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| US in Iraq |
Editing by Carolyn Bennett
Journalist and author Jeremy Scahill is founding editor of the online news publication The Intercept and author of Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army and book and documentary Dirty Wars: The World Is a Battlefield.
Scahill appeared today on the
New York-based Democracy Now program. These thoughts were particularly on point.
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| Pakistanis protest USA |
Deniability
and Impunity
Currently at trial on charges of murder
and manslaughter are four former Blackwater operatives who were “allegedly
involved in a 2007 massacre” in Baghdad that left 17 Iraqi civilians dead when a
Blackwater unit indiscriminately opened fire. The four mercenaries have been
charged with killing 14 of the 17 Iraqis.
In answering Amy Goodman’s question on this matter, Jeremy
Scahill said the incident at Nisour Square in Baghdad “was the worst massacre
of Iraqi civilians at the hands of mercenaries (private contractors) that we know of in Iraq.” But, he said, “It
is always the people down the chain that face the consequences.”
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| Pakistanis protest USA |
While the four accused “should be prosecuted, should be convicted, for what they did and should be in prison, the leadership of Blackwater should also be there.” Blackwater founder and chief operating officer Erik Prince held these positions when Blackwater was “essentially ‘Murder Incorporated’ in Iraq and when there was a company environment” in which mercenaries “were encouraged to view every Iraqi as the enemy” and when Blackwater operatives “committed many massacres” beyond the massacre at Nisour Square. Scahill takes the view that Prince should also stand trial.
Wikipedia note: The American private
military company founded in 1997 by Erik Prince was originally named “Blackwater.”
In 2007 the company gained notoriety “when a group of its employees killed 17
Iraqi civilians and injured 20 in Nisour Square, Baghdad [Iraq].” In 2009
Blackwater was renamed “Xe Services.” In late 2010, a group of private
investors purchased the company and installed a board of directors and new
senior management. In 2011 the former Blackwater assumed the name “Academi.” The
company founder, Erik Prince, reportedly “retained the rights to the name
Blackwater and has no affiliation with Academi.” In 2014, the company became a
division of Constellis Holdings along with Triple Canopy and other security
companies that were part of the Constellis Group as the result of an
acquisition.
Despite the notoriety of this ever
name-changing private military company, the United States federal government continues
to employ and partner with it. “The Obama administration contracted the group
to provide services for the CIA for $250 million.” Academi subsidiary
International Development Solutions in 2013 “received an approximately $92
million contract for State Department security guards.”
Scahill summed up, “Until we as a society stop cutting off
who’s held accountable at the lowest ranks, nothing is ever going to
fundamentally change.” In other words, no one should be above the law.
Dark Shadows
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| Libyans protest USA |
As if current President Barack Obama’s ruthless performance were
not enough, shadowing in the wings toward the next U.S. presidency is a
character “more hawkish” than the current second-term president who, Scahill
says, “has emerged as a pretty significant hawk … [in] a totally militarized
presidency.”
But the Clintons, Hillary Clinton and her husband, the
former president, “are two of the most fierce projectors of the politics of the
American empire and they [enjoy] very close relationships with some of the most
nefarious characters from the [George W., Jeb and George H.W.] Bush family.” The families together constitute something
like a monarchy, Scahill said. (Ah, the perks of cronyism, nepotism, corruption,
Yale, Harvard, and legacy hires.)
When she was head of the State Department of the United
States, Hillary Rodham Clinton “acted as though she was also sort of Secretary
of Defense.” During her tenure as Secretary, the “State Department,” he reports,
“was deeply involved with plotting covert action around the world, using the
State Department as cover for CIA operations.”
Hillary Clinton, Scahill said, “is a fierce neoliberal who
believes in backing up the so-called ‘hidden hand of the free market’ with
merciless, iron-fisted military policies.”
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| Libyans protest USA |
Backfire
“For many, many decades … U.S. policy has been its own worst
enemy in one sense – We have created the very threats we claim to be fighting.”
Every time we kill civilians in drone strikes, Scahill said,
“al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula becomes stronger in the sense that they have
a greater propaganda movement that they can roll out.” But beyond this obvious creation
and perpetuation of enemies and violence, the big beneficiary of war is “the
war industry.…
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| Middle East |
“Under Mr. Transformative Presidency Barack Obama,” Scahill
said, “the administration has been an incredibly great friend to the war
industry,” which is the greatest beneficiary of the Obama policy.
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| Middle East Camps |
Every
Tomahawk cruise missile launched – and coming soon a next-generation- longer-airborne-sustaining
jet-propelled drones – ensure that major beneficiary (and major political campaign
financing) military industrialist Lockheed Martin and like brands never stop
making “a killing off killing.”
Sources and notes
“Jeremy Scahill on Obama’s Orwellian War in Iraq: We Created
the Very Threat We Claim to be Fighting,” October 3, 2014, http://www.democracynow.org/2014/10/3/jeremy_scahill_on_obamas_orwellian_war
Journalist and author Jeremy Scahill is founding editor of
the online news publication The Intercept; author of Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army and Dirty Wars: The World Is a Battlefield
and the documentary of the same title, both released in 2013. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremy_Scahill
Blackwater brief at Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academi
Blackwater Baghdad shootings at Wikipedia
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: “On September 16,
2007, Blackwater Security Consulting (since renamed Academi) military
contractors shot at Iraqi civilians killing 17 and injuring 20 in Nisour
Square, Baghdad. The killings outraged Iraqis and strained relations between
Iraq and Washington. Blackwater guards claimed that the convoy was ambushed and
that they fired at the attackers in defense of the convoy. The Iraqi government
and Iraqi police investigator Faris Saadi Abdul alleged that the killings were
unprovoked. The next day, Blackwater Worldwide’s license to operate in Iraq was
temporarily revoked.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackwater_Baghdad_shootings
The Clintons
William (Bill) Jefferson Clinton (originally named William
Jefferson Blythe III) was the 42nd president of the United States (1993–2001) who
in his second term (1998) became the second U.S. president to be impeached.
Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton was a lawyer by training who
became a member of the U.S. Senate (2001–09) and a U.S. Secretary of State (2009-2013).
As wife of the 42nd president of the United States, she was “First Lady” (1993-2001).
Britannica and Wikipedia biographical briefs on the Clintons
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A lifelong American writer and writer/activist (former academic and staffer with the U.S. government in Washington), Dr. Carolyn LaDelle Bennett is credentialed in education and print journalism and public affairs (PhD, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan; MA, The American University, Washington, DC). Her work concerns itself with news and current affairs, historical contexts, and ideas particularly related to acts and consequences of U.S. foreign relations, geopolitics, human rights, war and peace, and violence and nonviolence. Dr. Bennett is an internationalist and nonpartisan progressive personally concerned with society and the common good. An educator at heart, her career began with the U.S. Peace Corps, teaching in Sierra Leone, West Africa. Since then, she has authored several books and numerous current-affairs articles; her latest book: UNCONSCIONABLE: How The World Sees Us: World News, Alternative Views, Commentary on U.S. Foreign Relations; most thoughts, articles, edited work are posted at Bennett’s Study: http://todaysinsightnews.blogspot.com/ and on her Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/carolynladelle.bennett. http://www.prweb.com/releases/2014/08UNCONSCIONABLE/prweb12131656.htm http://bookstore.xlibris.com/Products/SKU-000757788/UNCONSCIONABLE.aspx Her books are also available at independent books in New York State: Lift Bridge in Brockport; Sundance in Geneseo; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center in Buffalo; Burlingham Books in Perry; The Bookworm in East Aurora
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