Showing posts with label blackwater/xe. Show all posts
Showing posts with label blackwater/xe. Show all posts

17 March 2011

scahill and imtiaz on the davis blood money and perfidies on perfidies

[click image, video, forty-five minutes]

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Here's for a good effort at getting down to the truth... and the best part is we get to hear a Pakistani perspective.

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love, 99
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10 March 2011

empire, inc.

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Blackwater has a new director... but... I'm confused. It doesn't sound to me as though it has a CEO. It sounds as though the new owners just appointed him "the" director of the directors. Doesn't that make him the Chairman?
A retired admiral and short-lived nominee to head the Defense Department has been named the director of the nation's largest and most controversial private security force.

Retired Adm. Bobby Ray Inman, 79, who's legendary intelligence career includes serving as the vice director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, director of the National Security Agency, and most recently as deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency, will lead the board of directors for Xe Services, formerly Blackwater USA.

...a biography of Inman issued in a press release by the White House in 1993 describes Inman as having a “bipartisan reputation as one of the nation's finest intelligence officers.” It also pointed to news accounts that referred to him as "simply one of the smartest people ever to come out of Washington or anywhere."
Maybe they said that twenty years ago, but if had ever been true, he's actually almost 81 now, and it's more like he can be trusted not to interfere.

You make a name for yourself as someone who will further the enterprises of the unutterably corrupt and you get a dazzling resumé made for you. You never want for anything again, even when you are ready for the rest home.

Wonder why you're such a loser compared to the movers and shakers wagging their KMA cards at DHS? You didn't fight to get into a position to sell out, that's why.

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love, 99
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03 October 2010

worse than a twilight zone episode

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THE most aggravating puppet in American history....

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love, 99
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06 September 2010

beyond the pale

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And Prince was allowed to just skip the country. Nothing to see here. Move along.

[If you have the capability of opening up their interactive tree, it's even more boggling. You click these little plus signs and more and more and more front companies come popping out of the woodwork.

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love, 99
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29 June 2010

05 February 2010

these men rule the world

[click image, video, 25 minutes]

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YOU FUCKERS! THESE MEN RULE THE WORLD. GET IT STRAIGHT.

Quit blathering about frivolous shit. Quit making up clever names for people whose views you revile. WE make this world what it is, and WE are responsible for fixing this.

Erik Prince could pull Obama's dick off, feed it to him, unimpeded, and walk.

They'll blow his head off if he lets anyone be prosecuted for war crimes.

He knew this going in.

THIS IS FASCISM. WAKE THE FUCK UP.
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13 January 2010

another representative who must be careful about small aircraft

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Needing as she does to counter certain accusations and speculations set loose in the effort to make Sibel's stuff hit the MSM, this woman is attempting something dangerous. Of course, it will only be dangerous if she gets tough in pursuing these ends... knowing as everyone does that making public these [unfailingly unsuccessful] attempts at wonderful governance are the stock in trade of all American politicians... particularly Democratic ones.
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05 January 2010

president einstein steps in it

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The Democratic Party is getting back the full measure of their own. Their whole—murderous—strategy to take back control of Congress and the White House was to make Bush own the wars and own Blackwater, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Let that sink in. Rather than IMPEDE Bush, than even temper his outrageous breaches of International Law and our own Constitution, they sat back, they abetted his administration, using our rage to get their power... notwithstanding the incalculable amount of damage this strategy was ensuring. Well, kids, guess what? The Democratic Party now owns everything they let Dubya and Fuddy Boy pull on the world. Richly deserved. So very richly deserved.

Except, of course, this still leaves the world in ruins, but... who the fuck is counting anymore?
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federal prosecutors "behaving like defense lawyers"

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For the 298th time: THIS IS FASCISM.

