During the Democratic primary battle, blasting the private security firm Blackwater USA as a bunch of unaccountable trigger-happy mercenaries was an easy crowd pleaser – particularly after the September 2006 Nisoor Square incident and a subsequent congressional report that stated the company’s use of force was “frequent and extensive”.
Hillary Clinton announced she was sponsoring legislation banning the use of private security contractors. Barack Obama didn’t sign up to this and would not rule out using Blackwater and its ilk. But he made clear his disdain for the outfit, trumpeting in Iowa City last October his proposal for “tougher government reforms than any other candidate in this race – reforms that would eliminate the kind of no-bid contracts that this administration has given to Blackwater”.
He added: “Most contractors act as if the law doesn’t apply to them. Under my plan, if contractors break the law, they will be prosecuted.”
In Pennsylvania in March he stated that “we have to crack down on private contractors like Blackwater, because I don’t believe they should be able to run amok and put our own troops in danger and get paid three or four times or ten times what our soldiers are getting paid”.
So who do you think protected Obama and his fellow senators Jack Reed and Chuck Hagel during their recent and much ballyhooed congressional delegation trip to Afghanistan? Yep, that’s right – Blackwater.
In his Washington Whispers column, the well-connected Paul Bedard reports that Obama was overheard saying that “Blackwater is getting a bad rap”. A fairly startling alleged observation given his previous utterances about the company – though perhaps unsurprising given he was in a war zone and his life was in the hands of Blackwater guards.
A tight-lipped Anne Tyrrell, spokeswoman for Blackwater, said she could neither confirm nor deny that the company had been involved in the visits by the senators to Afghanistan or Iraq. My request to Bill Burton, Obama’s national spokesman, for comment on the Bedard story – including whether the alleged quote or its sentiment was genuine – went unanswered.
But a source familiar with Obama’s security arrangements told me that Blackwater, along with the Secret Service, did pull security for the three senators in Afghanistan, though not Iraq.
Deceiver describes this as Obama’s “Rosie O’Donnell moment” That’s maybe a tad harsh but it will be interesting to see whether Obama’s public position on Blackwater changes as a result of his up-close time with their personnel in Afghanistan.During the Democratic primary battle, blasting the private security firm Blackwater... more
The Justice Department intends to drop manslaughter and weapons charges against one of the Blackwater Worldwide security guards involved in a deadly 2007 Baghdad shooting, prosecutors said in court documents Friday.
The shooting in busy Nisoor Square left 17 Iraqis dead and inflamed anti-American sentiment abroad. It touched off a string of investigations that ultimately led the State Department to cancel the company's lucrative contract to guard diplomats in Iraq.
Iraqis have said they're watching closely to see how the U.S. judicial system handles the five men accused of unleashing an unprovoked attack on civilians with machine guns and grenades.
"The Justice Department intends to drop manslaughter and weapons charges against one of the Blackwater Worldwide security guards involved in a deadly 2007 Baghdad shooting, prosecutors said in court documents Friday.
The shooting in busy Nisoor Square left 17 Iraqis dead and inflamed anti-American sentiment abroad. It touched off a string of investigations that ultimately led the State Department to cancel the company's lucrative contract to guard diplomats in Iraq."
In my post, 'Blackwater Approved Secret Payments to Iraq After Shootings', I'm on record stating these guys will get off, but you don't have to be a genius to know that...just informed.
The New York Times reports that top executives at Blackwater Worldwide authorized secret payments of about $1 million to Iraqi officials that were intended to silence their criticism and buy their support after Blackwater security guards fatally shot 17 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad in 2007.The New York Times reports that top executives at Blackwater Worldwide authorized... more
"On November 10th, former Blackwater Worldwide executives admitted to secretly approving $1 million in bribes to Iraqi officials to silence criticism and purchase support after 17 civilians were fatally shot in Baghdad in September 2007.
So when I woke up this morning, I flipped through the morning news cycle, and what did I find?
Fox News had a new ACORN video they wanted to break.
Really. I couldn't make this up. This story lasted nearly 10 minutes and there was no reporting on the Blackwater scandal.
There was not a single mention of Blackwater or Xe, the company's new name, at any point the day after the story broke, according to transcripts. In fact, according to reports, Fox News Sunday spent a considerable amount of time discussion a photo of President Obama bowing before Japanese Emperor Akihito while failing to mention the Blackwater story even once.
