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The Whores of War
America’s hired guns in Iraq have been called ‘the coalition of
the billing’, but Blackwater mercenaries are accused of more
than just taking the money. Investigations Editor Neil Mackay
examines the links between the security firm and the US
political elite
By Neil Mackay
09/29/07 "Sunday
Herald" -- -- EVEN FOR Blackwater, it was an
atrocity too far. If an Iraqi government report is to be
believed, Blackwater, a US mercenary company which is
unofficially the world's largest "for hire" private army,
indiscriminately and without provocation opened fire earlier
this month on civilians in a Baghdad street, killing at least 20
people.
Iraq immediately revoked the firm's licence to operate in the
country and moved to expel its staff and prosecute those
responsible for the shootings, but Blackwater's activities have
since resumed.
This coincides with the release of a US Embassy report on the
September 16 shooting, obtained by the Washington Post and
described by a State Department official as a "first blush"
account. It details the events, as given by Blackwater guards,
and has stirred controversy in Iraq and Washington and prompted
an inquiry into the role of Blackwater and other private
security firms in Iraq.
According to Blackwater, its mercenaries, known as mercs, were
guarding a diplomatic convoy when it came under fire. The Iraqi
government, however, insists there was no ambush and that
Blackwater troops fired at a car when it failed to stop.
"There was no shooting against the convoy," said Ali al-Dabbagh,
the Iraqi government spokesman. "There was no fire from anyone."
Dabbagh said that after opening fire on a couple and a child in
a car the guards "started shooting randomly". The family were
incinerated in the car.
It is not the first time Blackwater has been at the centre of
controversy. But what is Blackwater? Who owns it? And why would
the former soldiers working for it think they could get away
with murder in broad daylight?
Despite being implicated in several controversial killings, the
company is the Pentagon's most favoured contractor and has
effective diplomatic immunity in Iraq. Referred to as "the most
powerful mercenary army in the world", both the US ambassador to
Iraq and the army's top generals hold it in regard.
On Christmas Eve last year, a Blackwater employee allegedly shot
dead the bodyguard of one of Iraq's vice-presidents, Adel Abdul
Mahdi. The Blackwater employee had been drinking heavily in the
Green Zone and tried to enter an area where Iraqi officials
lived. After the killing, he left Iraq without facing
prosecution. In May this year, a Blackwater employee shot dead
an Iraqi civilian who was said to be driving too close to a
security convoy. The company insisted the guard acted lawfully.
The company, based near the Great Dismal Swamp in North
Carolina, was co-founded by Erik Prince, a billionaire
right-wing fundamentalist. At its HQ, Blackwater has trained
more than 20,000 mercenaries to operate as freelancers in wars
around the world. Prince is a big bankroller of the Republican
Party - giving a total of around $275,550 - and was a young
intern in the White House of George Bush Sr. Under George Bush
Jr, Blackwater received lucrative no-bid contracts for work in
Iraq, Afghanistan and New Orleans after hurricane Katrina. His
firm has pulled down contracts worth at least $320 million in
Iraq alone.
Jeremy Scahill, who wrote the book Blackwater: The Rise Of The
World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army, says when Bush was
re-elected in 2004, one company boss sent this email to staff:
"Bush Wins, Four More Years!! Hooyah!!"
One Blackwater employment policy is to hire ex-administration
big-hitters into key positions. It hired Cofer Black, a former
State Department co-ordinator for counter-terrorism and former
head of the CIA's counter-terrorism centre, as vice-chairman.
Robert Richer, a former CIA divisional head, joined Blackwater
as vice-president of intelligence in 2005.
Scahill says the firm is "the front line in what the Bush
administration views as the necessary revolution in military
affairs" - privatisation of as many roles as possible. Senator
John Warner, former head of the Senate armed services committee,
once called Blackwater the "silent partner in the global war on
terror".
Scahill went on to call Prince a "neo-crusader, a Christian
supremacist, who has been given hundreds of millions of dollars
in federal contracts this is a man who espouses Christian
supremacy, and he has been allowed to create a private army to
defend Christendom around the world. He refers to Blackwater as
the FedEx of the Pentagon. He says if you really want a package
to get somewhere, do you go with the postal service or do you go
with FedEx? This is how these people view themselves."
Although the company was set up in 1996, it wasn't until 2004
that the world really took notice of it. On March 31 that year,
four Blackwater mercs foolishly drove through Fallujah - an
insurgent stronghold. They were shot, hauled from their cars,
burned, mutilated, dragged through the streets and bits of their
bodies were hung from a bridge (dubbed the Blackwater Bridge).
At least 22 Blackwater mercs have died in Iraq. To date more
than 428 contractors working for more than two dozen firms have
died there.
In January this year, five Blackwater mercs died when one of the
firm's helicopters (Blackwater has a private fleet of 20 planes
and helicopter gunships) was shot down in Baghdad. It later
emerged that four of the five crew were found with
execution-style bullet wounds to the head. On April 21, 2005,
seven Blackwater mercs died in two separate attacks in Baghdad
and Ramadi.
The Fallujah murders turned Blackwater into a kind of patriotic
poster boy, with the war lobby portraying its mercs as heroes
fighting for America in the face of bloodthirsty killers. By the
end of 2004, Blackwater had grown by 600%.
PRESIDENT Bush said the killings, which helped pave the way for
the bloody siege and capture of Fallujah by US marines in late
2004, were "a challenge to America's resolve". That admiration
for Blackwater doesn't quite tally, however, with the feelings
of the families of the four dead mercenaries.