Wake up.
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23 December 2009

ice water in zakheim's veins

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Just gives me the creeps.
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11 December 2009

black on black

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When Did the CIA Become a Blackwater Subsidiary?
By Scott Horton

James Risen and Mark Mazzetti of the New York Times continue the disclosures about Blackwater Worldwide, now called Xe Services:
Private security guards from Blackwater Worldwide participated in some of the C.I.A.’s most sensitive activities — clandestine raids with agency officers against people suspected of being insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan and the transporting of detainees, according to former company employees and intelligence officials. The raids against suspects occurred on an almost nightly basis during the height of the Iraqi insurgency from 2004 to 2006, with Blackwater personnel playing central roles in what company insiders called “snatch and grab” operations, the former employees and current and former intelligence officers said. Several former Blackwater guards said that their involvement in the operations became so routine that the lines supposedly dividing the Central Intelligence Agency, the military and Blackwater became blurred. Instead of simply providing security for C.I.A. officers, they say, Blackwater personnel at times became partners in missions to capture or kill militants in Iraq and Afghanistan, a practice that raises questions about the use of guns for hire on the battlefield.

Separately, former Blackwater employees said they helped provide security on some C.I.A. flights transporting detainees in the years after the 2001 terror attacks in the United States. The secret missions illuminate a far deeper relationship between the spy agency and the private security company than government officials had acknowledged. Blackwater’s partnership with the C.I.A. has been enormously profitable for the North Carolina-based company, and became even closer after several top agency officials joined Blackwater.
Evidently it was “all in the family,” but it’s not exactly clear who was “big brother” and who was “little brother” in this relationship. Today’s Times disclosures can be seen as an extension of the claims made by Erik Prince in his curious
Vanity Fair interview that he was a proud but informal operative of the CIA, notwithstanding his unsuccessful attempts to sign up through the front door. In a discussion with Jeremy Scahill at The Nation, I noted that the interview appeared to be carefully laying the foundations for a “graymail” defense for Prince, should federal prosecutors move against him. One common form of “graymail” for a figure who has a relationship with the U.S. intelligence community is to warn that, if prosecuted, he will have to spill the beans on his covert activities in order to defend himself. The tactic has proven widely effective.

The latest disclosures show Blackwater once more smack in the middle of the blackest of the CIA’s black ops. They show the incestuous relationship that had evolved between the CIA and the for-profit contractor, perhaps the result of a revolving door that moved high-ranking individuals between Blackwater and the intelligence community. And they show how extensive were the efforts to privatize some of the nation’s most sensitive national security operations for the benefit of a profitable company with tight connections to the Republican Party. When will the congressional intelligence committees wake up to these disclosures? Their inaction so far confirms suspicions that Congressional oversight of intelligence matters is an oxymoron.

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26 November 2009

fumbling athwart byzantium

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... because the Constitution is radioactive pulp, Jeremy, and we're supposed to be not at war with Pakistan.... A bureaucrat couldn't possibly advise one otherwise in such a situation. They can't even lie plausibly, but at least are not afraid because in our military adventures we don't even think about plausibility anymore.

24 November 2009

more right under our noses from behind the curtain

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Or listen to him talk about it if you can't bear to do all that reading....

HINT: THIS IS REALLY IMPORTANT.
Writing in The Nation Magazine, journalist Jeremy Scahill, Democracy Now! correspondent has revealed Blackwater is secretly operating in Pakistan under a covert program that includes planning the assassination and kidnapping of Taliban and Al Qaeda suspects. Blackwater is also said to be involved in a previously undisclosed U.S. military drone campaign that has killed scores of people inside Pakistan. Blackwater operatives have been working under a covert program run by the Joint Special Operations Command, the military’s top covert operations force. The previously undisclosed JSOC operations would mark the first known confirmation of U.S. military activity inside Pakistan.

A military intelligence source said Blackwater o[perative]s are effectively running the drone bombings for both JSOC and the CIA. The CIA drone program is already public knowledge. But the military source says some of the deadliest drone attacks [] attributed to the CIA were actually carried out by JSOC. The article also reveals Blackwater operatives have taken part in ground operations with Pakistani forces under a subcontract with a local security firm. The operations have included house raids and border interdictions in northwest Pakistan and other areas.

Blackwater has also been given responsibility for planning JSOC operations in Uzbekistan. The Nation reports the program has become so secretive th[at] top Obama administration and military officials have likely been unaware of its existence.


[DN! transcripts are notoriously full of typos... so just listen to the report or trust me here.]
No. Really. It's important.

And I'm wondering if Sy Hersh might not have given Scahill one of his sources....

11 November 2009

the continued rise of the world's most powerful mercenaries

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Despite Scahill's heroic, outright dazzling, reporting, Blackwater/Xe is rising more strongly under Obama than ever before.

Snap out of it.