Blackwater says lawsuit ‘politically motivated’

I wonder who BLackwater’s PR people are? Anybody has a  chance of finding out? Please let me know.

By Andrea Shalal-Esa

WASHINGTON, Oct 14 (Reuters) – Blackwater USA founder Erik Prince on Sunday dismissed as “politically motivated” a lawsuit filed against his security company by a wounded survivor and relatives of three Iraqis killed in Baghdad on Sept. 16.

In an interview with CNN’s “Late Edition,” Prince defended the work of the private company which has faced intense scrutiny after 17 people were killed when Blackwater employees opened fire on civilians.

The incident has created friction between Iraq and United States and prompted calls for tighter controls on private contractors working for the United States, who are immune from prosecution in Iraq.

U.S. military reports from the scene of the shooting indicated Blackwater guards opened fire without provocation and used excessive force. The Iraqi government has accused Blackwater of deliberately killing the 17, and wants Blackwater to pay $8 million in compensation to each victim’s family.

The lawsuit, filed by the Center for Constitutional Rights, charged that Blackwater violated U.S. law by committing “extrajudicial killings and war crimes.

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America’s own unlawful combatants?

Marko Drobnjakovic / AP

OVER BAGHDAD: A Blackwater helicopter in Feburary. The amount of force being used by such firms has raised questions.

Using private guards in Iraq could expose the U.S. to accusations of treaty violations, some experts think.

By Julian E. Barnes, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
October 15, 2007

WASHINGTON — As the Bush administration deals with the fallout from the recent killings of civilians by private security firms in Iraq, some officials are asking whether the contractors could be considered unlawful combatants under international agreements.

The question is an outgrowth of federal reviews of the shootings, in part because the U.S. officials want to determine whether the administration could be accused of treaty violations that could fuel an international outcry.

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Private US military contractors move into Helmand

By Kim Sengupta in Kabul

Published: 14 October 2007

 

Large numbers of US private military personnel are expected to arrive in Helmand, the focal point of British involvement in Afghanistan, as part of a new effort to promote reconstruction and development in the war-torn province.

The US has contributed the largest sum to the new aid effort, over $200m. But British officials striving to win “hearts and minds” in the conflict against the Taliban have expressed concern over the potential influx of military contractors, amid a continuing furore over the shooting of civilians in Iraq by Blackwater.

As Nato troops reclaim territory from the Taliban, the movement has increasingly resorted to suicide attacks and roadside bombings. “The worry is that there will be a blast, and some contractors will panic and open fire, as happened with Blackwater in Baghdad. That is the very last thing that Helmand needs at the moment,” said a Western diplomat.

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New Evidence That Blackwater Guards Took No Fire

BAGHDAD, Oct. 12 — Fresh accounts of the Blackwater shooting last month, given by three rooftop witnesses and by American soldiers who arrived shortly after the gunfire ended, cast new doubt Friday on statements by Blackwater guards that they were responding to armed insurgents when Iraqi investigators say 17 Iraqis were killed at a Baghdad intersection.

The three witnesses, Kurds on a rooftop overlooking the scene, said they had observed no gunfire that could have provoked the shooting by Blackwater guards. American soldiers who arrived minutes later found shell casings from guns used normally by American contractors, as well as by the American military.

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Good neighbor?

Apart from the fact that no reasonable human being would want Blackwater anywhere near were they live, why does a private mercenary firm need three bases spread all over the country? Why is a private mercenary firm accused of war crimes, who has withdrawn from their lobbying organisation for fear of an investigation into their professional conduct allowed to train American police officers? There are only a thousand Blackwater mercenaries in Iran, so what else do they do on those bases? And let’s not forget that they also have a fourth base in the Philippines.(Travellerev)

Blackwater keeps its eye on a tiny East County enclave.

By Pat Sherman 10/09/2007

Blackwater USA Vice President Brian Bonfiglio flashed a self-satisfied smile, gazing east across Round Potrero Road where, on Sunday, more than 200 Potrero residents and antiwar activists streamed onto an adjacent parcel of land. They had come-some from as far as Ventura-to protest the 824-acre paramilitary training facility the company hopes to open a mile down the snaky dirt road.”I don’t think the war profiteering signs are appropriate, quite frankly,” Bonfiglio said. “At the end of the day, this will be determined as a land-use project by the [San Diego County] Board of Supervisors.”

