Thoughts on Blackwater
Many Americans hope that if Bush and his zio-masters order the U.S. military to wipe out American citizens, the military will hesitate, and perhaps refuse.
I do not agree.
In any case, mercenaries will not hesitate. They are very numerous, very powerful, and very well paid. They will easily become death squads. They are loyal to their employer. They are emotionally disturbed. They are the “army of god.”
I was at Amazon.com examining the book Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army by Jeremy Scahill.
Some of the reader comments were (in my opinion) interesting enough to share…
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> Why the city of Fallujah was annihilated. The author was in Iraq 2004 when four Blackwater mercenaries were killed in Fallujah. Their deaths outraged CPA chief Paul Bremer, who used Blackwater mercenaries as his personal bodyguard. With the blessing of the Bush regime, Bremer ordered the U.S. military to reduce Fallujah to ashes. Before Paul Bremer left Iraq, he made sure that Blackwater was immune from prosecution.
>Most merc armies are assembled by right-wing Christians that see the "war on terror" as the final showdown between "Christianity" and Islam, to find out whose god is bigger. Money, plus the satisfaction of crusading against Muslims, gives them a sense of righteousness. Ultimately however, they are loyal only to money, and to the firms that hire them. They have no obligation to protect your constitutional rights. Their “mission” is to get more work.
>Some US soldiers who have gone from the military to these merc organizations are disgusted by the bigotry and brutality they see.
>The concept of privatized war subverts the concept of democracy.
>When a regime hates accountability as much as the Bush regime does, mercs are the natural outcome.
>When empires go into decline, they always use mercs to do more and more of their dirty work. So it was in Rome. So it is with the USA. The author likens Blackwater to a new kind of Praetorian Guard – in some ways like Saddam's Republican Guard. As a culture dies, mercenary forces are empowered by a potent mix of pro-globalist, nationalist, and religious ideologies.
>The US has a history of wiping out tribal people to steal their resources and extinguish their culture. Ironically, we attack them with helicopters named after the tribes we demolish - Apache, Black Hawk, Kiowa...
>Fifty years ago this book would have been viewed as fiction, like a comic book or a bad Steven Seagall movie. Today it’s all true.
>The use of mercs got a huge boost under Bush, but the trend started before Bush. For years, globalists have increasingly used mercs to accomplish their ends.
>Blackwater was named after a location in North Carolina. The headquarters has an ultra-modern training facility for practicing urban war games. Blackwater first found a niche in the 1990s, when it gained advantage from the relatively modest outsourcing tendencies afforded to it by the Clinton administration. Then came the Bush regime, which channels tax dollars to his cronies in the energy, defense and other strategic industries. This opened the money floodgates for Blackwater and other such firms, especially after 9-11.
>Blackwater operates on the streets of New Orleans and around the Gulf Coast. After Katrina, people were desperate for relief, but the Bush regime sent Blackwater mercenaries with machine guns and black uniforms.
>Mercs can kill with impunity, at home and abroad. No one knows what they are REALLY doing in Iraq or Afghanistan.
>People travel back and forth from high-level government positions to high-level Blackwater positions.
>Merc outfits like Blackwater have enough firepower to disrupt most governments. They have heavily armed, experienced soldiers with their own helicopter gunships, armored vehicles, warplanes, and so on.
>Eric Price, the founder of Blackwater, came from a privileged family with a long history of activism in extreme right-wing political and religious causes.
>The fog of war has allowed billions of dollars to be wasted on “security” projects that have questionable benefit to taxpayers.
>The Bush regime’s legal maneuvers in support of Blackwater show how much the regime values mercs for prisoner renditions, torture, and other shadowy activities.
>Mercs protect government officials and supply routes in Iraq. They protect pipelines in the Caspian Sea region. They overthrow governments. They do all kinds of things. They are hired thugs.
>Mercs are readily available to anyone in the U.S. and abroad. Since they have no oversight, there is always the danger that they might massacre people in the USA.
>In 2006 Blackwater had 2300 soldiers deployed in nine countries, with a database of 21,000 additional on-call mercenaries. At one point they had 25,000 operatives in Iraq. Typically they are retirees from US and UK Special Forces and Seals, right-wing Chilean Commandos, and experienced soldiers from several other small countries. Blackwater alone could make war on a significant number of countries, such as Somalia, and defeat them.
