Minimizing the Blowback one step at a time?
According to U.S. sources what’s being said by the father is not what happened.
Tag: Blackwater
Dec 12 2009
Destroy, Destroy, Destroy: the Obama War Against Pakistan
I want to start with great interview with Webster Tarpley on Bonnie Faulkner’s show on KPFA. First a few things about Webster. He’s one of the more interesting minds (if you pardon that expression) writing and speaking about politics in the world. I’m impressed with erudition and he travels and knows the world very well. His flaw is that he builds a theory and then fits the facts to it. However, the theory he builds are very good and connect with the facts enough to make him very useful. He and Peter Dale Scott seem to understand what is going on as well as anyone. And Tarpley, who I disagree on a number of matters, did call the Obama fraud a fraud before anyone and thus I’m inclined to believe him — plus he wrote the definitive books on the Bush family and has put 9/11 in a firm historical context in his book 9/11 Synthetic Terror: Made in USA.
If you listen to the interview you will see, as most of us here suspect, that we are not in Afghanistan to save Aghani women from harm or to bring democracy or even defeat the Taliban or even “get” Bin Laden and Al-qaida. It is much more interesting and complex than that.
Dec 03 2009
Hessians Part II
You all remember Blackwater (now Xe) don’t you? And Erik Prince, Soldier of God?
Well, there’s been some web commentary on this Vanity Fair piece that is certainly worth looking at (not that it isn’t always worth stopping by emptywheel’s place).
Spy Versus Spy with Erik Prince
By: emptywheel Wednesday December 2, 2009 4:00 pm
Among the revelations emptywheel enumerates-
- He was tasked by the CIA to create a “small, focused capability”
- The CIA’s original assassination squad trained at his personal estate outside of DC
- Prince integrated third-party nationals into the assassination squad who did not know of the CIA connection
- He (personally) and a team of foreign nationals targeted someone in 2008
- He did the targeting on al-Qaeda middleman Abu Ghadiyah in Syria
- The CIA referred the stories on Blackwater to the DOJ for criminal investigation
This in addition to the ‘old’ news that Blackwater was given operational control of CIA Predator Drones and fired Hellfire Missiles at targets and that Blackwater was the Cheney assassination squad that Leon Panetta (Director of the CIA) and the Congress were lied to about by the CIA.
I’ll ask you to give her your eyeballs for a moment or two and if you like it you might also be interested in dday’s take.
Nov 25 2009
BOMBSHELL! Blackwater’s secret war in Pakistan exposed
Crossposted at Daily Kos
Can anybody explain why Bush/Cheney Accountability is NOT happening?
Jeremy Scahill blows the lid off “Blackwater’s Secret War in Pakistan” in an article just published in The Nation. This story brings together an amazing array of bad actors: Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Stanley McChrystal and Blackwater. It should come as no surprise, then, that the outcome of this team working together is a jaw-dropping tale of war crimes that continue to be carried out.
The entire story should be read . . . .
Bold text added by the diarist
Quotes from Scahill’s article, commentary and more below the fold, but I SERIOUSLY urge you to read Scahill’s article in it’s entirety first.
Nov 24 2009
Blackwater Never Goes Away
Blackwater now called Xe services has been a stain on America with its criminal behavior especially in Iraq yet they continue to receive contracts from the U.S. government.
At a covert forward operating base run by the US Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) in the Pakistani port city of Karachi, members of an elite division of Blackwater are at the center of a secret program in which they plan targeted assassinations of suspected Taliban and Al Qaeda operatives, “snatch and grabs” of high-value targets and other sensitive action inside and outside Pakistan, an investigation by The Nation has found. The Blackwater operatives also assist in gathering intelligence and help run a secret US military drone bombing campaign that runs parallel to the well-documented CIA predator strikes, according to a well-placed source within the US military intelligence apparatus.
The source, who has worked on covert US military programs for years, including in Afghanistan and Pakistan, has direct knowledge of Blackwater’s involvement. He spoke to The Nation on condition of anonymity because the program is classified. The source said that the program is so “compartmentalized” that senior figures within the Obama administration and the US military chain of command may not be aware of its existence.
Lawyer Hassan Jabi
was stuck in traffic when he heard Blackwater USA security contractors shout ‘Go, Go, Go.’ Moments later bullets pierced his back, he said Thursday from his hospital bed. Jabir was among about a dozen people wounded Sunday during the shooting in west Baghdad’s Mansour neighborhood. Iraqi police say at least 11 people were killed. […] ‘No one fired at them,’ Jabir said of the Blackwater guards. ‘No one attacked them but they randomly fired at people. So many people died in the street.