Conversely, Fox News Sunday spent a total of 18 minutes discussing the ACORN tapes after Fox News broke that story in September.
Glen Beck has spent no time discussing the Blackwater case, while dedicating countless hours to ACORN coverage over the course of a few months. This pattern is reflected throughout the network.
Blackwater, which has been paid $1.4 Billion by the U.S. government since 2004, was denied an operating license by the Iraq government in March of 2009 in light of mass public outcry against the group after the Nisur Square shootings.
From the New York Times:
"At midday on Sept. 16, 2007, a Blackwater convoy opened fire on Iraqi civilians in the crowded intersection, spraying automatic weapons fire in ways that investigators later claimed was indiscriminate, and even launching grenades into a nearby school. Seventeen Iraqis were killed and dozens more were wounded."
Now, four former employees have admitted that Gary Jackson, Blackwaters president at the time, approved a series of bribes totally $1 million- that's $1 million of American tax dollars- to be paid to Iraqi officials to keep them in good favor.""On November 10th, former Blackwater Worldwide executives admitted to secretly... more
Despite news reports that the security contractor formerly known as Blackwater has seen its contracts dry up and its influence wane, the company continues to do brisk business in Iraq and Afghanistan -- and the Obama administration may be too afraid of the firm to do anything about it, says investigative reporter Jeremy Scahill.Despite news reports that the security contractor formerly known as Blackwater has... more
Top executives at Blackwater Worldwide authorized secret payments of about $1 million to Iraqi officials that were intended to silence their criticism and buy their support after a September 2007 episode in which Blackwater security guards fatally shot 17 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad, according to former company officials.
Blackwater approved the cash payments in December 2007, the officials said, as protests over the deadly shootings in Nisour Square stoked long-simmering anger inside Iraq about reckless practices by the security company’s employees. American and Iraqi investigators had already concluded that the shootings were unjustified, top Iraqi officials were calling for Blackwater’s ouster from the country, and company officials feared that Blackwater might be refused an operating license it would need to retain its contracts with the State Department and private clients, worth hundreds of millions of dollars annually.
Four former executives said in interviews that Gary Jackson, who was then Blackwater’s president, had approved the bribes and that the money was sent from Amman, Jordan, where the company maintains an operations hub, to a top manager in Iraq. The executives, though, said they did not know whether the cash was delivered to Iraqi officials or the identities of the potential recipients.
Blackwater’s strategy of buying off the government officials, which would have been illegal under American law, created a deep rift inside the company, according to the former executives. They said that Cofer Black, who was then the company’s vice chairman and a former top C.I.A. and State Department official, learned of the plan from another Blackwater manager while he was in Baghdad discussing compensation for families of the shooting victims with United States Embassy officials.
Alarmed about the secret payments, Mr. Black cut short his talks and left Iraq. Soon after returning to the United States, he confronted Erik Prince, the company’s chairman and founder, who did not dispute that there was a bribery plan, according to a former Blackwater executive familiar with the meeting. Mr. Black resigned the following year.
Stacy DeLuke, a spokeswoman for the company, now called Xe Services, dismissed the allegations as “baseless” and said the company would not comment about former employees. Mr. Black did not respond to telephone calls and e-mail messages seeking comment.
Reached by phone, Mr. Jackson, who resigned as president early this year, criticized The New York Times and said, “I don’t care what you write.”
To stifle criticism of civilian killings, the American mercenary group formerly known as Blackwater approved payoffs of up to $1 million for Iraqi politicians, according to former company officials who spoke to The New York Times.
In August, a former Marine and former Blackwater employee filed sworn affidavits linking company founder Erik Prince to murders and prostitution.
The statements also say that Prince and Blackwater executives were involved in illegal weapons smuggling and had, on numerous occasions, ordered incriminating documents, e-mails, photos and video destroyed. Prince has since resigned -- however, he did not dispute the bribery allegations when confronted by Blackwater's vice chairman at the time, according to one of the whistleblowers quoted by the Times.
