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Title: Blackwater Reveals Underpinnings of 'Private Security' Industry
Source:
Balitmore Chronicle
URL Source: http://baltimorechronicle.com/2007/032607Cherbonnier.html
Published: Mar 27, 2007
Author: Alice Cherbonnier
Post Date: 2007-03-27 13:38:04 by Brian S
Keywords: None
Views: 301
Comments: 18
Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army They envision, as a Baltimore Sun letter to the editor expressed on March 25, "a global war, with the United States serving as the primary defender of Western civilization against our rarely named enemy, Islamist totalitarianism..." Sounds over the top, doesn't it? Yet those who believe "Western civilization" (read "Christendom" or perhaps "Judeo-Christendom") is imperiled by 'infidels' are pushing hard to confront and defeat 'the enemy.' War that serves the purposes of this 'belief' faction also fuels profits for war-related businesses. Scahill demonstrates the added risks that can occur when these two powerful motivations (one might even substitute the word "addictions") come together. Blackwater USA is prominent among many companies that provide "contract security" personnel for governments, corporations and wealthy individuals. It began in 1987 by offering advanced military training at its 7,000-acre main training facility in Moyock, North Carolina, near the Great Dismal Swamp, and has rapidly expanded. It is now doing business on a global scale, with its operations horizontally and vertically integrated to cover just about any imaginable security need. Scahill reports that Blackwater currently has over $500 million in U.S. government contracts, not including secret "black budget" contracts for U.S. intelligence agencies. And this isn't counting Blackwater's revenues from contracts with other governments, corporations and individuals. Questions arise for which there are no known answers at this time, such as: How much seed money did Prince put up to start Blackwater? How much profit did he make on his initial investment? Who else besides Erik Prince has a financial stake in Blackwater? Among the company's first Iraq War assignments was the high-profile job of protecting top U.S. officials stationed there. One wonders why such an important and sensitive assignment wasn't given to top-notch U.S. military personnel; but by the end of this book, one wonders if the U.S. military even has all that much skill and authority left, as so many of its traditional functions have been privatized and outsourced. Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumseld famously included military contractors as part of the Pentagon's "Total Force," which he said included "active and reserve military components, civil servants, and its contractors." Though they are part of the "Total Force," however, mercenary soldiers are not subject to the structure and checks and balances of the U.S. military chain of command. One of the last acts of Presidential Envoy to Iraq L. Paul Bremer before he left his post in June 2004 was to issue a decree, known as Order 17, that made private contractors in Iraq immune from prosecution. (An attempt has been made to rectify this exemption in the 2007 defense spending bill, which includes a line "that could," according to Scahill [emphasis provided], "subject contractors in war zones to the Pentagon's UCMJ" [Uniform Code of Military Justice].) Blackwater is expanding rapidly, adding training campuses in California and Illinois and a jungle-training base in the Philippines. It has about 2,300 private soldiers deployed in nine countries, including the U.S., and claims a database of over 20,000 former military personnel who are on-call. Following the deployment of Blackwater mercenaries to New Orleans post-Katrina, the company saw a growth opportunity, establishing a domestic operations division that is seeking permits to contract for work in all 50 states. Blackwater's Greystone Ltd. division (registered in Barbados and classified by the U.S. as a "tax-exempt" corporate entity) offers to hire out "Proactive Engagement Teams" to meet client needs overseas (asset protection and recovery, emergency personnel withdrawal, defensive and offensive small group operations), using mercenary recruits from other countries, including some from Chile who served as commandos under Pinochet. Greystone has been seeking applicants qualified in such weapons as AK-47s, Glock 19s, M-16 series rifles, machine guns, and shoulder-fired weapons, and skilled in such specialties as sniper and door gunner. Scahill reports that pay scales for recruits from such countries as El Salvador, Nepal, Honduras and Chile are substantially lower than for Blackwater's U.S. recruits. Another Blackwater division, Presidential Airways, is known to use the same airports as those used in the CIA's "extraordinary rendition" program. The company claims to hold a Secret Facility Clearance with the U.S. Department of Defense. While Blackwater specializes in training and deploying contract mercenaries, it is simultanously reframing its mission, calling its work "humanitarian" and "peacekeeping." Realizing there will be questions about how their workers conduct themselves, and for whom they work, Blackwater and some other private mercenary companies have established a private military trade group called the International Peace Operations Association, and some are also signatories to The Global Compact espoused by the U.N. (which Blackwater's president, Gary Black, has critiqued as