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Indybay Feature

Journalist Jeremy Scahill delivers fervent speech to Sacramento

by Kari Westerman
Independent journalist and author of 'Blackwater-Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army', a New York times bestseller, gave a fervent speech Thurs. May 3 at the United Methodist Church on J and 21st streets in Sacramento.
jeremy_scahill.jpg
Independent journalist and author of 'Blackwater-Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army', a New York times bestseller, gave a fervent speech Thurs. May 3 at the United Methodist Church on J and 21st streets in Sacramento.

Investigative reporter Jeremy Scahill, a correspondent for the independent radio and television news show Democracy Now, and frequent contributor to The Nation, went into detail with the crowded room about his investigation into the private contractor security company Blackwater USA.

“It’s sort of an inappropriate term because when you hear the term contractor I think what comes to mind is construction worker, people that are building something, a bridge or a building or a hospital. I think it’s an odd term for heavily armed men running around war zones with no laws governing their presence,” Scahill said.

The private contractor security company Blackwater USA was founded in 1997 by Erik Prince, a wealthy ex-Navy seal who has close ties to the current republican administration, some of those ties amounting to millions in contributions to the Republican Party and its candidates.
Referring to the Columbine school shooting in 1999 Scahill said, “It would be the first of annual tragedies that would end up benefiting Blackwater’s business.”

Scahill explained that Blackwater USA set up a mock high school called “Are you ready high” to train their troops how to “face down the violent youth of America,” Scahill said.

Today Blackwater is most known for guarding high profile individuals like Paul Bremer and its presence in Iraq. There are about 126,000 total contractors in Iraq, however, not are all Blackwater forces. Which is about the same amount of U.S. military inside that country, effectively doubling the amount of forces that most Americans already believe to be in Iraq.

According to Scahill, at least 770 of these private personnel have been killed in Iraq alone, and at least 7,700 have been wounded. Adding these numbers to the 3,400 U.S. soldiers who have already died pushes the U.S. death toll in Iraq above 4,000 and the wounded into the tens of thousands.

Sacramento City College student Jennie Jones, 20, political science major, said that she felt both inspired and horrified from what she learned. She explained that while she was astonished that the mainstream media has not pursued this investigation, she was amazed that one individual could break such a monumental story.

“His presentation was really eye opening,” Jones said, “It never crossed my mind to consider all of those contractors in how many soldiers are actually over there.”

Scahill said that what he feels is even more disturbing than the fact that the media and government do not count these forces, is the lack of oversight and transparency.

“We don’t know what many of these private forces are doing, and they’re doing it with U.S tax-payer dollars and their doing it in the name of U.S. policy in Iraq,” Scahill said.

Sacramento City College student and women’s rights activist, Hakeem Naim, said that he was moved with how Scahill compared the coverage of the Virginia Tech shootings to the coverage of the war. Scahill said in his talk that if the media treated victims of the war like they did the victims at Virginia tech, that most Americans would no longer allow the war to go on.

“If we humanize the victims in Iraq, the war would be different,” Naim said.

Another point that Scahill stressed was the disparity in wages between Blackwater forces and U.S. troops making it an easy decision to, “Go Blackwater.” On average, one private armed force earns in one month what a U.S. soldier makes in one year.

“The Bush administration came to power with the most radical privatization agenda in the history of our country,” Scahill said.

This story has come to light at an important time for Ca. as the N.C. based company plans to build another training facility called Blackwater-West in the small town of Potrero outside of San Diego.

“This is very much a California story,” Scahill said

About half of the residents in this small community have begun protesting the construction of the facility and are working hand in hand with Rep. Bob Filner, D-San Diego to keep Blackwater out of their backyards.

“What they [Blackwater USA] never expected was to face an indigenous uprising of the people of Potrero,” Scahill said.

Jones said that she was inspired and felt proud that a small Californian community with no activist or organizing background has been able to ban together.

Bringing the story even closer to home is the alleged meeting between Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and Blackwater spokeswoman Anne Tyrell to discuss the possibility of outsourcing California’s earthquake response to the private company. The meeting was originally reported by Joanne Kimberlin and Bill Sizemore of The Virginian-Pilot, but was denied to have taken place by Tyrell after the Sacramento News and Review contacted her. Schwarzenegger’s spokesman would not confirm if the meeting took place.

