A Special Forces Army

“By Rumsfeld’s last day in office, the ratio of active-duty U.S. soldiers to private contractors deployed in Iraq had almost reached one to one, a statistic unprecedented in modern warfare… The dramatic military privatization scheme launched during Bill Cheney’s time as Secretary of Defense during the 1991 Gulf War had grown beyond his widest expectations under Rumsfeld and has forever altered the way the United States wages its wars.” – Blackwater, 341.

On the edge of the Great Dismal Swamp there is continual weapons fire. A million rounds of ammunition are fired annually. [Robert M. Hausman, “Blackwater and Heckler & Koch Form Training Program,” The Small Arms Review, vol. 10, No. 11, August, 2007, p. 55.]   

Over 50,000 Hosted

“On over 6,000 acres of private land, Blackwater has trained and hosted over 50,000 law enforcement, military and civilian personnel. Reputed to be the most comprehensive private tactical training facility in the United States, the instructors are ranked among the best and its facilities are top rate.” Hausman, op. cit.

Capability to Launch 1700-man

Privately Trained and Equipped

Army…. With Air Force and

Surveillance

‘Erik has the capability to launch his own brigade of private soldiers, or what he likes to call ‘Relief with Teeth’ – seventeen-hundred-man privately trained and equipped army that would field its air force of helicopters and cargo craft. Those with the money could also rent ‘fire support,’ complete with a private gunship, intelligence gathering, aerial surveillance, remote-controlled blimps, and fast-attack aircraft with JDAMS (joint direct attack munitions or cluster bombs. There would be a construction, medical, supply, and combat group adhering to a ratio of about one Western professionally trained officer to ten TCNs, or third-country nationals – Robert Young Pelton, Licensed to Kill: Hired Guns in the War on Terror. New York: Crown Publishers, 2006, p. 4.

“Blackwater’s latest aviation innovation is a CASA 212 gunship modified with two A12 guns. It can spit out forty-two hundred 50-caliber bullets per minute, which can travel thirty-four hundred feet per second. Seventy bullets per second creates a steady stream of red tracer fire that with depleted uranium shells can easily turn armored vehicles into Swiss cheese.” –Pelton, 294.

A Complete Special Forces Army

Blackwater is essentially a complete Special Forces army, the elite of the elite. Blackwater has taken off where the US military has dragged its feet, implementing, without lack of funding or imagination, the latest concepts of twenty-first century warfare, even to the production of the Grizzly APC, a state-of-the-art armored vehicle engineered to defeat up to 50 caliper projectiles, as well as the deadly blast waves produced by mines, rocket-propelled grenades, and improvised explosive devices, IEDs. The plant producing the Grizzly APC comprises 100,000 square feet.

Blackwater is only one of the thousands of new, powerful mercenary armies, created as a byproduct of the War on Terrorism.

The World is Exploding With

Thousands of New Mercenary

Armies

While you and I are sleeping, the world is exploding with a radically new phenomenon-thousands of new powerful mercenary armies who are doing the real fighting in the War on Terror all around the world. A new era is dawning in so many areas.

US Navy SEALs, Army Rangers, Elite Special Forces, not only from America but also from elite forces all around the world are being hired in an exploding market of mercenary armies deploying globally.

They are the best of the best, extremely heavily armed, and are doing the most dangerous work in the most deadly areas of the world-Iraq, Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, the Caspian Sea, etc., etc.

Immunity From Prosecution

In Iraq they operate with immunity from prosecution-a Special Forces dream come true-making them uninhibited warriors against terrorists, insurgents, and resistance fighters.

Mirror Image: Learning to Think

and Act Like Terrorists

Blackwater has classes, taught by such as Walter Purdy, ex-marine and former security staffer for the presidential helicopter, that teach weeklong training programs called “Mirror Image,” which train students in how to think, act, and attack exactly like terrorists. “Purdy’s literature describes the course as ‘an intensive, one-week classroom and field training program designed to realistically simulate terrorist recruiting and training techniques, and operational tactics. About sixty Special Forces, Secret Service, marines, FBI agents, independent contractors, and other hand-picked attendees will spend the next week learning to think and act like terrorists so they can better understand and anticipate their tactics…the course is operated under the purview of the Terrorism Research Center.” –Licensed to Kill, 183. The attendees learn everything from making bombs to how to pray as a Muslim, to assaulting a village, attempting to kill VIP, and using a truck bomb.

Operating Above and Outside the Law

Blackwater snagged a high-profile contract in Iraq to be the private bodyguards for “the Bush administration’s top man in Baghdad, Ambassador L. Paul Bremer III. Referred to as the ‘viceroy’ or ‘proconsul,’ Bremer was a diehard freemarketeer who, like Prince, had converted to Catholicism and passionately embraced the neoconservative agenda of using American military might to remake the world according to U. S. interests – all in the name of democracy…. The company was now recognized by the Bush Administration as an essential part of its war on terror armada. Blackwater president Gary Jackson, a career Navy SEAL, would soon boast that some of Blackwater’s contracts were so secret that the company couldn’t tell one federal agency about the business it was doing with another agency.” –Blackwater, 47.