An innocent man along with many others who were killed or wounded all because they were in the path of a Blackwater convoy.
Then there is the case of a Blackwater who shot and killed an Iraqi security guard in the Green Zone in December of 2006
The private security company Blackwater admitted on Tuesday for the first time that one of its employees shot and killed an Iraqi guard inside the Green Zone in December. Blackwater removed its worker from Iraq on the next day before criminal charges could be filed. The case raises new questions about whether contractors can be held legally accountable for misconduct. Congressman Dennis Kucinich questioned Blackwater’s general counsel Andrew Howell during a Congressional hearing on the role of private contractors in Iraq.
The covert JSOC program with Blackwater in Pakistan dates back to at least 2007, according to the military intelligence source. The current head of JSOC is Vice Adm. William McRaven, who took over the post from Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who headed JSOC from 2003 to 2008 before being named the top US commander in Afghanistan.
The most infamous incident involving Blackwater and its security guards is the Noor plaza killings
Estate of Himoud Saed Abtan, et al. v. Prince., et al. was filed against Blackwater, the private military contractor whose heavily armed personnel opened fire on Iraqi civilians in Nisoor Square in Baghdad on September 16, 2007 by Iraqi citizens injured or the estates of those killed in Nisoor Square. The Defendants include Blackwater founder Erik Prince, U.S. Training Center, Inc. (formerly Blackwater Lodge and Training Center, Inc.), Blackwater Security Consulting LLC, GSD Manufacturing LLC (formerly Blackwater Targets Systems), Raven Development Group LLC, Greystone Limited, The Prince Group LLC, Total Intelligence Solutions LLC, and Xe Services LLC (formerly EP Investments LLC Blackwater Worldwide).
One of the concerns raised by the military intelligence source is that some Blackwater personnel are being given rolling security clearances above their approved clearances. Using Alternative Compartmentalized Control Measures (ACCMs), he said, the Blackwater personnel are granted clearance to a Special Access Program, the bureaucratic term used to describe highly classified “black” operations.
JEREMY SCAHILL of the Nation is the person most responsible for exposing Blackwater for what it really is a mercenary army contracted out to the U.S. government to help fight the supposed War On Terror when in fact they seem to be involved in illegal activities with little or no recourse for their victims.
Nov 17 2009
Is Blackwater behind the terror attacks in Pakistan?
You’d think a terrorist organization would welcome being responsible for terrorist attacks, wouldn’t you?
In fact, don’t terrorist organizations often claim responsibility for incidents that they had nothing to do with? Isn’t that how they gain cred? Isn’t their whole purpose of being to create “terror”?
Then why would the Taliban disvow responsibility for the recent attacks in Pakistan?
Taliban: Blackwater to blame for Pakistan attacks
The Pakistani arm of the Taliban has denied responsibility for a recent series of terrorist attacks in Pakistan, instead pointing the finger at Xe Services, the security contractor formerly known as Blackwater, as well as the country’s own security services.“The Tehreek-e-Taliban are not responsible for the bombings, but Blackwater and Pakistan’s spy agency are behind them,” said Pakistani Taliban spokesman Azam Tariq, according to a translation from Al-Jazeera English.
”The dirty Pakistani intelligence agencies, for the sake of creating mistrust and hatred among people against the Taliban, are carrying out blasts at places like the Islamic university, Islamabad, and the Khyber bazaar, Peshawar,” the Associated Press quoted Tariq as saying.
Just to refresh people’s memories, or maybe to inform them for the first time, there has been a long, incestuous relationship between Pakistan’s secret police, the ISI, and the Taliban. In fact, the Taliban would not have survived, or possibly even existed, without the support of the ISI over the years.
Also, there is a great deal of evidence that the ISI is, and has been, responsible for a great deal of “Islamic terrorism” over the years, and were even directly involved in 9/11:
Omar Sheikh, a British-born Islamist militant, is waiting to be hanged in Pakistan for a murder he almost certainly didn’t commit – of the Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in 2002. Both the US government and Pearl’s wife have since acknowledged that Sheikh was not responsible. Yet the Pakistani government is refusing to try other suspects newly implicated in Pearl’s kidnap and murder for fear the evidence they produce in court might acquit Sheikh and reveal too much.Significantly, Sheikh is also the man who, on the instructions of General Mahmoud Ahmed, the then head of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), wired $100,000 before the 9/11 attacks to Mohammed Atta, the lead hijacker. It is extraordinary that neither Ahmed nor Sheikh have been charged and brought to trial on this count. Why not?
