Blackwaters Run Deep: New Questions On America’s Favorite Security Contractor
The more things change the more they stay the same, and that’s downright scary when it comes to Blackwater Worldwide.
If you’re under the impression that this most right-wing of defense contractors has been laying low since its goons mowed down 17 Iraqis last September, you would be wrong.
Despite the outcry, Condoleezza Rice’s State Department dutifully renewed Blackwater’s contract to guard diplomats in the war zone and the North Carolina-based company has been hard at work burnishing its stateside credentials.
Erik Prince, Blackwater’s chairman, former Navy SEAL and messianic right-winger with close White House and Pentagon ties, has been tight lipped about his company’s plans, but they obviously include expanding its already major presence as a trainer of military personnel and private contractors on the U.S.-Mexico border in Southern California.
Blackwater last month received a permit for a training facility for Navy personnel in south San Diego after abandoning its controversial proposal to build a larger one elsewhere in the area. The site will have a shooting range, a simulated Navy ship and classrooms, but the city’s Development Services Department granted the permit without public hearings so the project is on hold.
An argument can be made that firms like Blackwater are needed in this day and age, but as has been the case in so many other areas, the Bush administration has taken the involvement of private contractors in the business of war to extremes.
Blackwater alone has billed taxpayers over $1 billion for its work in Iraq and much of what it does was once and should still be the domain of Military Police units. (Think about all those M*A*S*H episodes when Hawkeye and Trapper were pounced on by MPs.).
The bigger problem with Blackwater is that it’s nefarious. It lies and misleads and when caught out asserts that it is not merely above the law but is a law unto itself. As it is, Blackwater went out of its way to hide its identity in the case of the San Diego facility by filing for a permit under the name of a subcontractor.
Okay, so Blackwater doesn’t rent out pony rides for kids’ birthday parties. A reasonable amount of circumspection and secrecy comes with its territory. But there is a cottage industry of sane people, along with some wingnuts, who believe that Blackwater is in cahoots with Uncle Sam to train local security forces should martial law ever be declared, as well as other nefarious activities.
I’m not buying, but neither am I not buying.
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5 Responses to “Blackwaters Run Deep: New Questions On America’s Favorite Security Contractor”
Hahahahaha….Fantastic! Follow the links Shaun provides to folks who make the “Democratic Underground” look like the forum of sober second thought.
See the “U.S. Martial Law Timeline” (cottage industry-link)and the crazy ass assertion that Bush is plotting a second Reichstag, and the overthrow of the American republic:
“It doesn’t take much imagination to foresee ‘Blackwater-style’ martial law in all of America….. The Bush Regime's foreign policy is also being carried out according to a strict blueprint. Not since Mein Kampf has a geopolitical punch been so blatantly telegraphed… We shudder knowing that Bush has issued an executive decree that grants him dictatorial power in the event of some nebulously defined national emergency…a vast network of internment camps bristle across the length of the U.S., standing at wait for those who might raise objections to the fascistic fury unloosed by the American empire's version of the Reichstag fire.”
Bush is a busy man. Only a few months left in his term, before he becomes Dictator-for-Life.
Hahahahahaha…as “Chris Matthews” said on SNL…keep this Crazy Train rolling!!!
While I have heard of this classified “executive order”, I also know that no one has read it outside of a handful of WH people (hence its text has never been leaked to the NYT), and that its legality is dubious at best.
However, I have not seen any sign of “a vast network of internment camps bristle across the length of the U.S., standing at wait” for Blackwater to arrest Shaun and his fellow dissidents.
I can only conclude that the media is deliberately suppressing knowledge of Bush's concentration camps and/or they are protected by some new invisibility screen. I put nothing beyond Bush/Cheney.
Always remember: “The times are near fascism.”
Marlowevan,
So, you don't know what's in the executive order, either, but you do know, somehow, that everything is just fine.
How is your non-reading speculation in the dark any better than Shaun's?
It's the secrecy, and the incessant governing by executive order that makes all the speculation inevitable. The only way to avoid it is tu put totally blind trust in the President. That would be acting like blind sheep with a death wish.
The trouble iwith Blackwater is that no one there, least of all Prince, takes responsibility for what ensues once they arrive on the scene. There are subcontactors upon subcontractors, to pass the blame to, if you can find them and figure out which laws apply to them.
To listen to Prince testify in Congress is to watch an escape artist at his best, when it comes to responsibility.
That shouldn't make anyone's speculations about Blacckwater be peaceful daydreams.
Where is the oversight for organizations like this?
And, when ( and I pray to God this never happens) that BW becomes the “National Police Force” and roams city streets like the Waffen SS, will America be forced to fight itself again?
What, you mean like the foreign-soil Rendition camps? Gitmoo? Abu Gharaib?