ineffective). Adherence to the standards promulgated by these entities is voluntary, however, with no outside oversight or enforcement mechanisms. There's nothing wrong, per se, for an employer to engage contract personnel, especially for occasions when work is seasonal or there's temporary work to be done that's beyond the capacity of day-to-day staff. Scahill shows, however, that the use of "temp" armed personnel, when engaged by governments and other entities bent on pursuing military and economic advantage, presents substantial moral and ethical issues, as well as practical ones: Who will police the police? What legal oversight exists for these mercenaries? What's the chain of command, and can the public trust it? How can the public be assured that such mercenaries won't be turned against them? What weapons systems will be entrusted to them, and by whom? What other normal government functions—police, disaster relief, corrections—will be turned over to such entities, and what could be the outcomes? What worker safety protections will be provided for individuals employed by mercenary contractors? What public safety and human rights guarantees will they follow? Are governments irrelevant if wealthy private entities can rent-an-army? Where will the next mercenary hot spots be—Sudan? Iran? Nigeria? Venezuela? Make the effort to read Blackwater: you'll emerge refreshed and revitalized, for the information it conveys can propel concerned readers to seek to change what needs to be changed. Jeremy Scahill has performed an immense public service by gathering such a huge amount of information—and making sense of it while Blackwater's story is still emerging.
by Jeremy Scahill
NY: Avalon Publishing Group, Inc./Nation Books, 2007. 438 pp. $26.95.
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#1. To: Brian S (#0)
bookmarked. He's a Catholic?
"The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes nor between parties either — but right through the human heart." — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Erik Prince is not Catholic. Erik Prince is a holy roller christonutter just like his dad. I think the "extremist Catholic" phrase was thrown in by the author of this article because Erik Prince struck up a business relationship with a Chilean thug (Jose Miguel Pizarro) and Blackwater has hired Columbians as mercenaries - ergo the "Catholic" tie - low ranking poor South Americans who are doing the heavy lifting at the lower ranks of the company and who happen to be Catholic - an incidental descriptor to these punks for hire. The author of this book review article does Catholics a dis-service with that unqualified remark. Actually more closely related to the Prince Family is the usual suspect group of neozios - whose religion the author oddly enough does not name in this paragraph of names: "Blackwater was founded the same year (1997) as the Neocon think tank Project for a New American Century (PNAC), an outgrowth of the New Citizenship Project, a 501(c)(3) organization funded by the Sarah Scaife Foundation, the John M. Olin Foundation and the Bradley Foundation, according to the watchdog group Media Transparency. Closely related to the American Enterprise Institute, PNAC's charter members included Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, Other prominent PNAC members have included Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, John Bolton, Richard Armitage, James Woolsey, Lewis Libby and Elliott Abrams. Not surprisingly, PNAC was a major proponent of the Iraq War." b. There was an informative interview that Amy Goodman did with Jeremy Scahill recently. http://www.coanews.org/tiki-read_article.php?articleId=1748 "Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army" Amy Goodman interviews Jeremy Scahill 03/20/07 Some cut and paste: AMY GOODMAN: That's one of the suits against this company, Blackwater. Talk about this company, who founded it, how large it is. JEREMY SCAHILL: Blackwater was founded -- it was actually incorporated in late 1996 and really started to build up its operations in 1997. Originally, it was a 5,000-acre plot near the Great Dismal Swamp of North Carolina, and the personal private fortune of its founder, Erik Prince. He's believed to be, if not the wealthiest, one of the wealthiest people ever to serve in the elite US Navy Seals. Maybe we should talk for a moment about who he is and his background, because it has everything to do with the success of the company. Erik Prince comes from a very wealthy rightwing Christian dynasty in the town of Holland, Michigan. His father was a man named Edgar Prince, who was a sort of pull-yourself-up-by- your-bootstraps capitalist. He built up an empire called the Prince Manufacturing Corp., and they manufactured auto parts, serviced the auto industry. And, in fact, what the company is perhaps best known for was for creating the now-ubiquitous lighted sun visor. So when you pull down the visor in your car and it lights up, that's the Prince family's invention. And it was a very profitable business. And so, young Erik Prince grew up in this very heady atmosphere that mixed the sort of free-market gospel with the literal Christian gospel. His family, they were strict Calvinists. And Erik Prince was political at a very early age and watched as his father used his company as a cash-generating engine to fuel the rise of what we now know as the religious right in this country, as well as the Republican Revolution of 1994. His father gave the seed money to Gary Bauer to