The Iraqi government ultimately revoked the mercenary group's operating license after the Nisour Square massacre, which left 17 civilians dead. Five Blackwater guards were charged for the killings. In spite of this, Blackwater's security apparatus continued to operate in the country for two years after it was banned.To stifle criticism of civilian killings, the American mercenary group formerly known... more
Top executives at Blackwater Worldwide authorized secret payments of about $1 million to Iraqi officials that were intended to silence their criticism and buy their support after a September 2007 episode in which Blackwater security guards fatally shot 17 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad, according to former company officials.Top executives at Blackwater Worldwide authorized secret payments of about $1 million... more
"WASHINGTON — Top executives at Blackwater Worldwide authorized secret payments of about $1 million to Iraqi officials that were intended to silence their criticism and buy their support after a September 2007 episode in which Blackwater security guards fatally shot 17 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad, according to former company officials."
More at the link.
In light of this controversy, the company has switched its name to Xe and still gets government contracts as mercenaries, only they don't use the new name in the articles, so you don't make the connection.
The 5 Blackwater guards on trial still haven't had their names released and due to the contracts that they sign with the gov't, they have immunity anyway, so they're gonna get off."WASHINGTON — Top executives at Blackwater Worldwide authorized secret payments of... more
"KBR, the largest contractor in Iraq, is pulling out of that country so slowly that it could end up costing American taxpayers $193 million more than expected, according to a new Pentagon audit.
Furthermore, during a hearing Monday by the Commission on Wartime Contracting, a legislative body set up to study contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan, Commissioner Charles Tiefer said the company’s plodding exit from Iraq could cost even more — up to $300 million.
One reason it’s hard to pin down how fast KBR and other contractors are withdrawing from Iraq is that the Defense and State departments and the Agency for International Development — the three agencies employing the most contractors in the Middle East — can’t agree on how many contract employees they have.
Tiefer released a list of the top contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan in late 2008 and early 2009. According to his list, KBR held four of the 10 largest defense contracts in Iraq, worth about $7 billion. Dyncorp was the largest State Department contractor, with four of the top 10 contracts.
“There’s no authority,” he said. “It’s good faith."
Blackwater retained two of the top 10 State Department contracts, worth $178.1 million. The government of Iraq revoked the company’s license to operate in Iraq last January after its employees were implicated in the killing of 17 Iraqi civilians."
Contractor=Mercenary. They take our tax money and shoot up villages, killing women and children. Then American soldiers get shot in retaliation, while these mercenaries are controlling the prostitution and drug rings. They make so much money exploiting war. There is no accountability while they rape and pillage and they never want it to stop. If the Taliban could pay them as much as we do, they'd come to America and start shooting us. No loyalty to country, just money."KBR, the largest contractor in Iraq, is pulling out of that country so slowly that it... more
The US government has no precise figure for how many contractors are employed in Iraq and Afghanistan, inviting the risk of fraud and security threats, a US commission warned on Monday.
"It is both peculiar and troubling that eight years after the overthrow of the Taliban regime, in Afghanistan, and more than six years since the overthrow of Baathist regime in Iraq, we still don't know how many contractor employees are working in the region," said Michael Thibault, co-chairman of the commission on wartime contracting.The US government has no precise figure for how many contractors are employed in Iraq... more
US Undersecretary of Defense Shay Assad, the Pentagon’s top contracting official, sent a memo to the commanders and directors of all branches of the military instructing them to cease all business with the embattled community organization ACORN and to take “all necessary and appropriate” steps to prevent future contracts with the organization. Assad’s brief memo [PDF] contained the two-page guidelines issued October 7 by Peter Orszag, the director of the Office of Management and Budget. Orszag’s guidelines were issued following the passage of Congressional legislation aimed at “defunding ACORN.”
Orszag’s guidelines were sent on October 7 to “the heads of Executive Departments and Agencies” and instructed them to “immediately commence all necessary and appropriate steps” to comply with the terms of the Defund ACORN Act. These include: no future obligation of funds, suspension of grant and contract payments and no funding of ACORN and its affiliates through Federal grantees or contractors. “Your agency should take steps so that no Federal funds are awarded or obligated” to ACORN, wrote Orszag.