“Politicians should be accountable to the people who put them in office,” Jones said, “He [Schwarzenegger] should be forced to answer that question.”





§Blackwater USA logo
by Kari Westerman
640_blackwaterlogo.jpg
§Book by Jeremy Scahill
by Kari Westerman
blackwater.jpg
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Comments (Hide Comments)
by Penelope Jay
fortheboys.jpg
It astonishes me each time I read an article regarding a company that unless you are apart of, then you can really never understand. Mr. Scahill has minimal knowledge about the men and women who work for and support operations with companies like Blackwater, Triple Canopy, DynCorp and others. I guess people always become fascinated with things that are not allowed to know about. However, I honestly dont think that people like Mr Scahill understand the impact of what he is doing to the friends, family, and people like me who are actually there working hard to make a difference. I hear several times people criticize me and tell me that I had taken on the job I did soley for the money. Im sorry but for any moral and respectful person, its not just about the money. Understand that some of the benefits the military are afforded, people such as myself are not. How do you think the wife of one of my fallen brothers would feel to hear that her husband was nothing but a mercenary (hired killer) who died because he was more concerned with playing commando and killing innocent people then providing for her and her children while trying to make a difference in a country that is falling apart? Or what about the men who have come back wounded by IED's or bullets and they have to hear how they "got what they deserved". I can only share with you some of my knowledge on what goes on as I am required to keep most things to myself. I understand being anti-war because after seeing the things that I have, or knowing the things I do, I am not exactly a huge fan of it either. I can say that like most of me colleagues, I believe that there will never be a combat end to this war. I think it would go on forever. I do believe if this war is going to end, it will be done with diplomats. Those diplomats need protection. So let me ask you this, regardless of the money... are you willing to leave your friends and family for extended periods of time, go to a foreign country where people would like nothing more then to burn and string you from a bridge all to protect some man or women who will likely never remember your name so he or she can do the best thing they know how which is to try and work things out diplomatically? And if your not willing to do it, why cant you just be grateful for the people who are willing to do so and let them do their jobs and let their families be home and not have to worry about people like Jeremy Scahill trashing the memory of their fallen loved one, or calling their deployed family member a murderer.
by anti-imperialist
Signing on to the U$ army or a company doing the work that the american public does not want the army to be doing and then following orders and doing one's job is no excuse to be in another sovereign country. Period. I understand needing to feed and house a family or try to get college money, but becoming a servant of the interests of an lying corrupt racist government engaged in a war of aggression as a soldier or a "contractor" will not get you far with most people on earth. The fact that this was an unjustified war of aggression makes every step you take as a servant of this government's policy in Iraq a war crime. And the "I was just following orders/doing my job" rap hasn't held water for people carrying out war crimes and crimes against humanity since after WWII when the nazis were tried at Nuremberg.

Those who did what current military contractors are donig in the past were privateers and pirates, taking a government contract/authorization and then traveling around raiding "unfriendly" ships and settlements when the government didn't want to commit resources for political reasons. Do what you like, but your conscience will bear the burden for the rest of your life and your body will be a legitimate military target for all those who oppose U.$. imperialism.
by ken

“Signing on to the U$ army or a company doing the work that the American public does not want the army to be doing and then following orders and doing one's job is no excuse to be in another sovereign country.”
We’ll a majority of population both A) supported the war in Iraq at its beginning and B) Voted for George Bush not once, but twice, allowing both the war to start and continue. So it’s a tad fucking late for the general public to claim that they want nothing to do with the war or the prosecution of it. If the soldiers share blame, so does everyone else. If Us citizens hadn’t approved of the war, US soldiers wouldn’t BE in the war. This includes both people who didn’t vote and protested against the war, but the former tacitly approved of Bush becoming president and the latter were apparently not organized enough to prevent the war.

“The fact that this was an unjustified war of aggression makes every step you take as a servant of this government's policy in Iraq a war crime.”
Bullshit. If that were true every soldier down the last private in the German HEER would be in prison. You want to figure out a way imprison over a million people? Good luck with that monstrous endeavor.