found the Family Research Council. Young Erik Prince was in the first crop of interns to serve at the Family Research Council. They gave significant funding to James Dobson and his group Focus on the Family, which is now sort of the premier evangelical organizing network in this country, the “prayer warriors.” And what’s interesting is that Erik Prince’s sister Betsy married into another powerhouse Michigan family, perhaps the single greatest bankroller of the Republican Revolution: Dick DeVos’s Amway Corporation. Erik Prince's sister married Dick DeVos, the heir to the Amway fortune. And Amway was a company that sold home services products and sort of was accused of running the operation like a cult and using their marketers to not only sell their products, but to sell their political agenda, the rise of the sort of Christian right and Republican Revolution. And so, this marriage of these two families was sort of typical of the merging of the monarchist families in old Europe. And so, Erik Prince grew up in this atmosphere, where his family was a real power player in what would become the Republican Revolution of 1994. Erik Prince interned in George H.W. Bush's White House, but he complained that it wasn't conservative enough for him on gay issues, on the balanced budget, on the environment. He also was an intern for the conservative California Congressman Dana Rohrabacher, a man who, after leaving Reagan’s staff as an advisor and speechwriter, went over to join the Mujahideen in Afghanistan before beginning his congressional term. And so, Erik Prince -- AMY GOODMAN: To fight the Soviets. JEREMY SCAHILL: To fight the Soviets, and he -- you know, he bragged of having gone over there to stand alongside the freedom fighters, those very freedom fighters now being the ones who have declared war on the Bush administration and, you know, that the Bush administration claims to be at the center of the so-called war on terror. So those were the early days of young Erik Prince. And then he went on to join the US Navy Seals. And I don't think he wanted to leave the Navy Seals, but his father died in 1995, and his wife had cancer, and it became no longer an option to be a Navy Seal. Prince had been in Bosnia. He had been in Haiti. He had served in the Mediterranean. And so, he sort of came home in the mid-’90s to help the family sort through its affairs and to also take care of his ailing wife. And the family ended up, after much deliberation, selling Prince Manufacturing for a little less than $1.5 billion in cash, and Erik Prince took his political experience, his religious commitment and the experience he gained from watching his father become a major operator in politics and business, and opened Blackwater. And he teamed up with several other former Special Forces guys, and Blackwater was founded on the principle of anticipating accelerated government outsourcing of training and firearms-related training, and so that's how Blackwater began. It was supposed to be like a sportsman's paradise/training center in the wilderness of North Carolina. c. Here's another interview done in January/07 done right after GWB's State of the Union address when he brings up the idea of "a volunteer civilian reserve corps"... http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl? sid=07/01/26/1559232 Some cut and paste re: Blackwater being a dream come true for neocons: AMY GOODMAN: What do you mean, the “life's work”? JEREMY SCAHILL: Well, Dick Cheney, when he was Defense Secretary under George H.W. Bush during the Gulf War, one of the last things he did before leaving office was to create an unprecedented lucrative market for the firm that he would go on to head, Halliburton. He commissioned [a] Halliburton [division] to do a study on how to privatize the military bureaucracy. That effectively created the groundwork for the absolute war profiteer bonanza that we’ve seen unfold in the aftermath of 9/11. I mean, Clinton was totally on board with all of this, but it has exploded since 9/11. And so, Cheney, after he left office, when the first Bush was the president, went on to work at the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute, which really led the push for privatization of the government, not just the military. And then, when these guys took office, Rumsfeld's first real major address, delivered on September 10, 2001, he literally declared war on the Pentagon bureaucracy and said he had come to liberate the Pentagon. And what he meant by that -- and he wrote this in an article in Foreign Affairs -- was that governments, unlike companies, can't die. He literally said that. So you have to figure out new incentives for competition, and Rumsfeld said that it should be run more like a corporation than a bureaucracy. And so, the company that most embodies that vision -- and they call it a revolutionary in military affairs. It’s a total part of the Project for a New American Century and the neoconservative movement. The company that most embodies that is not Halliburton; it’s Blackwater. AMY GOODMAN: Explain what you understand happened on Tuesday: President Bush giving his address, the Blackwater helicopter crashing. JEREMY SCAHILL: Well, I think a lot of people -- even though I think there’s been a lot of reporting on it and it’s been out in the public sphere, I think a lot of people still would be surprised to know that the US ambassador in Iraq and US diplomats throughout Iraq and US diplomatic facilities and regional occupational offices are actually guarded