The dangerous process that placed Blackwater in Iraq killing civilians, trying to steal planes

[ProSense]

Blackwater wanted Iraqi military planes

Blackwater Attempted to Take Iraqi Military Aircraft Out of Iraq; Congress Wants Answers

RICHARD LARDNER
AP News

Oct 19, 2007 16:10 EDT

Blackwater USA tried to take at least two Iraqi military aircraft out of Iraq two years ago and refused to give the planes back when Iraqi officials sought to reclaim them, according to a congressional committee investigating the private security contractor.

Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, wants the company to provide all documents related to the attempted shipment and to explain where the aircraft are now.

In a letter sent Friday to Erik Prince, Blackwater's top executive, Waxman said he learned of the 2005 attempt from a military official who contacted the committee. That official is not identified in the letter, nor is the type of aircraft.

Waxman also is seeking a sweeping amount of information about Blackwater's business, including its contracts with the federal government, profits made since the company was founded a decade ago, Prince's personal earnings since 2001, and details about the payments to the families of Iraqis killed by Blackwater personnel.

Blackwater did not respond immediately to a request for comment on Waxman's letter.

more

Waxman's Letter to Blackwater CEO Erik Prince

October 21, 2007, 8:21 am

Childish and dangerous

Why State hired Blackwater: Rumsfeld wouldn’t provide troops:

A new executive order, signed in January 2004, gave State authority over all but military operations. Rumsfeld’s revenge, at least in the view of many State officials, was to withdraw all but minimal assistance for diplomatic security.

But they sat down to work it out, right?

Meetings to negotiate an official memorandum of understanding between State and Defense during the spring of 2004 broke up in shouting matches over issues such as their respective levels of patriotism and whether the military would provide mortuary services for slain diplomats.

Remember, however, the important point: if you noticed back then that these were crazy, dangerous people, you were shrill. To be respectable, you have to have waited until 2006 or so to turn on the Bushies.

more

Has there ever been an administration so clueless to potential consequences of their actions:

The dangers of using a private army are clear. Employees of various companies, including Blackwater, USA, have been charged to senseless killings, reckless killings, and just plain cold blooded killings. I hesitate to say they have participated in murders, because “murder” implies a legal regime where murder is a crime. These mercenaries seem to above the law.

The new mercenaries are not merely civilian employees of western contractors. They have also been hired by Department of State to be bodyguards for U.S. officials in Iraq, including the U.S. Ambassador to Iraq. Thus we have the odd, utterly peculiar situation. The United States government is hiring mercenaries who are not even under our legal authority, to do the job that our own military or federal law enforcement agencies should do. We have outsourced the protection of our more important diplomatic and civilian officials to hired guns.

This policy raises significant questions about the nature of our mission in Iraq. It also seems to be an implicit insult to our own military. Are the U.S. Marines – the traditional embassy guards – no longer able to protect our ambassador? Are the Marines and other forces spread so thin that they cannot spare troops to defend the U.S. embassy and its staff? Or is the nature of the Iraq adventure such that we do not want marines and soldiers in this kind of “harm’s way.” Rather, we want mercenaries who do not have to answer to U.S. law or military law, to protect the ambassador, so that the mercenaries can always shoot first and ask questions later, and not be subject to any legal sanctions.

Jefferson was right on the mercenary issue. Nation’s that fight their wars with mercenaries run the great risk of having their hired guns carry out “Works of Death, Desolation, and Tyranny” under “circumstances of Cruelty and Perfidy, scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous Ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized Nation.” Sadly, the more he sanctions the use of mercenaries, hired guns, and armed cowboys on helicopters, the more our Third President George begins to look like our nation’s first enemy, George the Third.

State Department Struggles To Oversee Private Army

The State Department Turned to Contractors Such as Blackwater Amid a Fight With the Pentagon Over Personal Security in Iraq

By Karen DeYoung
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, October 21, 2007; Page A01

Last Christmas Day in Baghdad, U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad received a furious phone call from Iraqi Vice President Adel Abdul Mahdi. An American -- drunk, armed, wandering through the Green Zone after a party -- had shot and killed one of his personal bodyguards the night before, Mahdi said. He wanted to see Khalilzad right away.

