BOY SCOUTS
Heaps of brass shell casings jingle underfoot on Blackwater’s compound, remants of the countless rounds fired there. To clean them up, the company says it allows local Boy Scout troops onto the compound, where they collect the shells, turn them in for recycling and keep the proceeds. - The Virginian-Pilot
How long before they start using them as target practice?
So I leave it up to you to decide whether we should be taxed for the "war" to pay mercs like these. So I conclude this section with two quotes, one from a Blackwater merc and one from Jeremy Scahill during the interview with Alan Maass:
"This is a trend. You're going to see a lot more guys like us in these situations."-Blackwater merc commenting on Katrina
MAASS: CAN YOU talk how contracts like these are part of the drive toward privatization and the neoliberal agenda?
Scahill: THIS BECOMES very frightening on a number of levels.
On the one hand, you have this happening across the board. For example, this administration is attacking the public school system--de-funding it, and putting resources in the hands of fundamentalist Christian schools instead of bolstering the public school system. You see the Wal-Martization of U.S. society.
And now you have contractors being used all over Iraq and Afghanistan. They are alleged to have been involved in the torture at Abu Ghraib. They have acted with impunity. Not a single contractor has been prosecuted for any crimes committed in Iraq.
So you're left with one of two conclusions. Either they haven't committed any crimes, which I think we have the evidence to show isn't the case. Or no one's paying attention to accountability issues right now.
Conclusion: A Fact and a Fiction
Bill Sizemore stated in an article in The Virginian-Pilot in 2006:
In the Philippines, Blackwater President Gary Jackson said, the company has acquired about 25 acres at Subic Bay and will have access to thousands of acres of adjacent jungle for conducting jungle environment survival training, known by the acronym JEST.
THIS FOLLOWING IS FROM THE WEBSITE http://stopblackwater.net/Remember the bill passed just before the November elections to fund the military? ("John Warner National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2007" (H.R. 5122)) Well, hidden in that bill are provisions that seriously weaken two bulwarks of liberty--the Posse Comitatus Act and the Insurrection Act of 1807--by expanding the power of the president to declare martial law and use troops as a domestic police force in response to a "public emergency" or any "other condition". Blackwater troops (which were deployed domestically in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina) or other private mercenary and paramilitary forces pose a severe threat to the civil liberties of the American people and now could be deployed to quell public dissent, put down popular uprisings, or even to stop opposing points of view through intimidation or outright force.
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