Ahmed, the paymaster for the hijackers, was actually in Washington on 9/11, and had a series of pre-9/11 top-level meetings in the White House, the Pentagon, the national security council, and with George Tenet, then head of the CIA, and Marc Grossman, the under-secretary of state for political affairs. When Ahmed was exposed by the Wall Street Journal as having sent the money to the hijackers, he was forced to “retire” by President Pervez Musharraf. Why hasn’t the US demanded that he be questioned and tried in court?
You can easily look up the history of the ISI as it relates to the very existence of the Taliban and “Al Queda”.
Well, interestingly enough, just yesterday the LA Times published an article about how our very own CIA has funded the ISI over the years. And I mean funded it.
CIA says it gets its money’s worth from Pakistani spy agency
It has given hundreds of millions to the ISI, for operations as well as rewards for the capture or death of terrorist suspects. Despite fears of corruption, it is money well-spent, ex-officials say.
The CIA has funneled hundreds of millions of dollars to Pakistan’s intelligence service since the Sept. 11 attacks, accounting for as much as one-third of the foreign spy agency’s annual budget, current and former U.S. officials say.The Inter-Services Intelligence agency also has collected tens of millions of dollars through a classified CIA program that pays for the capture or killing of wanted militants, a clandestine counterpart to the rewards publicly offered by the State Department, officials said.
The payments have triggered intense debate within the U.S. government, officials said, because of long-standing suspicions that the ISI continues to help Taliban extremists who undermine U.S. efforts in Afghanistan and provide sanctuary to Al Qaeda members in Pakistan.
But U.S. officials have continued the funding because the ISI’s assistance is considered crucial: Almost every major terrorist plot this decade has originated in Pakistan’s tribal belt, where ISI informant networks are a primary source of intelligence.
The White House National Security Council has “this debate every year,” said a former high-ranking U.S. intelligence official involved in the discussions. Like others, the official spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject. Despite deep misgivings about the ISI, the official said, “there was no other game in town.”
The payments to Pakistan are authorized under a covert program initially approved by then-President Bush and continued under President Obama. The CIA declined to comment on the agency’s financial ties to the ISI.
U.S. officials often tout U.S.-Pakistani intelligence cooperation. But the extent of the financial underpinnings of that relationship have never been publicly disclosed. The CIA payments are a hidden stream in a much broader financial flow; the U.S. has given Pakistan more than $15 billion over the last eight years in military and civilian aid.
Congress recently approved an extra $1 billion a year to help Pakistan stabilize its tribal belt at a time when Obama is considering whether to send tens of thousands of additional troops to Afghanistan.
The ISI has used the covert CIA money for a variety of purposes, including the construction of a new headquarters in Islamabad, the capital. That project pleased CIA officials because it replaced a structure considered vulnerable to attack; it also eased fears that the U.S. money would end up in the private bank accounts of ISI officials.
Nov 11 2009
Blackwater bribes Iraqi officials with $1 million to buy their silence over crimes
Well, I’ll let the article just speak for itself:
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.
Why is this coming out now?
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.
Yeah, right, Cofer’s just a real nice guy, I’m sure his concerns were all about “doing the right thing”. Or maybe it was more like “staying out of jail”.
What a bunch of sleazebags:
Sep 27 2009
The pure hypocrisy of our pols on Acorn
Jeremy Scahill is, to my mind, the finest journalist working today. There are very few real journalists left, I could probably count them on one hand, and Scahill is simply on fire.
I wanted to share his latest, from his website where he simply destroys the whole notion of ACORN being any kind of a real scandal.
Here is the jist of his article:
How could any sane person put even the wildest allegations against ACORN up against the systematic misconduct and criminality of war corporations and gigantic multi-nationals?
This, considering the way the media has covered this, the way our politicians have such a terrible, palpable fear of any real Democracy that they all, including our complicit Democrats, have decided that Acorn is the real enemy and worthy of being punished, to the point where they are trying to pass legislation called “The Defund Acorn Act”.
If you just put ACORN up against Blackwater, the charges are absolutely ludicrous. Acorn received $53 million over 15 years, most of which went to support housing for low-income people. Blackwater has received over a BILLION in government contracts in the last few.
