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Monday, January 11, 2010

If Barack Obama is such a bleeding heart liberal, why is Blackwater about to get another contract?
Posted by Jill | 4:50 AM
Here's another reason we on the sane side of the political spectrum are exasperated with Barack Obama, and another reason we scratch our heads at this notion on the right that he's some kind of dirty fucking hippie pacifist:
Blackwater Worldwide's legal woes haven't dimmed the company's prospects in Afghanistan, where it's a contender for an important role in the U.S. strategy for stabilizing the country.

Now called Xe Services, the company is in the running for a Pentagon contract potentially worth $1 billion to train Afghanistan's troubled national police force. Xe has been shifting to training, aviation and logistics work after its security guards were accused of killing unarmed Iraqi civilians more than two years ago.

Yet even with a new name and focus, the expanded role would seem an unlikely one for Xe because Democrats have held such a negative opinion of the company following the Iraqi deaths.

During the White House campaign, then-Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, now President Barack Obama's secretary of state, backed legislation to ban Blackwater and other private security contractors from Iraq.

Xe eventually lost its license to operate as guardian of U.S. diplomats in Iraq. Clinton's State Department decided not to rehire the company when the contract expired in 2009. Delays in getting a new company in place led to a temporary extension of that contract.

A federal judge on New Year's Eve dismissed criminal charges against five of the Blackwater guards, citing repeated missteps by federal prosecutors. The Iraqi government has promised to pursue the case, a new strain on relations between the U.S. and Iraq.

Xe on Wednesday reached a settlement in a series of civil lawsuits in which dozens of Iraqis accused the company of cultivating a reckless culture that allowed innocent civilians to be killed. On Thursday, however, two former Blackwater contractors were arrested on murder charges in the shootings of two Afghans after a traffic accident last year.

Despite the scrutiny, the U.S. relies heavily on Xe (pronounced "zee") for support in Afghanistan; the workload may grow significantly.

STILL we're fighting wars with a largely mercenary army. STILL we're giving taxpayer money to the Christian Crusaders who run Blackwater/Xe. STILL we're trying to make war invisible to Americans by letting them keep their sons at home.

If Barack Obama thinks this is going to shut people like Rudy Giuliani and Dick Cheney up, he'd better guess again. What it WILL do is guarantee that the people who bought all that "hope and change" crap are going to sit on their hands when it comes time to decide to keep him in the White House.

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Monday, November 12, 2007

This is what will happen here when private contractors take over for local police
Posted by Jill | 1:43 PM
Yesterday I linked to an account of one man's experience with local police on Long Island after he was escorted out of a bookstore after WABC radio's programming director objected to questions he was asking of the station's hosts at a book signing. Although the police asking if the guy had been arrested before seems somewhat out of line, they did their job -- asking what happened before busting heads. "Dave from Queens"' decision to go to this book signing makes him a provocateur, to be sure, but being a provocateur is still legal. At least in this case, the police were civil servants and in theory at least, accountable to those whom they serve.

We've already seen what "private security" does under similar circumstances last year, when Mike Stark was assaulted by thugs "guarding" then-Senator George Allen. We also know that Blackwater mercenaries who patrolled New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina were authorized to use lethal force -- the same Blackwater that's been investigated for killing civilians in Iraq.

But Blackwater isn't the only company supplying mercenaries who kill at will. The latest name to hit the news is DynCorp:

An Iraqi taxi driver was shot and killed on Saturday by a guard with DynCorp International, a private security company hired to protect American diplomats here, when a DynCorp convoy rolled past a knot of traffic on an exit ramp in Baghdad, the Iraqi Interior Ministry said Sunday.

Three witnesses said the taxi had posed no threat to the convoy, and one of them, an Iraqi Army sergeant who inspected the car afterward, said it contained no weapons or explosive devices.

“They just killed a man and drove away,” Maj. Gen. Abdul-Karim Khalaf, an Interior Ministry spokesman, said in his office on Sunday afternoon. He added later, “We have opened an investigation, and we have contacted the company and told them about our accusations, and we are still waiting for their response.”

It was the latest in what the Iraqi government has said are unprovoked shootings on the streets of Baghdad by security companies hired by the State Department or contractors affiliated with it. On Sept. 16, guards with another of those concerns, Blackwater, opened fire a few miles south of Saturday’s shooting, killing 17 Iraqi civilians and wounding at least 24, according to Iraqi investigators.

The Iraqi government has accused Blackwater of involvement in at least six questionable shootings in Baghdad since September 2006. DynCorp has not drawn the same scrutiny, though it is unclear whether it has been involved in any other episodes in which Iraqis have been killed.

The shootings have stoked outrage among Iraqis, driven efforts to hold private security companies legally accountable for their actions in both the United States and Iraq, and created new challenges for American officials who were already forced to do much of their business within Baghdad’s protected Green Zone.


Why don't Americans care about this? Is it that we don't care what's done in our name as long as it means American young people aren't drafted into this war? Or is it that we really don't care that civilians are being killed because "our oil is under their sand?" Or is it that most Americans don't know what's happening?

We need to look at what these so-called "private security companies" are doing in Iraq, because you know damn well the next time there's a disaster here like there was in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the only law that will matter is the law that exists at the barrel of a gun held by a cop-for-hire.

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