Posted by Pam Spaulding October 2, 2007 in Uncategorized, Bush Admin, Crime, Iraq
This is what happens when BushCo contracts out his military misadventures. Your tax dollars are being burned on this:
Private security contractor Blackwater USA has had to fire 122 people over the past three years for problems ranging from misusing weapons, alcohol and drug violations, inappropriate conduct, and violent behavior, according to a report released Monday by a congressional committee.The North Carolina-based Blackwater has been paid over $800 million dollars by the State Department to perform security work. In the 15-page report detailing Blackwater's record, the firm had more shooting incidents that the other two security firms (Dyncorp, Triple Canopy) combined.That total is roughly one-seventh of the work force that Blackwater has in Iraq, a ratio that raises questions about the quality of the people working for the company.
Several investigations are already under way because of Blackwater's role in an incident on September 16 when 11 Iraqis were killed in a shoot-out involving Blackwater guards. The company claims the guards acted in self-defense; Iraqi witnesses said Blackwater rent-a-cops opened fire without provocation. Hearings are being planned.Previously undisclosed information reveals (1) Blackwater has engaged in 195 “escalation of force” incidents since 2005, an average of 1.4 per week, including over 160 incidents in which Blackwater forces fired first; (2) after a drunken Blackwater contractor shot the guard of the Iraqi Vice President, the State Department allowed the contractor to leave Iraq and advised Blackwater on the size of the payment needed “to help them resolve this”; and (3) Blackwater, which has received over $1 billion in federal contracts since 2001, is charging the federal government over $1,200 per day for each “protective security specialist” employed by the company.
24 Responses to “Bush’s miscreant mercenaries: Blackwater contractors canned for drugs, violence”
Leave a comment
Line and paragraph breaks automatic, e-mail address never displayed, HTML allowed: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <code> <em> <i> <strike> <strong>
Among the many questions I would want to ask the Democratic Presidential candidates, were I ever afforded the opportunity, is this: will you pledge to stop outsourcing force protection and State Department security to independent and unaccountable contractors like Blackwater? And why are we spending taxpayer money on companies motivated more by profit when it’s a job that the government should be doing on its own? Wouldn’t it be more fiscally responsible to give soldiers a pay raise, make it easier to recruit more of them, and turn that job over to them?
There’s a really cruel joke about libertarians and their precious free market in here somewhere, but I’m too horrified to come up with it at the moment.
Private military contractors are awesome! See, if one of them isn’t doing a good job, they’ll make less money by having to bribe their way out. Capitalism at its finest!
‘Lewd’ conduct…I’m remembering the rape of that 14 year old girl last year now.
i read that that $1200/day figure adds up to ~450k per person per year — about 7 times the salary of a member of our actual military. the whole deal is so fucking horrifying that it seems pretty trivial to pay attention to the dollars, but i’m thinking about it because you’d expect some of those “fiscal conservatives” to remember to act appalled at this too.
Hey, now–it’s a handy-dandy way of dealing with the problems of overextended forces and dwindling recruitment levels. The supply of money is quite infinite enough for these guys’ purposes, unlike the supply of bright-eyed young pups ready to get shot at for Liberty and Justice and Freedom. It makes perfect sense if you don’t care about the quality or accountability of the mercenaries, the sheer economic insanity of hiring mercs at far higher prices than your own soldiers, or what’ll happen when they start appearing on domestic assignments. (Didn’t that sort of thing contribute to the fall of the Roman Empire, by the way?)
Okay, here’s the definition of a mercenary according to The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.
It’s clear Blackwater employees engaged in combat who are citizens of any of the “coalition of the willing” countries are *not* mercenaries, per condition (d).
That being said, why the hell does nationality matter? Clearly the Blackwater soldiers meet all the other criteria and function as mercenaries.
Nationality matters because there are other ways to organize an army than the “standing, professional army” model that we’ve used until this conflict. The private armies of feudal lords aren’t technically “mercenaries,” for example, so if King George paid Lord Prince 50,000 pounds for the support of Prince’s Pikemen in a war, you’re looking at a fairly standard feudal arrangement for raising an army. Blackwater’s hiring is the modern, corporate version of that sort of transaction.
Of course, the world moved off of that sort of feudal arrangement for a damned good reason–”nobles with private armies” was a dangerous and stupid concept even in its time. Conservatives really like feudalism, though, so I suspect we’ll be seeing more of it.
The scariest part of this whole setup, in my opinion, is that most Iraqis quite understandably make no distinction between Blackwater mercenaries and U.S. military personnel. To them, it’s all “Americans.” So when a Blackwater employee does something swinish, from running an Iraqi off the road to shooting him, it stokes the hatred toward Americans in general.
Salon has some good articles today about Blackwater. This one about the ties between Blackwater and the Bush Republicans is especially infuriating.
