RADICAL BUSH REGIME STICKS WITH THEIR MERCENARIES

Even as the military justice system and the Pentagon try to figure out how to deal with criminal behavior by mercenaries in Iraq-- and by all accounts, except Chris Shays', criminal behavior has been rampant-- the Bush Regime announced yesterday, just as the media was getting ready for a lazy weekend, that they have renewed their deal with the private Republican militia, Blackwater.

The company, based in Moyock, N.C., is under investigation by the FBI in connection with a Sept. 16 incident in which its security personnel shot and killed 17 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad. Questions have been raised about whether the shootings were justified and if they violated the rules under which contractors may use deadly force in Iraq.

Blackwater [whose fascist owner is a huge GOP donor] has received more than $1 billion in federal business since 2000, according to Eagle Eye, a research company that monitors contract spending. Its agreement to provide security for U.S. diplomats, and bodyguards and armed drivers to escort government officials outside Baghdad's Green Zone, was set to expire next month.

Iraqi officials have called for the ouster of Blackwater. The State and Defense departments have put in place more stringent oversight of private security contractors, such as coordinating their movement with the military and making sure they know the rules of engagement, an official with the State Department said.

One of my neighbors runs a high profile project for the U.S. Government in Baghdad. He refused to continue his work there until the government agreed to use other bodyguards instead of Blackwater. He told me that the Blackwater personnel go out of their way to aggravate relations with Iraqis and are the most hated symbol of the U.S. occupation. He told me that traveling outside the Green Zone with Blackwater marks you as an enemy of Iraq.

IRAQ SAYS EXPULSION OF BLACKWATER MERCENARIES IS NOT NEGOTIABLE

Have you been watching the Erik Prince p.r. offensive on TV. Does he look like he's not the Antichrist? No, no... I mean doesn't he look like he is the Antichrist? The History Channel ran that Antichrist expose again this past weekend. I think they show it as soft-core gay porn now that Larry Haggard, the world's #1 Antichrist hunter and exploiter, has been exposed as a tushy-licker. Watch:



Whether Price is or is not the Antichrist, we probably will never know-- unless we find out too late-- but he has been very reclusive and secretive until Henry Waxman dragged him out of his little cocoon and made him testify publicly. Since then you can't get him off the TV. Last night 60 Minutes did a bit of a puff piece. You tell me: is this the Anitchrist?



Or just another greedy, grasping right-wing loon?

My good friend of mine is based in Baghdad as head of a major rebuilding operation. Last year he explained to me how Prince's mercenary company, Blackwater, is the heart of darkness, evil incarnate. But Prince disagrees. "I've not seen... any evidence to support any kind of egregious, malicious, intentional wrong behavior."

End of subject? Uh... probably not. The A.P. reports today that the puppet government in the Greed Zone is demanding that Blackwater leave Iraq within six months. Why are they giving them six months?

The Iraqi investigators issued five recommendations to the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, which has since sent them to the U.S. Embassy as demands for action.

Point No. 2 in the report says:

"The Iraqi government should demand that the United States stops using the services of Blackwater in Iraq within six months and replace it with a new, more disciplined organization that would be answerable to Iraqi laws."

Sami al-Askari, a top aide to al-Maliki, said that point in the Iraqi list of demands was nonnegotiable.

"I believe the government has been clear. There have been attacks on the lives of Iraqi citizens on the part of that company (Blackwater). It must be expelled. The government has given six months for its expulsion and it's left to the U.S. Embassy to determine with Blackwater when to terminate the contract. The American administration must find another company," he told AP.

...The Iraqi government investigative report said Blackwater guards had killed 21 other Iraqi citizens and wounded 27 in a total of seven previous incidents, including a shooting by a drunk Blackwater employee after a 2006 Christmas party. Congress is investigating whether the government relies too heavily on private contractors who fall outside the military courts martial system.

DynCorp, a less reckless and less inherently vicious mercenary company, will probably take over Blackwater's contracts. Bush will make sure American taxpayers are screwed and Blackwater is well-compensated. And will Pelosi's promises prove to be more empty rhetoric that don't end the war even one micro-second sooner than Bush's departure from the White House?

IS THERE A PLACE FOR A PRIVATE ARMY IN A DEMOCRACY? DO WE STILL HAVE A DEMOCRACY?

