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The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
Kidnappings, Torture and Big Money |
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July 23rd,
2008 - Blackwater is Here to Stay |
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Despite reports that the company is leaving the mercenary business,
Blackwater's future is secure By Jeremy Scahill The Guardian July 23rd, 2008 It seems that executives
from Blackwater Worldwide, the Bush administration's favourite hired guns in
Iraq and Afghanistan, are threatening to pack up their M4 assault rifles, CS
gas and Little Bird helicopters and go back to the great dismal swamp of
North Carolina whence they came. Or at least that's how it is being portrayed
in the media. This story broke on Monday,
when the Associated Press ran an article based on lengthy interviews with
Blackwater's top guns. Since then, the story has picked up considerable steam
and generated a tremendous amount of buzz online and in the press. After all,
Blackwater has long been a key part of the US occupation and has been at the
centre of several high-profile scandals and deadly incidents. Add to that its
owner's ties to the White House and the radical religious right in the US and
it is clear why this is news. On top of that, Barack Obama - a critic of
Blackwater - just completed a tour of Iraq, where he was touting his
withdrawal plan. Among the headlines of the
past 24 hours: "Blackwater plans exit from guard work",
"Blackwater getting out of security business", "Blackwater
sounds retreat from private security business", and "Blackwater to
leave security business". One blogger slapped this headline on his post:
"Blackwater, worst organisation since SS, to end mercenary work." Frankly, this is a whole lot
of hype. Anyone who thinks Blackwater
is in serious trouble is dead wrong. Even if - and this is a big if - the
company pulled out of Iraq tomorrow, here is the cold, hard fact: business
has never been better for Blackwater, and its future looks bright. More on
this in a moment. Back to the matter at hand.
Complaining that negative media attention and congressional and criminal
investigations are hurting business and that the Blackwater name had become a
catch-all target for anti-war protesters, the company's brass told the AP that
Blackwater was shifting its focus to its other areas of government
contracting, like law enforcement and military training, as well as
logistics. ''The experience we've had
would certainly be a disincentive to any other companies that want to step in
and put their entire business at risk,'' said Erik Prince, Blackwater's
reclusive, 39 year-old founder and owner. Company president Gary Jackson said
Blackwater has become like the "Coca-Cola" of war contractors, a
brand representing all private companies servicing the Iraq occupation.
Jackson charged the company had been falsely portrayed in the media, saying,
''If [the media] could get it right, we might stay in the business.'' All of this sounds a bit
like whining on a children's playground. Shame on journalists for not
recognising the noble work of the gallant heroes and patriots (who happen to
be paid much more than US troops and have not been subjected to any system of
law and who can leave the war zone any moment they choose) and forcing
Blackwater to consider abandoning its (very profitable, billion-dollar)
charitable humanitarian campaign in Iraq. Remember, according to Blackwater,
it is not a mercenary organisation. It is a "peace and stability"
operation employing "global stabilisation professionals". While they were at it,
Jackson and Prince should have blamed those wretched 17 Iraqi civilians who
had the audacity to step in front of the bullets flying out of Blackwater's
weapons in Baghdad's Nisour Square last September. After all, following those
killings, Erik Prince told the US Congress that the only innocent people his
men may have killed or injured in Iraq died as a result of
"ricochets" and "traffic accidents". If that is true,
Nisour Square might have been the most lethal jaywalking incident in world
history. As for the current hype, the
day after the AP story broke, Blackwater's long-time spokesperson Anne
Tyrrell was quick to clarify the matter. Blackwater, she said, has no
immediate plans to exit the security business. "As long as we're asked,
we'll do it," she said. Meanwhile, the US state department, which
renewed Blackwater's contract for another year in April, says it has received
no communication from the company indicating it is not going to continue on
in Iraq. "They have not indicated to us that they are attempting to get
out of our current contract," said undersecretary of state Patrick
Kennedy. As of 2005-2006, according
to the company, about half of Blackwater's business was made up of its
security work in places like Iraq, Afghanistan and post-Katrina New Orleans.
Today, Jackson says it is about 30%. ''If I could get it down to 2% or 1%, I
would go there," he said in the interview. Blackwater, like all
companies operating in US war zones, is following political developments very
closely. The company may be bracing for a possible shift in policy should
Obama win in November. Blackwater could be contemplating resignation before
termination. On the other hand, Obama has sent mixed messages on the future
of war contractors under his Iraq policy. While he has been very critical of
the war industry in general - and Blackwater specifically - he has also
indicated he will not "rule out" using private armed contractors at
least for a time in Iraq. Perhaps Blackwater has
already gotten what it needed from Iraq: over a billion dollars in contracts
and a bad-ass reputation, which has served it well. In May, Blackwater
boasted of "two successive quarters of unprecedented growth." Among
its current initiatives: - Erik Prince's private spy
agency, Total Intelligence Solutions, is now open for business, placing
capabilities once the sovereign realm of governments on the open market. Run
by three veteran CIA operatives, the company offers "CIA-type
services" to Fortune 1000 companies and governments. - Blackwater was asked by
the Pentagon to bid for a share of a whopping $15bn contract to "fight
terrorists with drug-trade ties" in a US programme that targets
countries like Colombia, Bolivia, Afghanistan and Uzbekistan. The New York
Times said it could be the company's "biggest job" ever. - Blackwater is wrapping up
work on its own armoured vehicle, the Grizzly, as well as its Polar Airship
400, a surveillance blimp Blackwater wants to market to the Department of
Homeland security for use in monitoring the US-Mexico border. On top of this, Blackwater
affiliate Greystone Ltd, registered offshore in Barbados, is an old-fashioned
mercenary operation offering "personnel from the best militaries
throughout the world" for hire by governments and private organisations.
It also boasts of a "multi-national peacekeeping programme," with
forces "specialising in crowd control and less than lethal techniques
and military personnel for the less stable areas of operation."
Greystone's name has been conspicuously absent in this current news cycle. At the end of the day, maybe
this is just a story, a whole lot of a hype and a dash of misdirection from a
pretty savvy company. Safe money would dictate that Blackwater plans on
continuing to be, well, Blackwater. Consider this. The other day
Blackwater president Gary Jackson told the AP: "Security was not part of
the master plan, ever." Interesting claim. It was in
fact Jackson himself who, back at the beginning of the Iraq occupation,
described his goal for Blackwater as such: "I would like to have the
largest, most professional private army in the world." External link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jul/23/usa.iraq |