Come to think of it, most every soldier in most every war would be serving a life sentence, because 90 percent of these conflicts were einaited without UN approval. But then again what nation would leave their fate at the hands of a laughably ineffective organization life the UN?

“And the "I was just following orders/doing my job" rap hasn't held water for people carrying out war crimes and crimes against humanity since after WWII when the nazis were tried at Nuremberg.”

Oh really? Fuck you, why wasn’t Stalin on trial then? Why not Curtis Lemay? George Patton? Winston Churchill? FDR? Oh yeah I know why, they won the war! To the victor goes the spoils, including the right to put people on trial for “war crimes”. Face it, the Nuremburg trials were fucking kangaroo courts, that was the sort of shit that led to World War II in the first place, jackass politicians shoving all the blame onto another party when they had no right to judge. It would be far more honest just to shoot the bastards and not pretend like your performing some impartial delivery of justice.

But again isn’t it funny that we didn’t see to many buck privates from the German Army on trial merely by virtue of the fact that they were in the German army?



by fuck bush
i didn't vote for the theif in chief, so don't say that those who didn't vote for the thief are culpable. i resisted and called the elections a farce from the beginning. nor did i vote for the democrats who should have followed through challenging the supreme court appointment when bush and his cronies took over the whitehouse.
by ken
“nor did i vote for the democrats " So basically you just delivered a vote to Republicans by not participating...nice. If you don't vote, its the same as voting for the worse possible candidate. I voted, so at least I'm not one of those who sit around and bitch, blaming minor civil servants (soldiers, cops) for everything that’s wrong with this country, and then have effrontery to not exercise what limited power they have when its provided for them!
You can bitch all day about the war in Iraq, but you won't even vote for candidates that will fix the fucking potholes in your neighborhood! This is why we have shitty presidents and shitty policies, because we have a lazy, self-absorbed jackass john-q public squandering the rights that so many better men have died for.
Do you think some blue-blooded asshole faux-Texan like o'le George really gives a flying fuck about whether you’re holding a sign in the streets? No, of course not. You can talk about "resisting" as much as you want, but the only “resistance” a politician respects is a vote, and you didn't fucking exercise that little bit of leverage so guess what happened: Bush got elected not once, but twice. That’s almost 8 years for you chuckle fucks to figure things out, but you didn't. He’s won; he’s completely outmaneuvered you merely by virtue of the fact that you guys are all talk and no substance. I'd call it a farce, but a farce should be funny. This is just sad.
by Reality-Based Writer
Ken, you obviously live in a world of fantasy and delusion. Maybe you should become literate and read a book or two for the first time in your life.

"Bush got elected not once, but twice."

Bush was not elected by anybody... all of the available evidence points out (again, become literate and read Greg Palast and other writers!) that both elections were stolen.

O.K. I know you're slow... but I'll repeat it again: Bush did not win the U.S. presidential elections of 2000 or 2004. His neo-con cabal stole the votes for his alleged "win."
by Reality-Based Writer
"I voted, so at least I'm not one of those who sit around and bitch, blaming minor civil servants (soldiers, cops) for everything that’s wrong with this country, and then have effrontery to not exercise what limited power they have when its provided for them!"

The fact that a uninformed, fantasy-based fool like yourself has the right to vote is a sad comment on what passes for "democracy" under the Bush dictatorship. Wow... you should withdraw from voting until you educate yourself on what's really going on in this country!

Soldiers and cops aren't "minor civil servants" - cops are the internal occupation forces in the U.S. while soldiers are the shock troops of U.S. imperialism and corporate globalization throughout the world.

Maybe rather than posting your idiotic rants and exposing your ignorance to a public forum maybe you should consider buying Scahill's book and educating yourself... that is, after you become literate.
by ken
Does being literate make you a pseudo commie conspiracy nut? If that’s the case IZ RATHER BE DUM! Look, you don’t participate in the system...so the system fucks you. It fucks you hard in the ass. It doesn’t even take the time apply some lube. What did you expect?

So your saying voting can’t possibly work because those dirty neo-cons will always steal the election from you, because the Right wing’s long string .of victorious elections cannot POSSIBLY have something do with a lazy, disorganized, and socially detached Left and a far more organized and monolithic Right now could it? What a convenient excuse!