As the public face of the project-dubbed Blackwater West-it’s Bonfiglio’s job to sell the facility as a non-invasive windfall to the residents of Potrero, a rural hamlet 45 miles east of San Diego. Given his employer’s image as a supplier of trigger-happy mercenary armies, unaccountable to neither the Iraqi nor American governments, wooing Potrero’s 850 residents has been a dicey game. Five members of the Potrero Planning Board who voted in December to support the project are facing a recall election. Some 320 residents signed a petition opposing the project that was sent to the county Board of Supervisors and Congressman Bob Filner, the Democrat whose district includes Potrero.

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Internal Review of Blackwater Prompted Firm to Leave Lobbying Assoc.

We have received notification from Blackwater USA that they are formally withdrawing from the membership of the International Peace Operations Association, effective October 10, 2007.

Blackwater USA joined IPOA in August 2004 and was a member in good standing.

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Blackwater faces war crimes inquiry after killings in Iraq

By Anne Penketh, Diplomatic Editor

Published: 12 October 2007

 

The American firm Blackwater USA has been served notice that it faces investigations for war crimes after 17 unarmed Iraqi civilians were killed in a hail of bullets by its security guards in Baghdad.

The killings last month put the spotlight on the private security firms whose employees are immune from prosecution, unlike professional soldiers who are subject to courts martial. In the second such incident in less than a month, involving the Australian contractor Unity Resources Group this week, two Armenian Christian women were shot dead after their car approached a protected convoy. Their car was riddled with 40 bullets.

Ivana Vuco, the most senior UN human rights officer in Iraq, spoke yesterday about the shootings by private security guards, which have provoked outrage among Iraqis. “For us, it’s a human rights issue,” she said. “We will monitor the allegations of killings by security contractors and look into whether or not crimes against humanity and war crimes have been committed.”

An Iraqi who was wounded in the 16 September shooting, and the relatives of three people killed in the attack, filed a court case in Washington yesterday accusing Blackwater of violating American law by committing “extrajudicial killings and war crimes.”

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AZERBAIJAN: IS IRAN THE REASON FOR THE CIA DIRECTOR’S RECENT VISIT TO BAKU?

Political analysts in Baku are debating the reasons for an unannounced late September trip to Azerbaijan by Central Intelligence Agency Director Gen. Michael Hayden. US diplomats remain tight-lipped about the visit. Many local experts, however, contend that Hayden’s talks with Azerbaijani leaders likely concerned Iran, Azerbaijan’s neighbor to the south.

Gen. Hayden’s one-day visit on September 28, which included a meeting with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Minister of National Security Eldar Makhmudov, was not publicized in advance, and few details have since been provided. According to informed sources, the CIA director arrived in Baku late on the night of September 27. The Turan news agency has cited “unofficial sources” as saying Hayden stayed in a private downtown hotel at which special security measures were taken. He left Baku in the early evening on September 28.

US Embassy spokesperson Jonathan Henick told EurasiaNet that Hayden’s visit was part of a trip to several countries in the region. Henick would confirm only that Hayden discussed issues related to regional security and international terrorism with President Aliyev and National Security Minister Makhmudov. Azerbaijani officials likewise declined to elaborate on the nature or specifics of the discussions.

Some Azerbaijani analysts, however, see “the Iranian issue” as the most pressing reason for the CIA director’s trip. The trip came five days before an October 3 statement by US President George W. Bush that Washington was prepared, under certain conditions, to negotiate with Tehran on the nuclear issue.

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Blackwater Is Soaked

By Rod Nordland and Mark Hosenball

Newsweek

Oct. 15, 2007 issue – The colonel was furious. “Can you believe it? They actually drew their weapons on U.S. soldiers.” He was describing a 2006 car accident, in which an SUV full of Blackwater operatives had crashed into a U.S. Army Humvee on a street in Baghdad’s Green Zone. The colonel, who was involved in a follow-up investigation and spoke on the condition he not be named, said the Blackwater guards disarmed the U.S. Army soldiers and made them lie on the ground at gunpoint until they could disentangle the SUV. His account was confirmed by the head of another private security company.

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Erik Prince and the Council for National Policy: Armageddon Soon

So now we have a groups of loonies helped by a crazy rich guy with a private army running around causing mayhem in the part of the world that they deem to be the theater of the coming Armageddon.