The “Proconsul” Issues Order 17

Note the Roman framework of “proconsul.” Bremer’s last act before leaving Baghdad on June 28, 2004, “was to issue a decree known as Order 17, immunizing contractors in Iraq from Prosecution…

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Negroponte, when U.S. Ambassador to Honduras from 1981 to 1985, was known as the “proconsul.” [Blackwater, 164.] “He was ‘such a powerful ambassador in Honduras in the early 1980s that he was known as “the proconsul,’ a title given to powerful administrators in colonial times.” –Blackwater, 282. Negroponte was appointed ambassador to Iraq in April 2004. “Negroponte was guarded by Blackwater’s forces upon his arrival in Baghdad in June.” –Blackwater, 283. The embassy in Iraq was an estimated staff of 3,700, including 2,500 security personnel,” ‘a unit only slightly smaller that a full Marine Corps regiment.’ …the Baghdad embassy would house some five hundred CIA operatives.  At the same time Blackwater had just been awarded a vaunted diplomatic security contract worth hundreds of millions of dollars.” –Blackwater, 283.

Above the Law

“Blackwater has openly declared its forces above the law. While resisting attempts to subject its private soldiers to the Pentagon’s Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) – insisting they are civilians – Blackwater has simultaneously claimed immunity from civilian litigation in the United States, saying its forces are a part of the U.S. Total Force. Blackwater has argued in legal briefs that if U.S. courts allow the company to be sued for wrongful death of its workers, that could threaten the nation’s war-fighting capacity: ‘In order for responsible federal contractors to accompany the U.S. Armed Forces on the battlefield, it is essential that their immunity from liability for casualties be federally protected and uniformly upheld by federal courts. Nothing could be more destructive of the all-volunteer, Total Force concept underlying U.S. Military manpower doctrine than to expose the private components to the tort liability systems of fifty states, transported overseas to foreign battlefields… How the president oversees and commands these military operations, including his decisions through the chain of command concerning the training, deployment, armament, missions, composition, planning, analysis, management and supervision of private military contractors and their missions, falls outside the role of [the courts].’” –Blackwater, xx, xxi.

Order 17: Immunity From Prosecution

“On June 27, Bremer signed 17, which declared, “Contractors shall be immune from Iraqi legal process with respect to acts performed by them pursuant to the terms and conditions of a Contract or any sub-contract thereto.’ [Coalition Provisional Authority Order Number 17, June 27, 2004].” –Blackwater, 163.

A Legal Gray Zone

“Private contractors largely operate in a legal gray zone that leaves the door for abuses wide open.” –Blackwater, xxi.

In late 2006, a one-line amendment was quietly slipped into Congress’ massive 2007 defense-spending bill, signed by President Bush that could subject contractors in war zones to the Pentagon’s UCMJ, also known as the court martial system. But the military has enough trouble policing its own massive force and could scarcely be expected to effectively monitor an additional 100,000 private personnel. While the five-word insert hardly establishes a system of independent oversight, experts will predict it will be fiercely resisted by the private war industry.” – Blackwater, xxi, xxii.

In truth, a Government accountability Office report in December 2006 found that “’officials were unable to determine how many contractors were deployed to bases in Iraq’” – Blackwater, xxii. The military does not know the number of contractors or the services they are providing to US forces, but figures quoted now are 180,000 Independent Military Contractors in Iraq.

A “Contractor Brigade”

While former Secretary of State Colin Powell declared that ‘active military is about broken,’ Prince offered up his own proposal to create a ‘contractor brigade’ to supplement the conventional US military. Prince declared he could do it cheaper. He is a man in control of his own army. [Blackwater, xxii].

By 476 A.D., historically the fall of Rome, “A proud army made up of Romans had long since turned into a paid army made up of barbarians.” –Cullen Murphy, Are We Rome? The fall of an Empire and the fate of America. New York: Houghton Mifflin, Co., 2007, p.28.

Condottieri

“Centuries ago it was not unusual for monarchs and city-states to contract out much of their war-fighting business to professional mercenaries; the term condottieri, referring to men of this kind, comes from the Italian word for “contract.” –Are We Rome? Pp. 87,88.

Scouring the Earth For Special Forces

Blackwater created a new division, Greystone limited, registered offshore in Barbados, which hires new recruits from the Philippines, Chile, Nepal, Columbia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Honduras, Panama and Peru – areas of earth with some of the world’s worst human rights records. Blackwater scours the earth for commandos, special forces, defense, intelligence, and law enforcement professionals ready at a moment’s notice for global deployment. It is Rome’s new global rapid reaction, special forces army.

Thus the difficulty with bringing other nations on board in the War on Terror is outflanked by simply hiring the best special forces each of these nations can offer and weld it all into a giant international Blackwater mercenary army, ready to go anywhere instantly.