All you can come up with is excuses “OH THEY STOLE IT” you say. Dude...get… a…fucking..clue! Even democratic voters hate snobby liberals flapping their tiny dicks around, brow beating everybody they think is less educated then they are...just like your doing now. It alienates people and it hurts your cause.

But if you can’t understand that, I’m wasting my breath. So lets have a little fun and analyze some of your quotes a little close shall we?

“fool like yourself has the right to vote is a sad comment on what passes for "democracy"”

Oh so maybe only YOU should have the right to vote! Is that what your suggesting? That might be a problem, because most liberals can’t seem to find the time to put down their frappacunio’s and head over to vote. Seems like limiting the right to vote to you would be kind of a waste, seeing as you wont exercise it, bEcaUse deM ConserVaTives will just steal duh electIn! NOES BLOD FER OIEL 1111!

But of course I’m dumb, and liberals because if enough people had voted like me 1) Bush wouldn’t be in office and 2) the Iraq War wouldn’t have happened. Clearly you have the right idea and we peasants should just stay out of your way so you can do…..nothing.

But sure, go head over to another rally, stand out in the rain for an hour and then go back to your friends and brag about how you FOUGHT THE POWER!

“under the Bush dictatorship”

HAH HAH fuck you. If this were a real dictatorship, they would be scraping you ashes out of an oven by now. Bush is shitty politician and shitty president, but you deserve him.
You

“Maybe you should become literate and read a book or two for the first time in your life.”
Oh I read a book just yesterday chief, it was entitled, WHY LIBERALS LOVE THE SMELL OF THEIR OWN SHIT.

In summary, drop the conspiracies/excuses and come back to planet earth.
by fuck bush
I didn't vote for the republicans nor the democrats. Yes I voted, just not for those two parties. And yes, the woman who gave me my ballot had no idea what GP meant. Until there is a third party whose view is just as valid as the two holding the congress and white house hostage, I'll continue to vote for the best possible person. In the last two president elections, I voted. Fuck Bush I say, he stole the election last time in Ohio and the time before that in Florida. I'm not going to debate that. And yes, Bush is doing exactly what he wants, keeping the oil in the ground in Iraq. Props to him, the tyrant. The war in Iraq is just that, who controls the resources and what they do with them. In this instance, its not about getting more oil to feed the junkies needs, its about keeping the oil in the ground. Less oil being processed, bigger profits for Houston.
-------------------------------------------------------------------


By Greg Palast:

If Vice President Al Gore is wondering where his Florida votes went, rather than sift through a pile of chad, he might want to look at a “scrub list” of 173,000 names targeted to be knocked off the Florida voter registry by a division of the office of Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris. A close examination suggests thousands of voters may have lost their right to vote based on a flaw-ridden list that included purported “felons” provided by a private firm with tight Republican ties.

Early in the year, the company, ChoicePoint, gave Florida officials a list with the names of 8,000 ex-felons to “scrub” from their list of voters.

But it turns out none on the list were guilty of felonies, only misdemeanors. The company acknowledged the error, and blamed it on the original source of the list — the state of Texas.

Florida officials moved to put those falsely accused by Texas back on voter rolls before the election. Nevertheless, the large number of errors uncovered in individual counties suggests that thousands of eligible voters may have been turned away at the polls.

http://www.gregpalast.com/floridas-flawed-voter-cleansing-program-saloncoms-politics-story-of-the-year/#more-937
by Doug Brooks (DBrooks [at] IPOAonline.org)
Below is the full text of the email I sent to Ms. Westerman. To her enormous credit, she agreed to correct the largest factual mentioned - the 126,000 alleged to be working for Blackwater. The other points still hold. - doug brooks

_______________

Ms. Westerman,

I am the president of the International Peace Operations Association (IPOA), a trade association that maintains a public code of conduct and advocates for enhanced stability and peace operations through improved utilization of the private sector.

I know it is probably too late to make corrections, but your report on Jeremy Scahill's Sacramento speech (IndyBay.org - "Journalist Jeremy Scahill delivers fervent speech to Sacramento") carried some fairly significant errors and misperceptions that could mislead your readers.

To be fair, the problems may have had more to do with the way Mr. Scahill presented the subject, but nevertheless they are significant.