Today, Blackwater founder Erik Prince defended all of his company’s actions in Iraq to the Congress (and to the American people) as being as close to earthly perfection as humans can achieve on god’s earth. Prince, who is a also a founder of a right-wing foundation called “Freiheit,” which is German for “liberty,” aimed a laser-like scowl at the forehead of Chairman Henry Waxman and the other Democrats as they dared to ask questions of a CEO who has clearly grown accustomed to operating without oversight.

Herr Prince’s appearance before the committee led me to wonder what he has been discussing behind closed doors lately as a member of the super-secret “Council for National Policy.” Other right-wing luminaries who belong to the Council for National Policy include the Armageddonist novelist Tim LaHaye, and the right-wing evangelical leaders Pat Robertson, Tony Perkins, James Dobson, Gary Bauer, and Ralph Reed. The late Jerry Falwell was also a member. There also close ties between the CNP and the beer magnate Holland Coors, the NRA leader Wayne LaPierre, Phyllis Schlafly, Oliver North, Grover Norquist, and Frank Gaffney.

The Council for National Policy recently held a top-secret meeting in Utah that Vice President Dick Cheney attended. “The media should not know when or where we meet,” the Council instructs its members, “or who takes part in our programs, before or after a meeting.”

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America’s Armageddonites

Some interesting tidbits you might want to know.

Gary Bauer, former presidential candidate, Jerry Falwell, and Pat Robertson are  or were in the case of Jerry Falwell, all members of the very secretive and ultra right wing Council for National policies. The organization was heavily financed by the Prince family. Yep, the one of Erik Prince fame.
Gary Bauer helped start up the PNAC project in 1997, the same year that Erik Prince’s Blackwater USA became operational. 

Additionally Erik Prince interned under Gary Bauer  when he was 18 with the Family Research council  before interring in the white house under the first Bush.
The secretary of defence at the time was Dick Cheney. It was at this time that Dick Cheney authorised Halliburton to come up with a way to privatise the army. After his tenure as SOD he went to work for Halliburton.

Utopian fantasies have long transfixed the human race. Yet today a much rarer fantasy has become popular in the United States. Millions of Americans, the richest people in history, have a death wish. They are the new “Armageddonites,” fundamentalist evangelicals who have moved from forecasting Armageddon to actually trying to bring it about.

Most journalists find it difficult to take seriously that tens of millions of Americans, filled with fantasies of revenge and empowerment, long to leave a world they despise. These Armageddonites believe that they alone will get a quick, free pass when they are “raptured” to paradise, no good deeds necessary, not even a day of judgment. Ironically, they share this utopian fantasy with a group that they often castigate, namely fundamentalist Muslims who believe that dying in battle also means direct access to Heaven. For the Armageddonites, however, there are no waiting virgins, but they do agree with Muslims that there will be “no booze, no bars,” in the words of a popular Gaither Singers song.

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Mr. Cheney’s Minority Report

TWENTY years ago this week, Lt. Col. Oliver North testified for six days before a special joint House and Senate investigating committee. Permitted by the Democratic majority to appear in his bemedaled Marine uniform, and disastrously granted immunity, Colonel North freely admitted that he had shredded documents, lied to Congress and falsified official records.

Colonel North justified these crimes as necessary to protect two of the Reagan administration’s covert policies: defying a Congressional ban on aiding the anti-Sandinista contra insurgents in Nicaragua; and selling arms to Iran — officially classified as a terrorist state — in order to free American hostages in the Middle East.

Mixing bathos with belligerence, Colonel North played the incorruptible action hero facing down Washington politicians and lawyers. He also suggested that, under the Constitution, the president and not Congress held ultimate authority to direct foreign policy.

Most of the Congressional committee members, Republicans and Democrats alike, expressed shock at Colonel North’s testimony. And despite the surge in Colonel North’s personal popularity, he failed to sway other Americans on the underlying issues. Clear majorities in opinion polls said that Colonel North had gone too far in his covert operations, especially in helping the contras. Roughly half of those polled believed that he had acted as if he was above the law. Sixty percent said that Congress was more trustworthy than the Reagan White House on foreign relations.

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Rohrabacher stands behind Blackwater chief

Erik Prince will become an all American Hero just like Ollie North.

