to more than 300 people as the original attackers faded into the side streets of Fallujah. The Jeeps were soon engulfed in flames. The scorched bodies of the men were pulled out, and men and boys literally tore them apart, limb from limb. In front of the TV cameras, a young man held a small sign emblazoned with a skull and crossbones. It declared in English, "Fallujah is the graveyard of the Americans." The mob hung the charred, lifeless remains of the men from a bridge over the Euphrates River, where they would remain for hours, forming an eerily iconic image that was seen on television screens throughout the world.

Thousands of miles away in Washington, D.C., President Bush was on the campaign trail speaking at a fundraiser dinner. "This collection of killers is trying to shake our will," the president told his supporters. "America will never be intimidated by thugs and assassins. We are aggressively striking the terrorists in Iraq. We will defeat them there so we do not have to face them in our own country."

The next morning Americans woke up to the news of the gruesome killings. "Iraqi mob mutilates four American civilians" was a typical newspaper headline. Somalia was frequently invoked, referring to the incident in 1993 when rebels in Mogadishu shot down two Black Hawk helicopters, killed 18 U.S. soldiers, and dragged some of them through the streets, prompting the Clinton administration to withdraw forces. But unlike Somalia, the men killed in Fallujah were not members of the U.S. military, at least not on active duty, nor were they "civilians" as many news outlets reported. They were highly trained, private soldiers sent to Iraq by a secretive mercenary company based in the wilderness of North Carolina. Its name is Blackwater USA."

The U.S. has been employing "independent contractors" or "advisors" to engage in and/or organize covert operations all over the world since the 50s. But when the media began using the term "war contractors," people think "Halliburton," which came known to the public primarily because of its ties to its former CEO vice-President Dick Cheney. Cheney, it is widely known, still profits from Halliburton success and helped it to "win" no-bid contracts worth $billions.

But this was a different sort of war-contracting system. Now it is the large-scale outsourcing of combat functions in war zones. It is commonly reported that there are about 145,000-plus U.S. soldiers in Iraq. Seldom mentioned, however, is the fact that 126,000 corporate employees are in occupied Iraq working for private companies, under contract to the U.S. government, on behalf of the occupation in Iraq.

Among the most powerful of those operating in Iraq is Blackwater USA.

A decade ago this company barely existed. Today its contracts with the State Department, since June of 2004, total over three-quarters of a billion dollars. That doesn’t count the work that Blackwater does for the U.S. military, for the CIA and other intelligence agencies, for other private companies, for state, federal, local law enforcement and corrections departments in the U.S., and abroad.

Blackwater’s Prince

Blackwater was founded by now 37-year old Erik Prince. Prince came from a powerhouse conservative Republican family in the state of Michigan and grew up in the Dutch Reform Church. He’s believed to be, if not the wealthiest, one of the wealthiest people ever to serve in the elite U.S. Navy SEALs.

His father was a major leader in the community of Holland, Michigan, and in that city the Princes were the kings. His dad had a very successful business called Prince Manufacturing Corp. Prince grew up, not just watching his father build up this successful manufacturing empire that serviced the auto industry in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, but he saw his father use the company as a cash-generating engine to fuel and fund the rise not only of the Republican revolution of 1994 but of several of the key groups that would make up the core of what we now know as the radical religious right movement in this country.

Prince was an early intern for former presidential candidate Gary Bauer of the Family Research Council. In fact, he was in the first group of interns that Bauer took on in Washington. Bauer is one of the original signers of the Project for a New American Century, the neoconservative agenda that was adopted by the Bush administration.

Prince was also an early intern in the White House of George H. W. Bush, but he complained that it wasn’t conservative enough for him on gay issues, the budget, or the environment.

He interned in the office of California Republican Congressman Dana Rohrabacher. Rohrabacher had been an adviser to President Reagan, one of his main speechwriters. Rohrabacher was elected to Congress when the Soviets were being defeated in AfghanistanÂ*with significant U.S. support. Rohrabacher actually fought alongside the mujahideen against the Soviets for the few months between election and taking officeÂ*something he’s bragged about publicly.

Prince enlisted in the Navy SEALs, went through the training program and had deployments in the 1990s in Bosnia, Haiti and the Mediterranean.

In 1995, tragedy struck his family. His father died suddenly of a heart attack in the elevator of the company headquarters. Prince went back to Michigan to help reorganize the family business now that the patriarch had passed away. The surviving family decided to sell Prince Manufacturing for $1.3 billion in cash.

Prince then left active duty with the Navy SEALs and headed for the Great Dismal Swamp of North Carolina, where he got together with a few other SEALs and like-minded members of the special forces community to began building up what would become Blackwater USA.


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You can read the rest on the Idaho Observer web page..... http://www.proliberty.com/observer/20070707.htm

http://www.goleft.tv/viewer.asp?v=197