Blackwater, an member of our Association, does NOT have "126,000" contractors deployed in Iraq. It is one of the largest and most successful private security companies in the globe, but they have only about 1,250 personnel deployed around the world.

The 126,000 number is actually an estimate of all contractors in Iraq supporting the U.S. mission and doing U.S. funded reconstruction. The numbers are overwhelmingly Iraqi - the people who should be doing the reconstruction and security in their own country. The Department of Defense reports that only 17% of their contractors are Americans. It is estimated the numbers of security contractors working for Western companies is about 25,000 - about 5,000 of which are Westerners, and the rest are Iraqis and some third-country nationals.

When Mr. Scahill suggests that the 770 contractor fatalities should simply be added to U.S. military personnel fatalities he is glossing over the fact that the contractor casualty numbers are predominately Iraqi, but also includes many third country nationals. It is rather odd, and misleading, to lump them all together.

There are other spicy but misleading aspects to the story, but I'm sure you understand the gist of the problem. The role of the private sector in providing services in conflict and post-conflict societies is something that does need to be better understood, and we are happy to see the coverage. But there are too many nuances that are being left out in too many speeches. IPOA would be delighted to help in the future with coverage on this issue.

I would be happy to come to Sacramento some time and explain the nuances that apparently were left out of Jeremy Scahill's speech. Private companies are important in Iraq and Afghanistan, but they are critical for UN and Africa Union peace operations in Darfur, Haiti, Somalia and other humanitarian crises. Please do take some time to peruse our web site and download our Journal of International Peace Operations - the latest issue is focused on mine action.

I hope you might call or email me personally if I can clarify anything else that might be of concern.

Regards,

Doug Brooks
President
International Peace Operations Association (IPOA) Businesses Worldwide United for Peace

Phone: (202) 464-0721
Cell: (202) 297-9717 - Washington, DC
Fax: (202) 464-0726

1900 L Street, NW, Suite 320
Washington, DC 20036

Work email: DBrooks [at] IPOAonline.org
IPOA website: http://www.IPOAonline.org
by Zack
Well written miss Westermann.

For the pro-contractor crowd, you may want to take a look at this:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5177956987382860214&sourceid=searchfeed

Yep, shooting Iraqi civilians sure is fun for these low lives. After all, they may even get a medal for it.
by ken
"Yep, shooting Iraqi civilians sure is fun for these low lives. After all, they may even get a medal for it. "

It's kind of hard to get a metal if YOUR NOT in the military..idiot.

Besides, you can't prove a majority of contractors or soldiers.

But I can assume this happened...

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=028efc78a2

Oh and this...

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=18b10724d5

and this...

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=3afc5813ac

You see insurgents, freedom fighters, whatever the fuck you want to call them, rarely ever abide by eitheir the Hague of Geneva conventions. Why aren't you upset over that. Atleast our guys wear uniforms and instead of being craven cowards pretending to be civilians.
by Gerald F. Shields Jr.
This is in response to Jay Penelope's comments:

Mercenary: A person who takes part in an armed conflict who is not a national of a Party to the conflict and "is motivated to take part in the hostilities essentially by the desire for private gain and, in fact, is promised, by or on behalf of a Party to the conflict, material compensation substantially in excess of that promised or paid to combatants of similar ranks and functions in the armed forces of that Party".

In the Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, and relating to the Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts (Protocol I), 8 June 1977 it is stated:

Art 47. Mercenaries

1. A mercenary shall not have the right to be a combatant or a prisoner of war.
2. A mercenary is any person who:
(a) is specially recruited locally or abroad in order to fight in an armed conflict;
(b) does, in fact, take a direct part in the hostilities;
(c) is motivated to take part in the hostilities essentially by the desire for private gain and, in fact, is promised, by or on behalf of a Party to the conflict, material compensation substantially in excess of that promised or paid to combatants of similar ranks and functions in the armed forces of that Party;
(d) is neither a national of a Party to the conflict nor a resident of territory controlled by a Party to the conflict;
(e) is not a member of the armed forces of a Party to the conflict; and
(f) has not been sent by a State which is not a Party to the conflict on official duty as a member of its armed forces.
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