Blackwater- God's Army

In case you missed it here is part of the interview of journalist Jeremy Scahill by Bill Moyers which aired october 19, 2007
In this clip he is talking about the Blackwater involvement in New Orleans after hurricane Katrina:

from Iraq to New Orleans - God's Army



In a natural disaster the poor suffer & die while the rich bring in their mercenaries to protect their property-

Jeremy Scahill Testifies on Defense Contracting, 5.10.2007 in which he argues there is no oversight of these private contractors - Mercenaries & whose only interest is profit & not peace or diplomacy - the less security the more work for them -



As Scahill points out the head of Blackwater Erik Prince is a neoconservative with lots of connections to the Republican Party & the Bush Administration & he is also a radical Christian Evangelical who is connected to the Dominionists/Reconstructionists organizations which he has helped fund as did his father before him . Erik Prince believes that Blackwater is in essence God's Army which is to be used to spread Christianity around the world & to defeat & suppress all who are seen as enemies of Christianity & American Supremacy-

And here's a little info on Erik Prince aka The Prince of Darkness as he twists & mangles American & Christian values into those of a vengeful & nasty God who wishes to convert or exterminate all who do not believe in Jesus or The American Way i.e. unfettered unapologetic rapacious capitalism -

Blackwater's top brassThe Virginian-Pilot© July 24, 2006

ERIK PRINCE, 37, Blackwater’s founder and chairman, has deep roots in conservative Republican politics in Michigan.

His father, Edgar Prince, turned a small die-cast shop in Holland, Mich., into a major auto parts supplier with a specialty product: a windshield visor with a lighted mirror. After his death in 1995, the company was sold for $1.4 billion. Edgar Prince was a confidant and financial backer of Gary Bauer, a conservative activist and onetime presidential candidate.

Erik Prince’s sister Betsy, a former chairwoman of the Michigan Republican Party, is married to Dick DeVos, billionaire son of the founder of marketing giant Amway and this year’s likely Republican candidate for governor of Michigan.

Erik Prince went to private schools in Michigan, earned his pilot’s license at 17 and attended the U.S. Naval Academy. He later joined the Navy and was deployed with a SEAL team.

Prince was living in Virginia Beach when he founded Blackwater in 1996. He now runs the Prince Group, Blackwater’s parent company, from an office in McLean, Va.

His first wife, Joan, died of cancer in 2003. He has since remarried, and has six children.

Prince is a board member of Christian Freedom International, a nonprofit group dedicated to helping persecuted Christians around the world.

Since 1998, he has made nearly $200,000 in contributions to Republican committees and candidates, including President Bush and indicted former House leader Tom DeLay, according to Federal Election Commission records.

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New Evidence That Blackwater Guards Took No Fire By James Glanz The New York Times Saturday 13 October 2007

Baghdad - 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.

The Kurdish witnesses are important because they had the advantage of an unobstructed view and because, collectively, they observed the shooting at Nisour Square from start to finish, free from the terror and confusion that might have clouded accounts of witnesses at street level. Moreover, because they are pro-American, their accounts have a credibility not always extended to Iraqi Arabs, who have been more hostile to the American presence.

and check out interview of P.W. Singer who has been researching the privatizing of the US military for over ten years:

Privatizing Terror, Outsourcing Diplomacy By Wajahat Ali at Counterpunch

10/13/07 "Counterpunch" --- - The international outcry over the recent Blackwater shootings forced the world to closely examine and appreciate the complex reality of the United States government's overdependence on private military contractors operating in Iraq. The foremost expert and most cited authority on the subject is Peter Warren Singer, a senior fellow at the prestigious Brookings Institute, co-founder of "The U.S. Policy towards the Islamic World" Program, and author of the seminal work on private military contractors, "Corporate Warriors." This interview, his most recent, examines the most current repercussions caused by the Blackwater scandal and private military firms within an overall context of The Iraq War, U.S. Foreign policy in the Middle East, and America's public relations with the Muslim world.

Take care,
GORD.