Every little fascist turd needs his own bullies. Early on Bush Family benefactor Adolf Hitler had the Sturmabteilung (better known as the S.A.), the Nazi Party's "Assault Division. And, just like their Nazi heroes, George Bush's GOP wanted a private army too. They found it through billionaire GOP contributor and deranged psychopath Erik Prince and his disreputable mercenary army, Blackwater.

This new Newsweek paints a dismal picture of the GOP's violent little army. Like a report in Saturday's Washington Post, 5 Witnesses Insist Iraqis Didn't Fire On Guards, the Newsweek story exposes the vicious and brutal mercenaries as a cancer on the honor of our nation's involvement in Iraq.

Since the fatal Sept. 16 Blackwater USA shooting in Baghdad’s Nasoor Square, officials from the private security company have insisted that their guards were responding to fire from “armed enemies.” Yet an extensive evidence file put together by the Iraqi National Police and obtained by Newsweek-- including documents, maps, sworn witness statements and police video footage-- appears to contradict the contractors’ version of events. A confidential incident report, which has been provided by Iraqi National Police investigators to American military and civilian officials, concludes that the Blackwater vehicles “opened fire crazily and randomly, without any reason.”

A neighbor of mine, a high ranking civilian working in Baghdad, has told me repeatedly that he refuses to have anything to do with Blackwater. They are worse than rabid animals and they shoot at Iraqis for sport. His contract stipulates that his body- guards are provided by any security firm except Blackwater. He's told me for years that the hatred the Iraqis have for Blackwater is the most intense hatred he's ever seen and that the American dislike for the Hessians couldn't have come close. Many think that the one charge that may eventually take Bush to the Hague will be his loosening of this violent band of mercenaries on Iraq.

The incident at Nasoor Square is remarkable only because it has been widely reported. For Blackwater, it is an everyday occurrence. It happened just around the corner from National Police Headquarters and Iraqi police officials were on the scene within minutes. They and other Iraqi witnesses swear that Blackwater mercenaries opened fire completely unprovoked. "No one shot at Blackwater," says Col. Faris Saadi Abdul, the lead Iraqi police investigator. "Blackwater shot without any cause."

The report from the House Oversight Committee, released to members in preparation for today's hearing are startling and makes one wonder once again what could possibly be on Nancy Pelosi's mind to take impeachment off the table. Bush's Regime is a criminal enterprise and Blackwater is a very real and very clear and present danger to American democracy. The report reveals that:

(1) Blackwater has engaged in 195 “escalation of force” incidents since 2005, an average of 1.4 per week, including over 160 incidents in which Blackwater forces fired first; (2) after a drunken Blackwater contractor shot the guard of the Iraqi Vice President, the State Department allowed the contractor to leave Iraq and advised Blackwater on the size of the payment needed “to help them resolve this”; and (3) Blackwater, which has received over $1 billion in federal contracts since 2001, is charging the federal government over $1,200 per day for each “protective security specialist” employed by the company

This morning's NY Times has a story on this report and it boggles the mind that the American public can allow the Bush-Cheney Regime to remain in office for even another hour. Blackwater CEO, Erik Prince, whose family has given countless millions of dollars to neo-fascist organizations and Republican politicians-- and who has gotten close to a billion dollars in contracts in return-- will be testifying under oath today. Seven notoriously extremist Republican Party politicians, Dan Burton (IN), Christopher Cannon (UT), Darrell Issa (CA) [who Jane tells me is already acting like an obstructionist dick as the hearing were getting underway today], Patrick McHenry (NC), John Mica FL), Mark Souder (IN) and Lynn Westmoreland (GA), have demanded that the Oversight Committee postpone the hearings to give the Regime more time to tamper with evidence and come up with a credible story. Henry Waxman is unlikely to didn't take them seriously.

BLACKWATER-- BACK IN THE DRIVERS SEAT

Blackwater is the most hated symbol of Bush's regime of mayhem and destruction in Iraq. Every self-respecting Iraqi, no matter how they feel about anything else, wants to wipe out the mercenary savages the Bush Regime has loosened on their country with a license to kill randomly and at will-- and with no oversight and no accountability. It is a clear war crime and hopefully one day we will all watch Bush being handed a last cigarette and a blindfold after his war crimes tribunal for this alone. Better than that than having to deal with a savage Republican private army in our own country.

My friends in Iraq-- some military, some civilian-- all agree on the brutality of the Blackwater mercenaries. "They use Iraqis for target practice," one friend told me. "The Iraqis all fear them and hate them." Most people who know of former CIA field officer Robert Baer know him for the film Syriana (which was based on his books Sleeping With the Devil and See No Evil and starred George Clooney playing him). This week he also has an article in Time, Why Blackwater-- and More-- Should Leave Iraq.