by mercenaries. And Blackwater has a $300 million contract to provide diplomatic security. And so, they guard Zalmay Khalilzad and other US diplomats in Iraq. While what we understand -- and, of course, as you know, reports are always very shaky in the early stages -- is that a US diplomatic convoy came under fire in a Sunni neighborhood of Baghdad, and a Blackwater helicopter apparently landed to try to respond to that attack, because Blackwater and its “Little Bird” helicopters provide the security for diplomatic convoys, and they got engaged in some kind of a firefight on the ground, and four men from one helicopter were killed. Then another helicopter responded and was brought down, either by fire or it got tangled in some wires. Four of the five men who worked for Blackwater that were killed were shot in the back of the head, according to reports. And what’s interesting about this is that Zalmay Khalilzad said that he had traveled with the men and then said that he had gone to the morgue to view their bodies. And he said that the circumstances of their death were unclear, because of what he called the “fog of war.” But I think it’s very possible that they were guarding a very senior diplomat, if not Zalmay Khalilzad himself. I mean, we don't have evidence to suggest that, but the fact that Khalilzad really came out forward and said, These were fine men. I was with them and visited them in the morgue, indicates that it could have been a very serious attack on a senior official. AMY GOODMAN: What do you think is the actual body count in Iraq of US soldiers? I mean, we count them very carefully, you know, when it surpassed 3,000. This was extremely significant. What really is the number of US military dead? JEREMY SCAHILL: Military dead is -- I mean, I think it’s interesting, because the lines have totally been erased. I would say that we should be counting the deaths of Blackwater soldiers in the total troop count. I mean, I filed over the last year a lot of Freedom of Information Act requests, and one of the ways that we have found to discover the deaths of the number of contractors that have been killed is actually through the Department of Labor, because the government has a federal insurance scheme that’s been set up, which is actually very controversial -- grew out of something called the Defense Base Act -- and it’s insurance provided to contractors who service the US military abroad. And so, as of late last year, more than 600 families of contractors in Iraq had filed for those benefits. So I think we’re talking somewhere in the realm of -- and these are just US contractors that have rights to federal benefits inside of the United States. Remember, it’s not necessarily Americans that make up the majority of these 100,000 -- 100,000 -- contractors that are operating in Iraq right now, 48,000 of whom are mercenaries, according to the GAO. So I don't think it’s possible to put a fine point on the number of troops killed, because the Bush administration has found a backdoor way to engage in an undeclared expansion of the occupation by deploying these private armies. And at the State of the Union address the other night, Bush announces this civilian reserve corps, which is gaining momentum among Democrats and others. Wesley Clark has talked about it, the former presidential candidate and Supreme Allied NATO Commander. But what that is is another Frankenstein scheme that Cheney and these guys cooked up in their outsourcing laboratory to engage in an undeclared expansion. I mean, on the one hand, we have Bush talking about an official US troop surge. The Army said -- a few months ago, when Colin Powell said that the active-duty Army is basically broken, the Army was calling for 30,000 troops over ten years. Bush then announces in his State of the Union 92,000 active-duty troops over five years, and at the same time, they're increasing the presence of the mercenaries, increasing the presence of the other contractors, talking about some privatized or civilian reserve corps. This is all an undeclared expansion of the US occupation, totally against the will of the American people and the world. AMY GOODMAN: Civilian reserve corps? JEREMY SCAHILL: Right. That's what they're calling it. And, you know, I mean, a lot of what has been tossed around about this since 2002 has been envisioning a sort of disaster response, international aid. You know, it’s all very benign- sounding, but the context of it, when Bush announced it the other night, he said we need 92,000 troops and we should develop a civilian reserve corps to supplement the work of the military. Now, what’s interesting, Amy, is that two years ago Erik Prince, the head of Blackwater USA, was speaking at a military conference. He only comes out of his headquarters to speak in front of military audiences. He does not speak in front of civilians. He's on panels with top brass and others. He’s very secretive. He gave a major address in which he called for the creation of what he called a “contractor brigade.” And I actually -- I can read you what he said. He said -- this is two years ago, before Bush called for his civilian reserve corps. Erik Prince, head of Blackwater USA: “There’s consternation in the [Pentagon] about increasing the permanent size of the Army. We want to add 30,000 people.” And they talked about costs of anywhere from $3.6 billion to $4 billion to do that. Well, by my math, that comes out to about $135,000 per soldier. And then, Prince added, “We could do it certainly cheaper.” And