Blackwater Founder's Visions of Christian Supremacy in Iraq

Explosive allegations concerning Blackwater have recently become public in a bombshell of a story published by Jeremy Scahill, a man who has been on the Blackwater beat for years now.

Two individuals, a former employee and a Marine who used to work as a security operative, allege that Erik Prince, the founder of Blackwater, may have murdered or assisted in the murders of individuals who were helping federal authorities investigate his company.  

What's striking isn't that Blackwater and murder is in the news. Blackwater has a history of being linked to allegations of murder (for example, the Nissour Square killings on September 16, 2007).

The most salient part of this news are the words written in a five page declaration by a former member of Blackwater's management team, who is being referred to as "John Doe #2" because he fears he may face violent retaliation if his identity is found out.

Doe #2 alleges that Prince "views himself as a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe":

To that end, Mr. Prince intentionally deployed to Iraq certain men who shared his vision of Christian supremacy, knowing and wanting these men to take every available opportunity to murder Iraqis. Many of these men used call signs based on the Knights of the Templar, the warriors who fought the Crusades.

Mr. Prince operated his companies in a manner that encouraged and rewarded the destruction of Iraqi life. For example, Mr. Prince's executives would openly speak about going over to Iraq to "lay Hajiis out on cardboard." Going to Iraq to shoot and kill Iraqis was viewed as a sport or game. Mr. Prince's employees openly and consistently used racist and derogatory terms for Iraqis and other Arabs, such as "ragheads" or "hajiis."

That Erik Prince may have been involved in murders of people cooperating with investigations of his company isn't as important as the fact that if this is true he murdered because he felt compelled by a higher power to do so.

Jeremy Scahill, a journalist for The Nation and the man who broke this news story yesterday, discussed Prince's Christian supremacist ideology on Countdown w/ Keith Olbermann yesterday night.

""let's remember that Erik Prince viewed Blackwater as a neo-crusader force and has from the beginning. This is a guy who comes from the powerhouse of the radical religious right. His father was a major bank roller and gave the seed money to Gary Bauer to start the Family Research Council, James Dobson, Focus on the Family.

And then we have his force employed in Iraq as part of a war against a Muslim nation that George Bush characterized as a crusade. What we have here, Keith, is a confirmation from insiders at Blackwater that, in fact, Erik Prince did have a neo-crusader agenda, and, most explosively, may have murdered or facilitated the murder of individuals who were intending to or did cooperate in the federal government's criminal investigation of Blackwater""

When asked how Bush could have missed the "crusader element," Scahill rightfully explained that Bush viewed this as a "plus" and did not miss it.

Scahill said, "These were his men, his private force in Baghdad. And the allegations that they were running around shooting Iraqis as part of a war to eliminate Islam globally, as is actually what one of these individuals said, is extremely disturbing to anyone who believes in any semblance of Constitution, law or human rights.

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