<...>

After consulting with the embassy's legal officer, Khalilzad identified the shooter as Andrew J. Moonen, an employee of Blackwater USA, the company that provides security for U.S. diplomats in Baghdad. But he would not deliver Moonen himself. Within 36 hours of the shooting, Blackwater and the embassy had shipped him out of the country.

<...>

But as with previous killings by contractors, the case was handled with apologies and a payoff. Blackwater fired Moonen and fined him $14,697 -- the total of his back pay, a scheduled bonus and the cost of his plane ticket home, according to Blackwater documents. The amount nearly equaled the $15,000 the company agreed to give the Iraqi guard's family.

Ten months later, however -- after Blackwater guards shot and killed 17 Iraqi civilians in a Baghdad traffic circle on Sept. 16 -- the State Department can no longer quietly manage the consequences of having its own private army in Iraq. The FBI is investigating the incident, Baghdad has vowed to overturn a law shielding contractors from prosecution, and congressional critics have charged State's Bureau of Diplomatic Security with failing to supervise Blackwater and other security companies under its authority.

more

[Kagemusha]

1. Actually, yesterday I found what put Blackwater in that position.

Rumsfeld cut off all but the most minimal military protection of State Department employees in revenge for losing out on dominion over all that unfolded in Iraq as if it was a private military colony. Naked, exposed, and unable to get real support from an angry Pentagon, the State Department took over Blackwater's military contract, with Blackwater's use of helicopters for urban combat and rescue being decisive in that choice.

[phaseolus]

2. The attempted military aircraft theft --

So ... are Prince, or Cofer Black, or any other Blackwater upper management known to be private pilots who collect military aircraft??

Just wonderin'.

[Cleita]

3. Not being a legal eagle or Constitutional scholar,

I'm hesitant to remark for sure, but it strikes me that private companies that hire mercenaries such as Blackwater were not what was meant in the Second Ammendment as a citizen's militia. Considering that Blackwater is rumored to hire nationals from other countries like Chile, it's hardly a citizen's militia. Also, we know we have rent-a-cop security companies that are hired by private enterprises and individuals, but should our government be doing the same without a vote from the people of the USA or at least their representatives?

[TahitiNut]

4. I gotta wonder how Colin Powell held his nose and went with Blackwater.

It's obvious there was no love lost between Powell and Rumsfeld. It undoubtedly had something to do (besides the fool he made of himself peddling the lies at the U.N.) with Powell's resignation.

[StClone]

5. I fear Black Water Reprisals

When Blackwater's international forces rival or exceed our Military and The Prince of War decides 'Merika needs a purging for the New Messiah and Savior (Prince himself) will there be any person understanding then why we should never hire (or even allow to exist in this country) mercenaries?

[Froward69]

6. Keep in mind

Blackwater is The GOP's answer to South Africa's Executive Outcomes. As Excutive outcomes did in Africa what the UN and other armies coulden't. bring peace and stability to whole regions. Because they are mercinarys the concept is deemed wrong. However Blackwater, bieng a homegrown merc army is tolerated by the GOP, State Dept and Defence Dept. Excutive Outcomes meanwhile are villified, banned from Iraq. Yet are truthfully, by far more honest, more effective, less expensive and no civillian casualties than Blackwater.

[ProSense]

7. I think the only thing to keep in mind is that the

U.S. shouldn't privatize the military.

Thanks to the corporate expertise of Barlow and others, Executive Outcomes' operations were cloaked behind a network of shadowy multinational holding entities, mining and oil companies, transportation, and security companies.<4> Together the entire structure engaged in the extraction of mineral and oil resources from the failed states where EO served its clients. The practice was referred to as "predatory capitalism" by Dr. Robert J. Bunker and Steven F. Marin.<4>

more

When researching EO, it must be understood that Eeben Barlow, its founder, was associated with the Civil Cooperation Bureau (CCB) which had expertise in setting up front-companies to circumvent sanctions against apartheid era South Africa. With the demise of apartheid, individuals such as Barlow redirected these and other skills for private enterprise purposes. As a result, EO is connected to a weblike structure of multinational holding entities, mining and oil companies, and security and air transportation groups which have purposefully been created to mask its operations, those of its allied firms, and the various individuals involved. This network engages in what could be termed a post-Cold war form of "predatory capitalism" by specializing in the extraction of mineral and oil resources from troubled and failed-states.

link

Nothing good comes of Blackwater-like companies.