Jeremy Scahill: Blackwater's Private CIA (Mercenary Company Offers 'Services' To Fortune 500 Cos.)

[Hissyspit]

http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/87200

Blackwater's Private CIA
By Jeremy Scahill, The Nation. Posted June 9, 2008.

The notorious mercenary company now offers spy "services" to Fortune 500 companies, for the right price.

This past September, the secretive mercenary company Blackwater USA found its name splashed across front pages throughout the world after the company's shooters gunned down seventeen Iraqi civilians in Baghdad's Nisour Square. But by early 2008, Blackwater had largely receded from the headlines save for the occasional blip on the media radar sparked by Congressman Henry Waxman's ongoing investigations into its activities. Its forces remained deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan, and business continued to pour in. In the two weeks directly following Nisour Square, Blackwater signed more than $144 million in contracts with the State Department for "protective services" in Iraq and Afghanistan alone and, over the following weeks and months, won millions more in contracts with other federal entities like the Coast Guard, the Navy and the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center.

Blackwater's Iraq contract was extended in April, but the company is by no means betting the house on its long-term presence there. While the firm is quietly maintaining its Iraq work, it is aggressively pursuing other business opportunities. In September it was revealed that Blackwater had been "tapped" by the Pentagon's Counter Narcoterrorism Technology Program Office to compete for a share of a five-year, $15 billion budget "to fight terrorists with drug-trade ties." According to the Army Times, the contract "could include antidrug technologies and equipment, special vehicles and aircraft, communications, security training, pilot training, geographic information systems and in-field support." A spokesperson for another company bidding for the work said that "80 percent of the work will be overseas." As Richard Douglas, a deputy assistant secretary of defense, explained, "The fact is, we use Blackwater to do a lot of our training of counternarcotics police in Afghanistan. I have to say that Blackwater has done a very good job."

Such an arrangement could find Blackwater operating in an arena with the godfathers of the war industry, such as Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Raytheon. It could also see Blackwater expanding into Latin America, joining other private security companies well established in the region. The massive US security company DynCorp is already deployed in Colombia, Bolivia and other countries as part of the "war on drugs." In Colombia alone, US military contractors are receiving nearly half the $630 million in annual US military aid for the country. Just south of the US border, the United States has launched Plan Mexico, a $1.5 billion counternarcotics program. This and similar plans could provide lucrative business opportunities for Blackwater and other companies. "Blackwater USA's enlistment in the drug war," observed journalist John Ross, would be "a direct challenge to its stiffest competitor, DynCorp -- up until now, the Dallas-based corporation has locked up 94 percent of all private drug war security contracts." The New York Times reported that the contract could be Blackwater's "biggest job ever."

[peacetalksforall]

1. It is the privatization of the military and more. Perfect dictatorship.

Wear us down financially, spy on our every move in so that we will be totally trackable, change the Constitution, have their judges in the courts, and not have to ask a National Guard soldier to arrest his parents or asibling.

Soon the Blackwater employee-mercenaries will be a worldwide assortment of soldiers, possibly even Moslems or Christian Arabs, Africans, Asian, Hispanics. Making it easier to attack us since we won't be their own. There need be no language defeciencies as there has been for the CIA, FBI, State, and even the DOD. WE ARE THE ULTIMATE NUMBER ONE TARGET FOR CONTAINMENT. No protests. That will be the law. Especially if we let it happen, just as it has happened in other countries, other eras. However, they must keep us working so that we can pay for the mercenaries.

Want an example of a possibility? While our movement and transportability slows down, those unfilled motels for former family tourists will be used to house the mercenaries. Further, the properties could be taken as eminent domain or through planting drugs since the drug act allows our leaders to take anything. At some point our leaders will own us - the exact opposite of what we were taught about our leaders representing us.

Especially if we let it happen.