so, now you have Blackwater, the Praetorian Guard for the war on terror, itching to get into Sudan. You know, something happened last year that got no attention whatsoever. In October, President Bush lifted sanctions on Christian Southern Sudan, and there have been reports now that Blackwater has been negotiating directly with the Southern Sudanese regional government to come in and start training the Christian forces of the south of Sudan. Blackwater has been itching to get into Sudan, and Erik Prince is on the board of Christian Freedom International, which is an evangelical missionary organization that has been targeting Sudan for many years. And there is a political agenda that Blackwater fits perfectly into, whether it’s Iraq and Afghanistan or Sudan. AMY GOODMAN: And the other connections, Jeremy Scahill, between Blackwater and the Bush administration and the Republican Party? JEREMY SCAHILL: The most recent one is that President Bush hired Blackwater's lawyer -- Blackwater’s former lawyer to be his lawyer. He replaced Harriet Miers. His name is Fred Fielding, of course, a man who goes back many decades to the Reagan administration, the Nixon administration. He is now going to be Bush's top lawyer, and he was Blackwater's lawyer. Joseph Schmitz, who was the former Pentagon Inspector General, whose job it was to police the war contractor bonanza, then goes on to work for one of the most profitable of them, is the vice chairman of the Prince Group, Blackwater’s parent company, and the general counsel for Blackwater. Ken Starr, who’s the former Whitewater prosecutor, the man who led the impeachment charge against President Clinton, Kenneth Starr is now Blackwater's counsel of record and has filed briefs for them at the Supreme Court, in fighting against wrongful death lawsuits filed against Blackwater for the deaths of its people and US soldiers in the war zones. And then, perhaps the most frightening employee of Blackwater is Cofer Black. This is the man who was head of the CIA’s counterterrorism center at the time of 9/11, the man who promised President Bush that he was going to bring bin Laden's head back in a box on dry ice and talked about having his men chop bin Laden’s head off with a machete, told the Russians that he was going to bring the heads of the Mujahideen back on sticks, said there were going to be flies crawling across their eyeballs. Cofer Black is a 30-year veteran of the CIA, the man who many credit with really spearheading the extraordinary rendition program after 9/11, the man who told Congress that there was a “before 9/11” and an “after 9/11,” and that after 9/11, the gloves come off. He is now a senior executive at Blackwater and perhaps their most powerful behind-the- scenes operative. AMY GOODMAN: And electoral politics? JEREMY SCAHILL: Well, Erik Prince, the head of Blackwater, and other Blackwater executives are major bankrollers of the President, of Tom DeLay, of Santorum. They really were -- when those guys were running Congress, Amy, Blackwater had just a revolving door there. They were really welcomed in as heroes. Senator John Warner, the former head of the Senate Armed Services Committee, called them “our silent partner in the global war on terror.” Erik Prince’s sister, Betsy DeVos, is married to Dick Devos, who recently lost the gubernatorial race in Michigan. But also, Amy, this is a family, the Prince family, that really was one of the primary funders. It was Amway and Dick DeVos in the 1990s, and it was Edgar Prince and his network -- Erik Prince's father -- that really created James Dobson, Focus on the Family -- they gave them the seed money to start it -- Gary Bauer, who was one of the original signers to the Project for a New American Century, a major anti-choice leader in this country, former presidential candidate, founder of the Family Research Council. He credits Edgar Prince, Erik’s father, with giving him the money to start the Family Research Council. We’re talking about people who were at the forefront of the rightwing Christian revolution in this country that really is gaining steam, despite recent electoral defeats. And what’s really frightening is that you have a man in Erik Prince, who is a neo-crusader, a Christian supremacist, who has been given over a half a billion dollars in federal contracts, and that's not to mention his black contracts, his secret contracts, his contracts with foreign friendly governments like Jordan. This is a man who espouses Christian supremacy, and he has been given, essentially, allowed to create a private army to defend Christendom around the world against secularists and Muslims and others, and has really been brought into the fold. He refers to Blackwater as the sort of FedEx of the Pentagon. He says if you really want a package to get somewhere, do you go with the postal service or do you go with FedEx? This is how these people view themselves. And it embodies everything that President Eisenhower prophesied would happen with the rise of an unchecked military-industrial complex. You have it all in Blackwater
Thanks for clearing that up. This is a man who espouses Christian supremacy, and he has been given, essentially, allowed to create a private army to defend Christendom around the world against secularists and Muslims and others, and has really been brought into the fold. He refers to Blackwater as the sort of FedEx of the Pentagon. He says if you really want a package to get somewhere, do you go with the postal service or do you go with FedEx? HOLY SHIT!