What was it again that Ollie North did that make him a Hero in Dan Rohrabacher’s eyes?

Oh, I remember, he was the chief coordinator of the sale of weapons via intermediaries to Iran, with the profits being channeled to that really friendly terrorist gang named the “Contras” in Nicaragua. And all this without anybody knowing, illegally while lying to the congress. Yep, a real all American Hero. And Erik Prince really likes that idea. In fact Erik Prince supported Ollie North financially on occasion.(travellerev)

 

By DENA BUNIS

WASHINGTON – Rep. Dana Rohrabacher has more than a passing interest in the recent controversy surrounding Blackwater USA. The owner is a friend of his.

Erik Prince, the president of Blackwater, was an intern in Rohrabacher’s Capitol Hill office in 1990 and they have since become friends. Rohrabacher is furious at the congressional inquiries into incidents in Iraq where Blackwater security guards have been accused of killing Iraqi civilians.

“I think the Democrats should be ashamed of themselves,” Rohrabacher, R-Huntington Beach, said in a telephone interview Monday.

Prince, Rohrabacher said, has “had thousands of people involved in a warlike situation and has an insignificant number of bad eggs in that group.”

In the wake of the Blackwater controversy, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice last week ordered video cameras be installed in the company’s vehicles and federal agents will ride with the security contractors who escort diplomatic convoys. The FBI is investigating the Iraqi incidents.

Marchers oppose plan for Blackwater Potrero.

EAST COUNTY – Wearing a bright green “Stop Blackwater” T-shirt, Rep. Bob Filner urged about 200 protesters yesterday to keep up their fight against Blackwater USA’s plans to build a military and law enforcement training center in the backcountry community of Potrero.

PEGGY PEATTIE / Union-Tribune Jake Pohlman, 10, gazed at the site in Potrero where Blackwater USA wants to build a military and law enforcement training facility.

“We’re going to stop them,” Filner, D-San Diego, told the demonstrators who gathered about a mile from the site of the proposed training camp. “Blackwater is a black mark on American democracy.”

Filner has proposed a bill in Congress that would allow mercenary training only on military bases. Opponents of Blackwater say the company’s workers in Iraq are mercenaries. The North Carolina company says that label doesn’t apply to its security guards who are working under government contract.

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The People vs. the Profiteers

Americans working in Iraq for Halliburton spin-off KBR have been outraged by the massive fraud they saw there. Dozens are suing the giant military contractor, on the taxpayers’ behalf. Whose side is the Justice Department on?
by David Rose November 2007 On first meeting him, one might not suspect Alan Grayson of being a crusader against government-contractor fraud. Six feet four in his socks, he likes to dress flamboyantly, on the theory that items such as pink cowboy boots help retain a jury’s attention. He and his Filipino wife, Lolita, chose their palm-fringed mansion in Orlando, Florida, partly because the climate alleviates his chronic asthma, and partly because they wanted their five children to have unlimited access to the area’s many theme parks.Grayson likes theme parks, too. Toward the end of two long days of interviews, he insists we break to visit Universal Studios, because it wouldn’t be right for me to leave his adopted city without having sampled the rides. Later he sends me an e-mail earnestly inquiring which one I liked best.

He can be forgiven a little frivolity. In his functional home-office in Orlando, and at the Beltway headquarters of his law firm, Grayson & Kubli, Grayson spends most of his days and many of his evenings on a lonely legal campaign to redress colossal frauds against American taxpayers by private contractors operating in Iraq. He calls it “the crime of the century.”

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Edwards Slams Top Clinton Strategist’s Ties to Blackwater

Meet Hillary Clinton, the new puppet for the New World Order. 
Vetted by Murdoch, the Bilderberg group and member of the council for foreign relations, funded by big capital and the coporate media she has already anounced that she will not end the war in Iraq for at least a year into her precidency “if elected”. (travellerev)

By JAKE TAPPER

Oct. 5, 2007 —

In a scathing attack, Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards went after front-runner Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., Friday, calling her a “corporate Democrat,” comparing top Clinton campaign strategist Mark Penn to former Bush aide Karl Rove and assailing Penn’s ties to Blackwater USA, the embattled private firm of military contractors accused by the Iraqi government of firing upon and killing 11 unarmed Iraqi civilians last month.