Baer points out that Iraqis "look at Blackwater as trigger-happy mercenaries, and Iraqis don't want any armed foreign security contractors in their country. Do we let Iraqi embassy private security contractors race around Washington or New York, machine guns sticking out the window, to prevent carjackings?"

Granted, Washington and New York aren't Baghdad. Still, the fact is security contractors are a daily reminder for Iraqis that their country is occupied, and they are second-class citizens. The insult is not just that security contractors are allowed to use lethal force and not worry about going to jail; a Western security contractor will make in a week what an Iraqi might make in a year. Private security contractors are a humiliation equal to the humiliations that provoked the Boxer Rebellion in China or drove Iranians to overthrow the Shah. Security contractors may be keeping our officials alive, but they are not winning the hearts and minds of the Iraqis.

Papering over the problem by expelling Blackwater from Iraq leaves dozens of other companies working in Iraq, with their fingers on the trigger. With anywhere from 25,000 to 48,000 security contractors in country, we're bound to have another incident like Sunday's.

What the Administration should do is rescind Coalition Provisional Authority Order 17, the decree that puts foreign security contractors beyond the reach of Iraqi law. This would effectively close down private security companies. There is no reason the State Department cannot provide its own security; State security officers are under diplomatic immunity. If there's a questionable shooting, the Iraqi government at least will have the satisfaction of declaring the shooter persona non grata under the Vienna Convention.

Bush's response was to get Condi to tell the Iraqi puppet government in the Green Zone that tried to expel Blackwater that they should back down. Lucas at The Battle School says she succeeded and Maliki has backed down. "Blackwater," writes Lucas, "was suspended, in total, for four days. Which equals out to be a half day for each civilian killed. So if you're Iraqi you should know that your death isn't worth a full 24 hours, just a petty 12. And if you're a mercenary in Iraq, you'll only get suspended for 12 hours for every Iraqi killed (so if you want a week off, then kill ten Iraqis).


UPDATE: ERIK PRINCE'S INVESTMENT IN THE GOP SURE HAS PAID OFF

Federal prosecutors are investigating whether employees of the private security firm Blackwater USA illegally smuggled into Iraq weapons that may have been sold on the black market and ended up in the hands of a U.S.-designated terrorist organization, officials said Friday.

PRIVATE REPUBLICAN ARMY-- FASCIST MERCENARIES-- BANNED BY IRAQ, BUT...

As we've mentioned before, one of DWT's neighbors is helping with a rebuilding project in Baghdad. He's running it and has been living over there. He told me that he stipulated in his contract that he will not be forced to use Blackwater personell in anything to do with his project. He threatened not to work on the project until this was agreed to. Run by a big Republican donor and Bush crony, Erik Prince, in the Iraqi consciousness Blackwater is exactly what the Hessians were in the early U.S. consciousness. They are seen as vicious mercenaries run by one of the worst of the war profiteer companies.

Today we find out that the government of Iraq has cancelled Blackwell's license to operate in their country-- in effect reducing the American military presense by as many troops as Petraeus and Bush claim they will do... soon. This morning CNN reports pretty much what my neighbor has been telling me for a couple of years: the perception among Iraqi civilians-- and this is borne out by years of grisly statistics-- is that Blackwater mercenaries, far, far more than American military personell, treat Iraqis like dogs and shoot them for sport.

Iraq's Interior Ministry has revoked the license of Blackwater USA, an American security firm whose contractors are blamed for a Sunday gunbattle in Baghdad that left eight civilians dead. The U.S. State Department said it plans to investigate what it calls a "terrible incident."

...An Interior Ministry spokesman, Brig. Gen. Abdul Kareem Khalaf, said, "We have revoked Blackwater's license to operate in Iraq. As of now they are not allowed to operate anywhere in the Republic of Iraq. The investigation is ongoing, and all those responsible for Sunday's killing will be referred to Iraqi justice."

The Bush Regime will, no doubt, remind the puppet government in the Greed Zone who's really running the show and I expect that it will soon be kiss and make up time between Maliki's Greed Zone operation and Blackwater.

Romney, who, like Giuliani, has an atrocious record of hiring really unsuitable people to work for him-- Larry Craig, Jim McCrery and David Diapers Vitter are just three recent examples-- just hired a Blackwater vice-president as his terrorism policy advisor.