And check this out:
The GOP smear machine tries to link ACORN to prostitution. Beyond the hypocrisy of Republicans denouncing prostitutes (long history of using them), do they really want talk of prostitution? One former Blackwater employee recently stated in a sworn declaration that Blackwater owner Erik Prince “failed to stop the ongoing use of prostitutes, including child prostitutes, by his men.” Another former employee described “having young girls provide oral sex to Enterprise members in the ‘Blackwater Man Camp’ (in Iraq) in exchange for one American dollar.” (PDF links to these affidavits are here) Even if ACORN did provide inappropriate tax advice to a prostitute, is that really on the same level as this conduct being conducted on a huge US government contract? If you think these are just the allegations of disgruntled employees, read the Justice Department’s perspective on Blackwater’s crimes and how its men “specifically intended to kill” Iraqi civilians as “payback for 9/11.”
As Scahill notes in his previous work on the website, Where is the “Defund Blackwater Act”? Where, indeed? Supposedly Democratic and supposedly liberal and supposedly “for the people” Barack Hussein Obama has decided to keep using Blackwater until, well, god only knows how long. Yet what do we hear about in the press? How bad and terrible and corrupt Acorn is.
Nobody talks about defunding the real criminals, others of which are mentioned here:
Beyond the question of innocent until proven guilty, these questions must be asked of Democratic lawmakers who support this punitive legislation against ACORN: Where is your legislation to defund the companies whose men are indicted by actual, real life prosecutors for manslaughter; who are accused by the IRS of tax fraud and whose North Carolina compound has been raided by the ATF for possessing unauthorized, automatic weapons? What about the move to defund KBR, which has provided polluted drinking water to US troops and installed faulty electrical wiring that has resulted in the electrocution deaths of US soldiers? What about the move to defund the massive US-funded mercenary force DynCorp in Iraq, Colombia and Afghanistan? A company whistleblower alleged that in Bosnia he “witnessed coworkers and supervisors literally buying and selling women for their own personal enjoyment, and employees would brag about the various ages and talents of the individual slaves they had purchased.” What about defunding Armor Group, which employed security guards at the US embassy in Kabul who were throwing fraternity-style parties, complete with disgusting hazing of new recruits in the form of alcohol shots off of butt cracks and the fondling of genitals?
You really just need to read the whole thing. I can’t possibly do it justice in lame attempts to paraphrase. And read the rest of his stuff, too, give his site a visit. He’s amazing. We need hundreds of Jeremy Scahills in the world, sadly there is just one.
Aug 08 2009
Christian “Blackwater” values…
Selling children into prostitution
The latest horror show from the Blackwater saga illustrates how absolutely dangerous white supremacy is when empowered with federal dollars and the power to kill.
Instead of being run out of all civilized society, Erik Prince’s huge donations to the GOP earned him massive federal contracts and the backing of the US government as his employees raped children under the banner of an American flag.
White power politics is not a matter of free speech when used by the state as a tool of war. It is a war crime. Erik Prince is a war criminal…………..Rest Here
Aug 05 2009
Blackwater (Xe): Murder Inc.
Causing the Deaths and Maiming’s of our Soldiers in the Blowback, easing the recruitment of more insurgent fighters and support for same, and in the long term will cause the blowback of criminal terrorism anywhere, and done on our dime, we share the guilt of their actions even if these statements aren’t true!
Most of these mercs are ex-soldiers, yet for their good paydays they fought on an ideology completely uncaring of their brothers and sisters still serving!
Jun 14 2009
At What Cost?
The question above is asked on the site of the Commission on Wartime Contracting as to their recently released report.
Remember the meme at the beginning of the War Drum Beating and the easy certain Corporate “No Bid Contracts” in support of the Wars and Occupations: “They’re the only ones in the World who can do the organizing and work needed in support of our Military and the Coalition of Willing!”
Never mind they were connected by the hips to those beating the drums, never mind they were only paper pushers tens of thousands of miles away and sub-contracting out all the work, never mind the many issues of lost billions, shoddy work, bonuses, waste and corruption that almost instantly started coming to light and even with that they were given more, not even handshakes, just here ya go Pallets with Shrink wrapped Blocks of Cash, Millions and Billions, freshly printed and minted!!
Jun 06 2009
On Bill Moyers Journal tonight: Jeremy Scahill
On Bill Moyers Journal tonight, Jeremy Scahill, author of Blackwater, will be interviewed.
Link http://www.pbs.org/moyers/jour…
Scahill wants the United States to back up and examine its entire approach to foreign policy and, rather than analyze the number of troops to send to Afghanistan or replace the commander, ask whether the U.S. should have any troops there at all.