“Bush has been a perfect example of cronyism because Blackwater has given hundreds of thousands of dollars to Republicans and to President Bush,” Edwards said in an interview with the Associated Press while campaigning in Iowa. “I also saw this morning that Sen. Clinton’s primary adviser, Mark Penn, who is like her Karl Rove — his firm is representing Blackwater.”

Edwards said that he thinks “it is important for Iowa caucus-goers to understand the choices they have in this election. And it is the reason I continue to say we don’t want to replace a group of corporate Republicans with a group of corporate Democrats. I think it is important for caucus-goers to see this choice.”

I survived Blackwater

When the Iraqi government last month demanded the expulsion of Blackwater USA, the private security firm, I had one reaction: It’s about time.

As a U.S. official in Baghdad for nearly two years, I was frequently the “beneficiary” of Blackwater’s over-the-top zeal. “Just pretend it’s a roller coaster,” I used to tell myself during trips through downtown Baghdad.

We would careen around corners, jump road dividers, reach speeds in excess of 100 mph and often cross over to the wrong side of the street, oncoming traffic be damned.

But much more appalling than the ride was the deleterious effect each movement through town had on the already beleaguered people of Iraq. I began to wonder whether my meetings, intended to further U.S. policy goals and improve the lives of Iraqis, were doing more harm than good. With our drivers honking at, cutting off, pelting with water bottles (a favorite tactic) and menacing with weapons anyone in their way, how many enemies were we creating?

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All you need is a crazy rich guy with a private army. part 4

Erik Prince’s connections read like a who is who of the 9/11 suspects and war profiteers.

If like me you have come to the realization that the official conspiracy theory about the events of 9/11 is impossible and that the body of scientific evidence proves that 9/11 was an inside job than you have to wonder how the perpetrators and planners could realize their ideologies. You have to wonder about how they could form a cadre of men prepared to ruthlessly kill Americans to further their own greedy agenda. This is one possible way.

Secretive and well connected Erik Prince, a ultra right wing re-converted catholic with a drive for a new crusade, might very well fit the bill. The next few weeks I will present the case.

In the mean time have a look at this PDF. It is a visual lay out of all the connections that have helped Erik Prince and Blackwater.
It will be updated as I find more connections. It will be followed by articles about the connections and what they mean in the bigger picture. 

Let me count the ways in which Erik Prince is connected

How Did Specialist Ciara Durkin Die?

(CBS/AP) Exactly how Ciara Durkin died remains a mystery. The Army National Guard soldier from Massachusetts was found dead with a gunshot wound to the head in Afghanistan last week, and now her family is demanding answers from the military.

Initially the Pentagon reported that Durkin, part of a finance unit deployed to Afghanistan in November 2006, had been killed in action, but then revised its statement to read she had died of injuries “suffered from a non-combat related incident” at Bagram Airfield. The statement had no specifics and said the circumstances are under investigation.

Durkin had a desk job doing payroll in an office about three miles inside the secure Bagram Air Base. About 90 minutes after she left work last Friday, her family says she was found dead near a chapel on the base with a single gunshot wound to the head.

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Blackwater’s Private Lynch moment.

Blackwater still under fire despite dramatic air rescue

It would be laughable if it wasn’t for the fact that this once again prooves that Blackwater’s Erik Prince can count on some very powerfull friends. What is it that makes Erik Prince so valuable in Iraq? Blackwater alledgedly only has a 1000 men in the country. One of the smallest footprints of any of the Mercenary groups currently employed in Iraq. Why is the US Government prepared to antagonise the congress and the American population over this corporation. There must be a 1000 men with equal skills to replace the Blackwater protection unit. Also, why was video material from an AP reporter convisgated by American Military personel on the scene? Would it proove the official story as portrayed by CBS evening news fraudulent or worse, engineered? Wake up and smell the putrid pit that is the Blackwater/Administration connection.(traqvellerev)

Like a scene from from an action film, Blackwater USA, the private security contractor under fire for numerous abuses in Iraq, was dispatched to rescue Poland’s ambassador after an assassination attempt on a busy Baghdad street today.

Despite being the subject of numerous investigations by Iraqi and American authorities, Blackwater is still indispensable, according to CBS News, which called it “essential to the American and international presence” occupying Iraq. CBS reports that the Blackwater air rescue unit was dispatched by the American embassy because it was the only such unit available.

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