While the DoD memo sent by Assad is basically a formality initiated by Orszag’s guidelines to all federal agencies, it is nonetheless remarkable given that ACORN is not a Defense Department contractor. According to an ACORN spokesperson, the group has not received Pentagon funds, nor has the community group even considered applying for such funds. “Of course we were hoping to win the contract to build the B-1 bomber, but we didn’t get that one,” says Brian Kettering, ACORN’s Deputy Director of National Operations, sarcastically. “This is all just silly, but the travesty here is that once again the witch-hunt against ACORN continues while there is a total neglect of [the misconduct] of the likes of Blackwater and Halliburton.”
More @ linkUS Undersecretary of Defense Shay Assad, the Pentagon’s top contracting official,... more
JUDGE Ricardo M. Urbina of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia has been holding closed-door hearings this week in the case of five Blackwater security contractors accused of gunning down unarmed Iraqi civilians. A reporter from The Post learned of the hearings, which appear not to have been listed on the public docket; Judge Urbina declined the newspaper's request to lift the secrecy order.
As The Post's Del Quentin Wilber reported, Judge Urbina explained that he needed to close the hearings to prevent witnesses and prospective jurors from getting wind of the information likely to arise in these hearings. The judge also said he was obligated to prevent public disclosure of secret grand jury testimony.Saturday, October 17, 2009
JUDGE Ricardo M. Urbina of the U.S. District Court for... more
"A federal judge Wednesday blocked the public from attending a critical set of pretrial hearings in the prosecution of five U.S. security contractors accused of killing 14 unarmed Iraqi civilians in a 2007 shooting.
The hearings, which are expected to last through Friday, will examine whether the government improperly used immunized statements by the Blackwater Worldwide security guards in its investigation. The guards gave the statements to the State Department shortly after the controversial shooting Sept. 16, 2007, in a busy Baghdad square.
U.S. District Judge Ricardo M. Urbina said Wednesday that he was closing the hearings because he wanted to shield witnesses and potential jurors from pretrial publicity. He also cited concerns about the disclosure of grand jury material. Urbina said he wanted to ensure the guards received a fair trial.
The five guards -- Paul Slough, Nicholas Slatten, Evan Liberty, Dustin Heard and Donald Ball -- are charged with voluntary manslaughter and weapons violations in the killing of 14 civilians and the wounding 20 others. The Justice Department alleges that the guards unleashed an unprovoked attack on Iraqi civilians in Nisoor Square while in a convoy. One guard, Jeremy P. Ridgeway, has pleaded guilty and is expected to testify against the others.
Blackwater, which has since renamed itself Xe, had a contract to provide security for the State Department in Iraq.
The proceedings underway in the District's federal court, known as Kastigar hearings, will probe how well investigators gathered evidence without being tainted by those immunized statements. If the judge finds the government's case is tainted, he might be forced to throw out the indictment."
Fair trial? Throw out the indictment?
Contractors are mercenaries under a contract, hence the name, and part of the contract is that they cannot be prosecuted for crimes that the average American soldier would be under United States and International Law. Essentially, the have immunity.
So, when Blackwater, Xe, Executive Outcomes, Halliburton, KBR, BAE Systems have their mercenaries shoot up villages and revel in the plunder of heroin and prostitutes, American soldiers get hit with the retaliation, and in the case of Afghanistan, they're about to hit back real hard. Think Vietnam was bad? Wait til he Taliban start their "Tet Offensive."
These "peacekeepers" are now patrolling the streets of the US as part of an international police force. Google 'G20 police pittsburgh' and click on images. Remember, contractor=mercenary and they have no allegiance to the United States or the Constitution. They work under a different contract and they get private trials."A federal judge Wednesday blocked the public from attending a critical set of... more
The U.S. terror war as seen through the eyes of a prisoner
When we first began corresponding with Khalid Awan in 2007, we had no idea why he was serving time in U.S. federal prison. We soon discovered Awan was one of the first of thousands of Muslims taken prisoner in the post-9/11 U.S. “terror war.” As the story began unfolding in our letters, we began to realize that this honest, humble and sincere man was not only innocent, but the ongoing injustice being done to him provides critical insight into the mindless, meanspirited, bureaucratic-yes-men idiocy fueling the illegal U.S. “war on terror” (and just about everything else that is going wrong in this country). At our insistence, Awan wrote his story and supplied us with whatever documents we requested. And now, after three months of cooperative efforts, the story of Khalid Awan can be told. We have come to know Awan as a peaceful man engaged in peaceful work who has been wrongfully accused, detained and repeatedly convicted of crimes he did not commit because he was a Muslim with international connections and an office in New York on 9/11. We present this to you in faith that you will realize a deeper understanding of the levels of complicity necessary for the “land of the free” to tolerate the phony war on terror year after year and in hope that Awan—and all the other million or more political prisoners being held by this country—will one day be reunited with their families.
