[thedoe]

On Tuesday, five employees of the private security firm Blackwater USA were killed in a violent Baghdad neighborhood. Hours later, President Bush used his State of the Union address to call on what some are calling an undeclared surge of private mercenaries in Iraq. Jeremy Scahill, author of the forthcoming
“Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army.”
was interviewed. His interview is most enlightening and can be read in its entirety by clicking here

a quote from the interview:
JEREMY SCAHILL: Blackwater is a company that began in 1996 as a private military training facility in -- it was built near the Great Dismal Swamp of North Carolina. And visionary executives, all of them former Navy Seals or other Elite Special Forces people, envisioned it as a project that would take advantage of the anticipated government outsourcing.

Well, here we are a decade later, and it’s the most powerful mercenary firm in the world. It has 20,000 soldiers on the ready, the world’s largest private military base, a fleet of twenty aircraft, including helicopter gunships. It’s become nothing short of the Praetorian Guard for the Bush administration's so-called global war on terror. And it’s headed by a very rightwing Christian activist, ex-Navy Seal named Erik Prince, whose family was one of the major bankrollers of the Republican Revolution of the 1990s. He, himself, is a significant funder of President Bush and his allies.

And what they’ve done is they have built a very frightening empire near the Great Dismal Swamp in North Carolina. They’ve got about 2,300 men actively deployed around the world. They provide the security for the US diplomats in Iraq. They’ve guarded everyone, from Paul Bremer and John Negroponte to the current US ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad. They’re training troops in Afghanistan. They have been active in the Caspian Sea, where they set up a Special Forces base miles from the Iranian border. They really are the frontline in what the Bush administration viewed as a necessary revolution in military affairs. In fact, they represent the life's work of Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld.
Well, Dick Cheney, when he was Defense Secretary under George H.W. Bush during the Gulf War, one of the last things he did before leaving office was to create an unprecedented lucrative market for the firm that he would go on to head, Halliburton. He commissioned [a] Halliburton [division] to do a study on how to privatize the military bureaucracy. That effectively created the groundwork for the absolute war profiteer bonanza that we’ve seen unfold in the aftermath of 9/11. I mean, Clinton was totally on board with all of this, but it has exploded since 9/11. And so, Cheney, after he left office, when the first Bush was the president, went on to work at the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute, which really led the push for privatization of the government, not just the military.

And then, when these guys took office, Rumsfeld's first real major address, delivered on September 10, 2001, he literally declared war on the Pentagon bureaucracy and said he had come to liberate the Pentagon. And what he meant by that -- and he wrote this in an article in Foreign Affairs -- was that governments, unlike companies, can't die. He literally said that. So you have to figure out new incentives for competition, and Rumsfeld said that it should be run more like a corporation than a bureaucracy. And so, the company that most embodies that vision -- and they call it a revolutionary in military affairs. It’s a total part of the Project for a New American Century and the neoconservative movement. The company that most embodies that is not Halliburton; it’s Blackwater.

This is a topic that affects us all.
It would benefit everyone to be informed. If you do not know about Blackwater Inc, you should.
It's your tax dollars that fund it. I am sure opinions will run the gamut.
http://www.democracynow.org/article..../01/26/1559232

[thedoe]

I hate to say I told you so, but if anybody here watched the news on CNN today, you will see what I am referring to.

Now, what was that about murder made to look like suicide?

[nvr]

Originally Posted by thedoe

I hate to say I told you so, but if anybody here watched the news on CNN today, you will see what I am referring to.

Now, what was that about murder made to look like suicide?

i did not get to see it, but i wish i had! which report are you referring to, i would like to see it, or read the article if i can find it?

was it CNN Headline News Channel or just CNN News Channel? who did the story?

[thedoe]

Originally Posted by nvr

i did not get to see it, but i wish i had! which report are you referring to, i would like to see it, or read the article if i can find it?

was it CNN Headline News Channel or just CNN News Channel? who did the story?

It was on CNN News all day. I am sure it will be a hot topic now:
If this is what they are reporting on CNN, imagine how much worse it really is.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/10/...ing/index.html
http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/10/02/bla...uja/index.html

[lindadanette]

Doe, I have thought this for a long time. It's like that woman who was handcuffed and died at the airport last week. This government stopped being "By the people, for the people" and is getting more and more oppressive and repressive by the hour. The Project for a New American Century has an agenda to eliminate the middle class and bring us to our knees. It's working. Manufacturing jobs are the lowest since the 1950's. Illegal immigrants (the lowest in the class system) are performing all of the tasks necessary to insure the comfort of the wealthy. We need to wake up and smell the coffee. We are becoming expendable and a nuisance to the "powers that be".

[thedoe]

Originally Posted by lindadanette

Doe, I have thought this for a long time. It's like that woman who was handcuffed and died at the airport last week. This government stopped being "By the people, for the people" and is getting more and more oppressive and repressive by the hour. The Project for a New American Century has an agenda to eliminate the middle class and bring us to our knees. It's working. Manufacturing jobs are the lowest since the 1950's. Illegal immigrants (the lowest in the class system) are performing all of the tasks necessary to insure the comfort of the wealthy. We need to wake up and smell the coffee. We are becoming expendable and a nuisance to the "powers that be".

Hi Linda
Just took a peak and noticed your post above from a while ago.
I agree, that incident with that woman (the daughter-in-law of a well know political activist IIRC)
was definitely a reminder of the new world order they are trying to get in place. I am all for a
new world order, but not one that is controlled by 1% of the population.
Hope you had a great thanksgiving. It's my favorite holiday.
Have a lovely weekend.
doe