>Blackwater was created in 1997 as a response to what its founder, Erik Prince, considered the “lax security situation” in the USA. Prince inherited a family fortune, and is a “Christian warrior.” Most Blackwater excecutives are members of ultra-right-wing Christian organizations. Many are also former military, and have military connections that land big contracts.
>Blackwater started out small, but grew exponentially through three key events: (1) The Columbine massacre in 1999 brought Blackwater a contract to train local law enforcement officials to respond to such incidents. (2) The bombing of the USS Cole brought Blackwater a $35 million contract to provide training for the US military. (3) 9/11 brought Blackwater contracts from the FBI, the Treasury Department, the CIA, the Pentagon DHS, and others. Blackwater is now the largest of the merc firms, and has over $500 million in regular contracts from the US government, plus contracts for "black budget" work, plus contracts for its secret subsidiary, Greystone – which is headquartered in Barbados, well outside U.S. jurisdiction.
>Blackwater has profited from the Bush regime’s obsession to privatize government and place all control in the hands of the rich. Mercs have little or no oversight, and when they are killed, they do not count as military casualties, nor does the media report them, which means politicians pay no political price. Mercs eliminate checks and balances. With mercs on call, Bush need not consult Congress or the public.
>The mercenary firms (Blackwater, Dyncorp, Executive Outcomes, Vinnell, and others) are big donors to Republican politicians. Blackwater’s owner, Eric Prince, helps bankroll organizations like Gary Bauer's "Family Research Council" and James Dobson's "Focus on the Family." This mix of militarism and fundamentalist Christian ideology is couched in pleasant-sounding words about "the family.” (Maybe they mean the family" in the gangster sense of the term).
>The US military theoretically operates under strict Rules of Engagement. Congressional oversight theoretically keeps them from being used for wars of adventurism. Geneva Conventions theoretically prevent abuses of human rights. Soldiers are theoretically accountable to the public for their battlefield conduct. By contrast, mercenaries have none of those controls, even theoretically.
>Based in the wilderness of North Carolina, Blackwater is the fastest-growing private army on the planet, and can effect regime change throughout the world.
> After Hurricane Katrina these mercs (some not even US citizens) were deployed to guard high-value targets in Louisiana, costing taxpayers many times more than was spent on rescue, repair and rebuilding. Most of the mercenaries are paid through secret (sealed) no-bid contracts.
>Do U.S. citizens really want private black-shirted gangs with "shoot-to-kill" orders patrolling our streets?
>The author’s facts are all verifiable online. The book has 56 pages of references.
>92% of the Chilean people were against the invasion Iraq, yet Blackwater recruited Chilean commandos and set them to work on the corporatist crusade in Iraq. So much for Democracy.
>Recently, Blackwater tried to open training camps in Mt. Caroll Illinois, and San Diego, but met with grassroots resistance.
>The book lists highly placed characters hired by Blackwater to lobby congress and sell services to the Pentagon and DHS. Most of these lobbyists are right wing “Christian” types.
>The book shows how the Bush regime’s corruption interacts with right-wing “Christian” ideology to privatize and expand war.
>America's founding fathers feared private armies. Hence the Constitution says it's the government's job to "provide for the common defense.” Neocons and the Bush regime have undone all that. They bleed our treasury at the expense of our liberty.
>One way to address this problem is to keep the mercenary outfits tied up in court through civil litigation. Make them spend their blood-fortunes on court costs. This hurts their profitability and their marketability.
>In fairness, private mercenaries have always been around. The Ottomans had Mamluks. Napoleon formed his own Mamluk corps in the early years of the 1800s. His Imperial Guard had Mamluk soldiers during the Belgian campaign, including one of his personal servants. Napoleon’s famous bodyguard Roustan was an Egyptian Mamluk. France outsourced war during the First and Second world wars when they brought troops from their `overseas assets.’ Germany had Hessians. Egypt outsourced war. El-Noukrashi Pasha (Egypt's Prime Minister during 1948 war with Israel) allocated some three million Egyptian Pounds to employ the Arab Legion in Jordan, trained by Glubb Pasha (Lieutenant-General Sir John Bagot Glubb commander of the Arab Legion 1939-1956). The Arab Legion came out of the 1948 war with credit. However, the degree to which the USA uses mercenaries is unprecedented in recent U.S. history.
Maliki government decided throw blackwater out of Iraq?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hthArgxj0tM&mode=user&search
Oh, I dunno, probably just laugh and keep sending more.
Maliki is no different from most other weak Arab leaders, he "makes speeches" of condemnations, while the global elite pigs in their plush fancy sties order up more mercenaries.