"The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes nor between parties either — but right through the human heart." — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
robin: Thanks for clearing that up. LOL! Well perhaps I used too strong language to describe Erik Prince's Protestant religious affiliation BUT I'm weary of hearing journalists using the Catholic Church as their personal punching bag. They never criticize Jews. They rarely criticize Muslims. But Catholics - oh yes, let's go for it - nobody in the MSM has any problemo whatsoever to do a hit on Catholics - like who's going to support a Church that let sexual abuse of teen boys to happen under its nose, right?
I know Joe Schmitz. He was in my Naval Reserve unit. Joe Schmitz is one Catholic extremist. And I say that although I'm a pretty conservative, traditionalist Catholic myself.
To reason, indeed, he was not in the habit of attending. His mode of arguing, if it is to be so called, was one not uncommon among dull and stubborn persons, who are accustomed to be surrounded by their inferiors. He asserted a proposition; and, as often as wiser people ventured respectfully to show that it was erroneous, he asserted it again, in exactly the same words, and conceived that, by doing so, he at once disposed of all objections. - Macaulay, "History of England," Vol. 1, Chapter 6, on James II.
I've read that Bush's Memorandum of Notification of Sept. 17, 2001, which was apparently the original authorization for the torture, was drafted for him by the CIA. I would guess Cofer Black played a central role in the drafting.
To reason, indeed, he was not in the habit of attending. His mode of arguing, if it is to be so called, was one not uncommon among dull and stubborn persons, who are accustomed to be surrounded by their inferiors. He asserted a proposition; and, as often as wiser people ventured respectfully to show that it was erroneous, he asserted it again, in exactly the same words, and conceived that, by doing so, he at once disposed of all objections. - Macaulay, "History of England," Vol. 1, Chapter 6, on James II.
And I say that although I'm a pretty conservative, traditionalist Catholic myself. aristeides, you must be a self-loathing Catholic... chuckle, chuckle ...now where have I heard that similar phrase before?...scratching of head...
How can anyone think that what's going on now in the ME is good for Christendom? Maybe he has other reasons.
"The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes nor between parties either — but right through the human heart." — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
I just got this email from Alice Cherbonnier-- Greetings-- At http://freedom4um.com/cgi-bin/readart.cgi?ArtNum=48898, the discussion thread shows contributors believe Erik Prince, founder of Blackwater, is not Catholic, as stated in the book review I wrote now posted on your site. Prince is, in fact, Catholic, having converted from Protestantism to Catholicism as a young adult. This point is clearly made in Jeremy Scahill's book. Could you please make a note to that effect, or post this comment? (I attempted to register, but there appears to have been a delay of some kind-could not get in to post a comment.) Thanks! Alice Cherbonnier
Their oath is as real as any other's...PJ Buchanan has been stealing votes for years before Diebold came along...
Army warns of 'jurisdiction gap' for criminal contractors "Contractors accompanying U.S. military forces in Iraq or elsewhere who commit crimes may be beyond the reach of law enforcement...because the Defense Department has not yet updated its regulations to conform to a Congressional mandate, resulting in a 'gap' in legal jurisdiction," wrote Steven Aftergood, the project's director. The presentation of the Combined Arms Support Command's Training Division noted that liability and accountability for contractors is often set in advance. But in some cases, Army law may not apply. "A gap may emerge where the contractor personnel are not subject to the UCMJ (only in time of declared war) and the contractor commits an offense in an area that is not subject to the jurisdiction of an allied government (for example, an offense committed in enemy territory). In such cases, the contractor's crime may go unpunished," the explanatory notes say.
Good of Alice to weigh in with straight skinny. I wonder if Erik married a Catholic who wanted him to convert "for the kids" sake?