Katy Helvenston, whose 38-year-old son Scott was killed, said:
"Blackwater sent my son and the other three into Fallujah
knowing there was a very good possibility this could happen.
Iraqis did it, and it doesn't get any more horrible than what
they did to my son. But I hold Blackwater responsible 1000%."
Her lawyer, Daniel Callahan, who is suing the firm on behalf of
the families, said: "What we have is something worse than the
wild, wild west going on in Iraq. Blackwater is able to operate
over there free from any oversight that would typically exist in
a civilised society."
Blackwater is accused of "doing things on the cheap". Rather
than three men to a vehicle - a driver, a navigator and a rear
gunner - there were only two in the Fallujah incident; the cars
were "soft-skinned", not armoured. "They were sitting ducks,"
said Callahan.
The four men didn't have a detailed map, so they drove through
the centre of Fallujah, and there had been no adequate risk
assessment before the journey. Helvenston wasn't even supposed
to be on that mission - he was meant to be guarding top-level US
diplomats.
Lawyers say the four "would be alive today" had they not gone
unprepared into the mission. After the deaths, the families
asked for paperwork about what happened. They were told if they
wanted the documents, they'd have to sue. Katy Helvenston said:
"Blackwater seems to understand money. That's the only thing
they understand. They have no values, they have no morals.
They're the whores of war."
Blackwater counter-sued the families, saying they breached
contract by blaming the company for the deaths of their loved
ones. Blackwater wants $10m. The company also hired lawyer Fred
F Fielding, currently counsel to the US president, to represent
it. It then took on Joseph E Schmitz, former inspector general
at the Pentagon, as its in-house counsel. Later, Ken Starr came
on board - the prosecutor of Bill Clinton during the Monica
Lewinsky scandal.
Blackwater has exploited the Bush presidency's desire to
out-source government functions. Dan Guttman, a fellow at Johns
Hopkins University and a consultant on private security firms
for the Centre for Public Integrity, says firms like Blackwater
are now "part and parcel of Pentagon operations ... performing
what citizens consider the stuff of government: planning, policy
writing, budgeting, intelligence gathering, nation building".
How taxpayers' money is being spent, however, seems to have been
overlooked.
Blackwater has also hired at least 60 Chilean commandos trained
under the Pinochet regime. The irony for the US army is that
many of its best soldiers leave to join organisations like
Blackwater where the pay is as high as $1000 a day. This then
puts more pressure on the government to use private contractors
due to military staff shortages.
Blackwater - like other military contractors - currently has the
same immunity from prosecution in Iraq as America's conventional
armed forces and diplomats. However, the Iraqi authorities are
now set to repeal the immunity laws. Blackwater's "troops" can
shoot to kill and there are plenty of allegations of wrongful
killings against merc firms in Iraq.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has also ordered a review
board to visit Iraq this week to assess US diplomatic security
practices there following the Baghdad shooting. It is expected
to present an interim report by Friday.
But the firm's standing in the eyes of the US administration
remains high because of incidents such as the attack on a US
government compound in Najaf which saw eight Blackwater staff
fight off a heavy assault by insurgents without the support of
conventional forces.
Blackwater's government contracts were awarded under the State
Department's Worldwide Personal Protective Service programme. An
audit found the company tried to inflate its profits. The
government has so far paid $100m more to Blackwater than was
budgeted for. Former assistant defence secretary Philip Coyle
says the privatisation of security is "insidious", but the State
Department says there is a need for such services as the
government is "unable to provide protective services on a
long-term basis".
Peter Singer of the Brookings Institute, an expert on mercenary
firms, describes the use of Blackwater and other private
military companies as "the coalition of the billing". Sometimes,
though, it seems the rank-and-file mercs might be shortchanged.
There have been allegations by Colombian counter-insurgency
troops that Blackwater promised them $4000 a month but they only
earned $1000 a month.
Colonel Thomas X Hammes, a senior fellow at the National Defence
University, says Blackwater "made enemies everywhere", and a
congressional committee is looking at whether Blackwater
"illegally smuggled weapons into Iraq".
During the recent temporary suspension of Blackwater's
operations in Iraq, America cancelled all diplomatic movement
outside the Green Zone - evidence of how integral the firm is to
American operations, and how serious a suspension of its licence
would be for the US. The travel cancellation came despite claims
by America that attacks in Iraq have declined due to this year's
troop surge. Blackwater insists its men "did their job to defend
human life".
US officials went into overdrive in a bid to persuade the Iraqis
not to throw Blackwater out. With 30,000 mercs working for 28
firms contracted by the US government in Iraq, the Blackwater
incident could have wide-reaching ramifications.
Iraq is now moving towards scrapping Order 17, established by
the US under Iraq administrator Paul Bremer, which exempts
foreign contractors from Iraqi law. But Abdul Sattar Ghafour
Bairaqdar, of Iraq's Supreme Judiciary Council, said the guards
could stand trial, regardless.
Brigadier General Abdul Kareen Khalaf, of the interior ministry,
said: "Blackwater committed a crime. They carried out a flagrant
assault." Mowaffak Rubaie, Iraq's national security adviser,
said the shootings were a "golden opportunity" for the
government to "radically review" the laws surrounding foreign
mercenaries.
©2007 newsquest (sunday herald) limited.
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