You gotta love anyone who fires employees for the crime of having contracted PTSD while on duty……….. It’s just the sort of ethics I’ve come to expect.
Noted - background article from the Guardian.
I wonder what the four people who publicly embarrassed Blackwater did? Tell the truth?
The more things change, the more they stay the same. From Kipling’s “Recessional”:
Far-called, our navies melt away;
On dune and headland sinks the fire.
Lo! all our pomp of yesterday
Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!
Judge of the nations, spare us yet,
Lest we forget,–lest we forget!
If, drunk with sight of power, we loose
Wild tongues that have not thee in awe,
Such boasting as the Gentiles use
Or lesser breeds without the law,–
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget,–lest we forget!
For heathen heart that puts her trust
In reeking tube and iron shard,
All valiant dust that builds on dust,
And guarding, calls not Thee to guard,
For frantic boast and foolish word —
Thy mercy on Thy People, Lord!
Orwell reminds us (in his essay “Rudyard Kipling”) that the line does not refer to the “natives”, but rather those modern nations who act lawlessly in support of a supposed superiority. Kipling erred in meaning just the Germans (and thus exempting the British) from that scathing brush, but the truth behind it remains the same: one cannot act in an uncivilized fashion, without law or restraint, and still call oneself civilized without bathing in hypocricy.
#
You gotta love anyone who fires employees for the crime of having contracted PTSD while on duty……….. It’s just the sort of ethics I’ve come to expect.
I’m surprised they only list one. Apparently Blackwater hires a lot of former US military personnel. And people from New Orleans and Iraq report them firing in the general direction of any noise that frightens them. So you see, from Blackwater’s point of view, the poor little things always act defensively and shun aggression.
Our Future Overlords.
“I America, company terminates Blackwater personell! In Iraq, Blackwater personell terminate you….”
And the writeups are spurring the astroturfd infowars.
I got some of that to my second Blackwater post at Majiksthise.
A Charles van Someren, who has some affilitation with the Institute for World Politics (lots of Scaife-like support, but no actual Scaife money, Tierney is paid by them, and they just did/are doing a seminar on PMCs… they are good, dontcha know) did some classic, “corrective” writing; linking to the site Josh Marshall mentioned this afternoon.
When I said one wonders at someone who feels the need to fluff Blackwater I was told it was, “someone who wants to counter the liberal spin some bloggers are spouting.
He’s not, so far, come back to answer my reply. Big surprise. You’d think he’d cover his tracks better.
And the writeups are spurring the astroturf infowars.
I got some of that to my second Blackwater post at Majiksthise.
A Charles van Someren, who has some affilitation with the Institute for World Politics (lots of Scaife-like support, but no actual Scaife money, Tierney is paid by them, and they just did/are doing a seminar on PMCs… they are good, dontcha know) did some classic, “corrective” writing; linking to the site Josh Marshall mentioned this afternoon.
When I said one wonders at someone who feels the need to fluff Blackwater I was told it was, “someone who wants to counter the liberal spin some bloggers are spouting.
He’s not, so far, come back to answer my reply. Big surprise. You’d think he’d cover his tracks better.
Not only has Blackwater been paid very well, but they have probably been involved with lots of black market activities. The combination of capital and might is very dangerous to our Republic. When Blackwater no longer has Iraq to shake down, they will turn their gaze inward and want to influence politics here at home. This is a professional gang of Brownshirts who will want to put their civil military training to good use for a nice retirement. We should insist Congress outlaw this type of business.
I think I see where tpx is going…
First Iraq, then detention centers on the Mexican border.
All I can say is that if you have a disaster in your area and you see a Blackwater vehicle in your area, consider yourself occupied. Resist to whatever degree of risk you are comfortable with. Graffiti their vehicles, or if you feel like dying, burn them.
Back in the 2000 Allison storm we had a limited National Guard presence. Mostly just the black (olive drab, but they look black against low clouds) heliocopters in Hermann Park airlifting out patients from flooded hospitals. The Guard never patrolled the streets and we were back to normal in a month.
Blackwater is a prototype occupation army. If they come tour home resist to whatever exten your conscience allows. But be careful. You’ve seen what they have done in Iraq.
Point of information here…
I can think of a million reasons why Blackwater sucks, but c’mon…what would you folks be saying if the employees who–let’s see here–misused weapons, abused drugs and alcohol, acted inappropriately or insubordinately or were hyperaggressive, or were caught lying were not fired? “ZOMG they’re above the law!!one”
This company shouldn’t have been hired–anyone with half a brain saw where the direction they were going to go. But this is kind of a weak argument, IMO.
Not only has Blackwater been paid very well, but they have probably been involved with lots of black market activities.
Wasn’t it Blackwater who got caught running a sex-slavery operation in Serbia? Or was it some other merc outfit?
That was DynCorp.