So, Blackwater operatives can literally negotiate the inland waterways from their practice area in Lake Drummond (in the Great Dismal Swamp) all the way to DC and pull off the coup if the traitorous Dems don't do the right thing. Their rubber assault boats will easily traverse the Dismal Swamp Canal (from Elizabeth City to Norfolk) or the Chesapeake Albermarle Canal (if deeper draft and wider right of way is required) then they can scoot through the Elizabeth River to the Chesapeake Bay and to the Potomac, with naval refueling stops all the way of course. The friendlies involved will have the same plausible deniability as one of the spooks being interrogated at the end of the film ENEMY OF THE STATE. He said, "I thought it was an STO-Standard Training Op...."
Ironic that the bad guys in "Jerico" [CBS] is a government merc contractor called Ravenwood, who rapes , robs and murders civilians after the nuking of America for their own profit and entertainment, all with military weapons and hardware that us poor sots may not own. These assholes are NOT the good guys and never will be. Think otherwise at your peril.
Law Enforcement Against Prohibition Yup.
That's what crossed my mind too. But if that happened it doesn't strike me that it would have happened while he was a "young adult." No offense to Alice but a number of sources identify Erik Prince as being a Calvinist Protestant like his Dad and raised in the Christian Reformed Church religious tradition. Furthermore Erik Prince received his pre-college education at Holland Christian School, not a Catholic parochial school, as one might think would be the case if he converted to Catholicism as a young adult. And he chose to attend a liberal arts non-denominational college called Hillsdale College ( originally founded by Baptists) not a Jesuit college - I'm sure with his family's $ Erik could have attended a place like Northwestern. The nndb info lists Erik as a "Born Again Christian." http://www.nndb.com/people/926/ 000117575/ Also sourcewatch identifies Erik Prince as a "billionaire right-wing fundamentalist Christian"... http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php? title=Blackwater_USA And Chris Hedges on truthdig ID's Erik Prince as a fundie not a Catholic. http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20061231_chris_hedges_americas_holy _warriors/ He's also identified as being a member of the Christian Coalition on the this YouTube clip from the film "Iraq for Sale" http://devos.wordpress.com/2006/10/20/blackwater-usas-erik-prince-dick- devos- brother-in-laws-in-arms/ Erik's dad, Edgar, helped Gary Bauer establish the Family Research Council. and as a college student, Erik was one of the first interns at the Family Research Council in Washington, which seems odd to me if he was a Catholic convert. Even today Erik is a board member of the FRC. Also he's a board member of for Christian Freedom National, another Christian right org. I'm not seeing any affiliations that he has with the Knights of Columbus or high profile Catholic league, as one might expect if he converted to Catholicism. Erik Prince's deceased wife's maiden name was Joan Keating and there's a Karl Keating Catholic apologist - I'm not sure if she was in any way related. Joan Nicole Keating Prince died on June 14, 2003 of breast cancer leaving behind 4 kids. She was diagnosed while pregnant with the 4th. They were married for 12 years and he has since remarried and added 2 other children to the Prince family line. Here's some good stuff about Erik Prince's background and company: http://www.newsobserver .com/512/story/172333.html Good info about his family and youth and religious affiliation and Calvinistic values. No mention of Catholicism. Erik's big on this org though - evangelical leanings: http://www.christianfreedom.org Also an informative 6 part series here: http://content.hamptonroads.com/story.cfm? story=108003&ran=206428 "Blackwater: profitable patriotism And an interview with Erik Prince and his photo here: http://content.hamptonroads.com/story.cfm? story=107985&ran=89575 Here's a reference to her/their association with the lay Catholic evangelizing ministry - Catholic Answers Inc - I read it was started up by a lawyer called Karl Keating in the 1980's but I'm not real familiar with these types of edgey apostolic lay ministries that are not connected with a for real RC church. http://www.catholic.co m/newsletters/kke_030429.asp Here's a write up in the Nat'l Review from a girlfriend of Joan Prince: http:// www.nationalreview.com/symposium/symposium200603080944.asp "March 08, 2006, 9:44 a.m. Women the World Should Know" International Women’s Day, NRO’s way. Ann Corkery The ideal woman at the utopian United Nations would have to be a woman with political power. So Hillary Clinton should probably be the U.N. poster child. Yet, in the same way that the U.N.'s attempts to help the hungry with the Oil- for-Food program ended up a foul-smelling mess, so too their ideals for womanhood are impoverished. Hillary was once described as "brittle." Funny, but I always figured the ideal woman would be soft — soft and friendly and understanding. One of the greatest women I have ever known was Joan Prince. She never really had a career, yet that didn't stop her from being a great force for the good. She would give of herself generously in every relationship, so that everyone felt they were her closest, dearest friend. The love she had for others was infectious. "Don't you just love Beth?" she would ask. And you'd decide that you did, even if you hadn't really thought about it before. She admired her husband so much, we couldn't help but think of him as some sort of hero. She literally gave her life for her children. She found out she had breast cancer during one of her pregnancies, and when the doctor told her euphemistically that he needed to "interrupt" the pregnancy, she jokingly asked him when she could resume it. As her precious body nourished her unborn baby, it also allowed the cancer to flourish. She spent the last days of her life writing soft, feminine, intelligent advice to her girls. "Always wear skirts if you can because men love it." "Smile when you don't know what to say." "Always remember, I'll be your angel watching you from heaven." — Ann M. Corkery has served as a representative to the United Nations at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations. Now you all get to know waaaaay more than you'd ever want to know about "Erik." Enjoy!