Khalid Awan # 50959-054
USP Marion
P.O.BOX : 1000
Marion, IL 62959
USA http://www.freekhalidawan.com/, http://blogs.amnesty.org.uk/blogs_entry.asp?eid=3759, http://awankhalid.com/, http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=60600467317The U.S. terror war as seen through the eyes of a prisoner
When we first began... more
Attorney General orders secretive paramilitary group to turn over all its records
The plans of American Police Force to boss the $27 million dollar detention center in Hardin Montana as well as expand their presence across the country while training foreign troops inside the U.S. could be mothballed after Montana’s Attorney General launched an investigation and demanded the organization turn over all its records.
The investigation was prompted by the revelation yesterday that APF founder “Captain” Michael Hilton is a career criminal and a convicted fraudster who has operated under no less than 17 different aliases. Hilton, a native of Montenegro, was sentenced to 6 years in jail in 1993 for “Such schemes you cannot believe,” according to Joseph Carella, an Orange County, Calif. doctor, namely a dozen counts of grand theft. Hilton has defrauded numerous different individuals to the tune of $1.1 million dollars over the past 20 years.
APF’s plans to construct another facility in Hardin that will train international paramilitary forces also looks doomed following intense media scrutiny of the organization’s shady dealings with local authorities and their probable violation of article 2 section 33 of the Montana Constitution.
Judging by the reaction of Attorney Becky Convery, who negotiated the original deal between Hardin authorities and APF, the contract to man the detention center and build the training facility could be torpedoed.
“Convery said Two Rivers director Greg Smith had a tentative deal with Hilton’s company to provide law enforcement service, but she said it was never finalized and she was uncertain whether it would be legal,” reports the AP.
“We are not at all pleased with American Police masquerading as if they were the police for the city of Hardin,” she said.Attorney General orders secretive paramilitary group to turn over all its records... more
Now this just simply could not be made up in that Frankenstein laboratory where the cuckoos on the right wing cook up their witches brew of batshit crazy allegations to levy against Barack Obama. There are scores upon scores of issues where Obama should be rightly taken to task for continuing Bush-era “war on terror” policies, preemptively immunizing torturers, refusing to fight for Single Payer health care, hiring a team of hawks and neoliberal crooks to manage foreign policy and the economy, among many many others. At the same time, there are racist astroturf loons that appear to have recently landed on earth from planet Fiction and are navigating their way through the country, speaking in tongues, led by snakeoil salesmen like Glenn Beck.
But the headline in today’s Wall Street Journal Op-Ed by former senior White House advisor Karl Rove is in a category all its own: “Obama Can’t Outsource Afghanistan.” The article is ostensibly about how Obama is delegating decision making on everything from Afghanistan to the CIA/torture investigation to others:
Mr. Obama’s hands-off approach to the war seems to fit his governing style. Over the past year, he outsourced writing the stimulus package to House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey, washed his hands of Attorney General Eric Holder’s decision to reinvestigate CIA interrogators, and hasn’t offered a detailed health-care plan.
Um, excuse me Karl, how about outsourcing an entire war to politically connected war companies? Remember those eight years? While Rove may be using the term “outsource” in a general way, let’s remember this fact: never, ever in US history have more government and military activities been outsourced to private corporations than they were the day Bush and Rove left 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and Obama moved in. For Rove—or any Bush-era official—to have the audacity to blast anyone for outsourcing anything is like a bigger-scale version of Republican Senator David Vitter lecturing the losers exiting Scores “gentlemen’s club” about the moral evils of prostitution.
The real article that should come below a headline “Obama Can’t Outsource Afghanistan” would never be written by Rove. Such an article would denounce the actual scandal of Obama’s continuation of the Bush-Cheney-Rove policy of radically outsourcing the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to corporate criminals like Armor Group, DynCorp, Blackwater, KBR, Triple Canopy, Lockheed Martin and many, many others.
By Jeremy ScahillNow this just simply could not be made up in that Frankenstein laboratory where the... more
