Blackwater

Barack Obama is not trying to set up government death panels as the idiot Palin has told us, but he sure as hell is continuing to employ Blackwater Death Squads. I believe this to be the most dangerous, if not the most sinister development in American history. Comparisons between the state of our union and the collapsing Roman Empire are a dime a dozen, but when mercenaries begin to outnumber regular military, it becomes a threat and when the mercenaries have an objective which includes an evangelist theocracy, when they openly indulge in orgies, child prostitution, murder, destruction of evidence, illegal arms dealing, money laundering, tax evasion and armed mayhem with impunity while arrogantly refusing to allow congress to examine their books -- the threat demands that overused Roman comparison.

Such use of mercenary troops, immune from Congressional oversight and legal obligation, may or may not be unconstitutional, but it is, in my opinion, unconscionable.

The contract with Blackwater and its subsidiaries was set to expire in May, however the Obama administration has now decided to temporarily extend it through September, according to The Nation. Barack Obama needs to end this danger immediately. If we cannot raise sufficient troops to maintain our presence in Iraq and Afghanistan, we need to get out now, because the presence of heavily armed, privately owned military forces loyal to who knows whom in the United States may be the biggest threat to national survival since the Civil War.

Blackwater Christmas - not just a dream

I don't know what the spectators at the Armed Forces Bowl this New Years Eve will think when they see Blackwater mercenaries parachuting into the stadium as they did December 1st during halftime at the Sand Diego State/BYU game. Indeed, what will the Air Force team think when they see that those aren't our guys in the black uniforms? Are they staging an armed takeover or just displaying the awesome power of a private military?

I'm sorry to contradict Reagan the Great, but when someone shows up to help, I prefer that it would be someone from the legitimate government rather than armed representatives from a country without borders, or laws or accountability. I don't think it will be long, for instance, before the Bushists privatize the "War on Drugs" by giving license to companies like Blackwater to do all the things we won't allow the government to do ( like start a war in Columbia or Mexico or pour water up your nose or worse) and make no mistake, Blackwater has the vehicles, the helicopters, the ships and the intelligence division to allow them to accomplish most any mission, foreign or domestic, our next rogue president might consider to be too touchy to approach in a legal fashion.


If the next rogue president should be Mitt Romney, we can be assured that Blackwater head, Cofer Black, his chief adviser on counterterrorism, will have a lot to say about military affairs and military conduct and indeed he already has had. Romney's decision not to comment on torture was made with the advice of Black. Of course I'm sure Cofer Black's private army will be happy to accept more and better no-bid contracts from whichever idiot the American people choose to make things worse.

As Jeremy Scahill writes in The Nation,

"the Government is in the midst of the most radical privatization in history, and companies like Blackwater are becoming ever more deeply embedded in the war apparatus. Until this system is brought down, the world's the limit for Blackwater Worldwide. . ."

And what are the chances that this profitable enterprise will be brought down now that they have moved beyond the borders of brutal occupation and commercial espionage into retail sales of everything from 9mm pistols to baby clothes? Is the future a kind and degree of fascism unimaginable even in the Europe of the 1930's and 40's? Why not? With the country rallying behind thugs and idiots in blue pinstripes, what chance does freedom have?

Men in Black go back

Are we witnessing a new birth of testicularity in Iraq? It seems like Blackwater Security; the guys with the black helicopters and carte blanche to do as they will in Iraq are being kicked out by the Maliki government. The company that operates out of a secret and massive privately owned military base in North Carolina and charges enormous fees for shady operations free from any military code or oversight is accused of being involved in a Baghdad shootout that ended 8 lives.

The astonishing rise of Blackwater has been, in my opinion, one of the most frightening developments of the Bush administration. They rose from relative obscurity to being an enormous private army for hire after 9/11 - George Bush's private army paid for by the public, sometimes at a rate of over $100,000 per man as we saw when they were hired to police New Orleans. If we allow the free government of free Iraq to exercise a bit of freedom, the men in black may be back home for Christmas. What about your son or daughter, or father or cousin?

Onward Christian Soldiers

If all the outrages of the Bush administration were lined up end to end like the Great Wall of China, I think you'd be able to see a long dirty line from the moon.

It seems to be harder to see from the earth, thanks to many factors, like the haze of public indifference, the smokescreen of patriotic propaganda, the fog of bias and the opaque, pandering disfunctionality of the media, but a few people have started to notice Bush's other army, his private army of Christian soldiers, an army that prospers wildly as Bush's efforts surge - or at least the owners of that army prosper - big time.

I'm talking about Blackwater, of course; the worlds most powerful mercenary army, according to Jeremy Scahill's new book to be released March 21st. According to the blurb, Blackwater is

"the powerful private army that the U.S. government has made its Praetorian Guard for the 'global war on terror.' Blackwater has the world's largest private military base, a fleet of twenty aircraft, and 20,000 contractors at the ready. Run by a multimillionaire Christian conservative who bankrolls President Bush and his allies, its forces are capable of overthrowing governments, and yet most people have never heard of Blackwater."

Bush has shown little tolerance for the restraints that remain on presidential authority with regard to what he may do with the Armed forces yet he has no restraints, it seems, regarding this private SS, this elite corps whose mercenaries get paid far more than the soldiers we're told we're not supporting when we question the administration. I don't think any of our GI's are making the $350 per day that Bush's private army is said to be earning.

I have no idea if or how much out troops were demoralized when mercenaries were paid to guard Ambassador Paul Bremer when he was head of the US occupation of Iraq, or whether they were demoralized that Blackwater was paid nearly a thousand dollars a day for each man they supplied to do various duties normally performed by the National Guard and police in New Orleans after Katrina. I do have an idea how much the taxpayer was soaked for it: over $33 million for New Orleans alone and this while our wounded were being neglected by the VA and FEMA thrashed about like stranded fish at low tide, wasting more millions. I wonder how they feel about Blackwater. Maybe we shouldn't tell them. It might be demoralizing.

I find it demoralizing that in this country, in this time we can have a private army of such power and magnitude that is loyal only to the highest bidder and restrained by no law or treaty when operating abroad; demoralizing that we have a president I can't trust not to use that power as he sees fit and with disregard to the Constitution or the will of the governed. Can that government Blackwater is supposed to be capable of overthrowing be our own?