I have long thought that this organization was nothing but a glorified attempt to pass of killing and mayhem as a legitimate capitolist enterprise, and we’ve certainly seen other Blackwater incidents in the past that didn’t do anything to dissuade me.
But this is like icing on the cake. How in the world does this group get to keep their $250 million contract, and why isn’t Erik Prince (and his fellow board members, execs, etc.) being brought up on criminal charges?
Blackwater Worldwide should be shut down, it’s people prosecuted, and the US should repudiate any notion of legitimacy for mercenary organizations. If something needs doing in Iraq (or anywhere else, for that matter) WRT guns, explosives, or other munitions being used against people (i.e. in a war/combat setting), it should be the US military doing it not some bunch of well-paid thugs.
The US military does training there, as do several other goverment agencies. They should be watched closely, but I don’t know that they should be entirely shut down. If the government had a problem with Blackwater they would have shut it down already.
Grand jury deliberations are supposed to be secret.
There’s a reason for this. “Investigating allegations” sounds awful, but in fact the grand jury hasn’t made any determinations about anything. We have no idea what sort of evidence has been adduced in support of the claims. It’s precisely why grand jury proceedings are supposed to be secret.
Blackwater, presumably, as a contractor of the U.S. government, already can ship all the weapons and ammunition its employees might need into Iraq by legitimate channels. Or, heck, buy them locally, it’s probably cheaper. Why would they smuggle weapons into Iraq?!
The “hidden in large sacks of dog food” doesn’t make any sense, either. Why would anybody be shipping dog food to Iraq? A bit for Embassy pets, perhaps, but not a lot.
Isn’t there some kind of agreement that’s coming up, and if it doesn’t come about, private contractors won’t be immune in Iraq? I think the U.S. is asking for things the Iraqis don’t want, and they’ve come to a kind of stalemate.
From everything I’ve read, the Iraqis are really pissed off by the military contractors, more than by the real military.
If Blackwater (and similar companies based in other countries) did not exist, the companies doing reconstruction in Iraq would have to arm their own employees. Would you prefer the convoys and jobsites be guarded by professional ex-military men, or by random taxi drivers and construction workers? I would think that untrained men who have never known either military discipline or the horrors of war would be more reckless and dangerous.
Not enough of them on the ground, I suppose, to protect foreign civilian contractors and do everything else they’ve got to do. Several generals advised Bush at the start of the war that it would take no less than 400,000 troops to police the country effectively. He ignored them and went in with less than half that number – 140,000, I believe – and the generals who gave that advice have since been cashiered.
It may be cheaper, because you don’t have to pay for their upkeep in peacetime. Or, it may ultimately be more expensive but we havn’t realized it yet because the cost-benefit analysis hasn’t been extensively looked at. Or, if you want to be a cynic, it may be because private military contractors have contributed substantially to presidential and congressional campaigns over the last ten years or so.