Outstanding research - thank you.
Oh good, for a minute I was afraid he was related to Derek Prince, a radio preacher who was unusual but very decent (e.g. a pacifist who drove an ambulance during WWII).
"The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes nor between parties either — but right through the human heart." — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Blackwater merits being singled out for attention because of its leaders' well-placed political, social, and religious connections, and its founder Erik Prince's immense wealth and Catholic extremist connections.
#2. To: robin, bluedogtxn, Burkeman1, Brian S, leveller, christine, aristeides, Diana, AGAviator, All (#1)
He's a Catholic?
#3. To: scrapper2 (#2)
Erik Prince is not Catholic. Erik Prince is a holy roller christonutter just like his dad.
#4. To: robin (#3)
scrapper: Erik Prince is not Catholic. Erik Prince is a holy roller christonutter just like his dad.
#5. To: robin (#1)
#6. To: Brian S (#0)
J. Cofer Black, former chief of the CIA's counterterrorism division, joined Blackwater as vice president in 2005. He is believed to have started the post-9/11 rendition program.
#7. To: aristeides (#5)
I know Joe Schmitz. He was in my Naval Reserve unit. Joe Schmitz is one Catholic extremist.
#8. To: aristeides (#5)
Joseph E. Schmitz, the scandal-ridden former Pentagon Inspector General during the first years of the Iraq war, is a member of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta. Says Scahill, Schmitz "comes from one of the most bizarre, scandal-plagued, right-wing political families in U.S. history," and the facts back him up. Schmitz left the Pentagon in 2005 to take job as Blackwater's Chief Operating Officer and General Counsel.
It's actually creating a large migration out of the ME into Europe/UK/US.
#9. To: scrapper2, Brian S, robin, aristeides, Writer (#7)
Managing Editor
Baltimore Chronicle
#10. To: robin (#8)
(Edited)
Sovereign Military Order of Malta
“Yes, but is this good for Jews?"
#11. To: christine (#9)
“Yes, but is this good for Jews?"
#12. To: christine (#9)
#13. To: Brian S, Indie TX, christine, Zipporah, robin, rowdee, Diana, Jethro Tull, lodwick (#0)
Blackwater USA is prominent among many companies that provide "contract security" personnel for governments, corporations and wealthy individuals. It began in 1987 by offering advanced military training at its 7,000-acre main training facility in Moyock, North Carolina, near the Great Dismal Swamp, and has rapidly expanded. It is now doing business on a global scale, with its operations horizontally and vertically integrated to cover just about any imaginable security need.
#14. To: HOUNDDAWG, ALL (#13)
In a CorporoFascist capitalist society, there is no money in peace, freedom, or a healthy population, and therefore, no incentive to achieve these.
- - IndieTX
"Peace? There's no money in peace! What we need is a war!"
--Three Stooges
#15. To: IndieTX (#14)
#16. To: lodwick, christine, Brian S, robin, aristeides (#12)
I wonder if Erik married a Catholic who wanted him to convert "for the kids" sake?
#17. To: scrapper2 (#16)
#18. To: scrapper2 (#16)
Erik's dad, Edgar
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