What, no job openings for arrogant fucking bastards?

Think Progress:

Former officials of the Bush administration have had a notoriously hard time finding work. In February, the Wall Street Journal reported that “only 25% to 30% of ex-Bush officials seeking full-time jobs have succeeded.” The New York Times reports today that one of the down on his luck Bushies is top Cheney aide David Addington:

David S. Addington, a top aide to Vice President Dick Cheney who was a forceful voice in internal legal debates, is also said to still be looking for work. The former Pentagon general counsel William Haynes II had been nominated by Mr. Bush for an appeals court judgeship, but was blocked because of his role in detention policies.

The Times suggests that the inability of Addington and other Bush lawyers to find work is a “likely consequence” of the fact that they “blessed conduct that most mainstream legal scholars contend was, in fact, illegal.”

Why can't he go work for Cheney? I'm sure he'd have an extra chair in his homemade secure undisclosed location... a man's gotta keep his hand in for the upcoming shadow government.

Ten easy steps

To fascism. Darkblack has the list:

1. Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy
2. Create a gulag
3. Develop a thug caste
4. Set up an internal surveillance system
5. Harass citizens' groups
6. Engage in arbitrary detention and release
7. Target key individuals
8. Control the press
9. Dissent equals treason
10. Suspend the rule of law

The list was taken from an article by Naomi Wolf published in the Guardian April 24, 2007. A quote:

Because Americans like me were born in freedom, we have a hard time even considering that it is possible for us to become as unfree - domestically - as many other nations. Because we no longer learn much about our rights or our system of government - the task of being aware of the constitution has been outsourced from citizens' ownership to being the domain of professionals such as lawyers and professors - we scarcely recognise the checks and balances that the founders put in place, even as they are being systematically dismantled. Because we don't learn much about European history, the setting up of a department of "homeland" security - remember who else was keen on the word "homeland" - didn't raise the alarm bells it might have.

It is my argument that, beneath our very noses, George Bush and his administration are using time-tested tactics to close down an open society. It is time for us to be willing to think the unthinkable - as the author and political journalist Joe Conason, has put it, that it can happen here. And that we are further along than we realise.

Conason eloquently warned of the danger of American authoritarianism. I am arguing that we need also to look at the lessons of European and other kinds of fascism to understand the potential seriousness of the events we see unfolding in the US.

Read the article and then put your pitchfork and torch by the front door. We're going to need them.

Blackwater's cover is pulled back just a bit more

As Cheney's shadow government retreats more into the dark side. Via Steve Bates of The Yellow Doggerel Democrat, Naomi Wolf of Firedoglake:

The New York Times reported today that Blackwater, the infamous organization that has been accused of killing civilians in Iraq, “has been involved in a far higher rate of shootings while guarding American diplomats in Iraq than other security firms.” A mercenary firm in Iraq with an itchy trigger finger is bad enough. But it now appears that Blackwater’s activities may be massively expanded — and not in Iraq.

In little noticed news, Blackwater, Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Arinc were recently awarded a collective $15 billion — yes, billion — from the Pentagon to conduct global counter-narcotics operations. This means that Blackwater can be deployed to engage with citizens on a whole new level of intimacy anywhere around the world — including here at home. What is scarier than scary is that Blackwater’s overall plans are to do more and more of its armed and dangerous ‘security’ operations on U.S. soil.

[snip]

The Founders knew from their own experience of standing armies, responsive only to a tyrant, how dangerous such a situation was; King George’s men — armed with blanket warrants — invaded the colonists’ homes, trashed their possessions, and even raped Colonial women. It was that bitter experience that led them to insist on the second amendment — ‘a well regulated militia’ that was responsive to the people and could not be deployed against the people of the United States by would-be despots. The founders knew that American tyranny was not only possible, it was likely, in the event of weakened checks and balances; and they knew a mercenary army was the advance guard of despots.

Blackwater is available to anyone who can write the checks. If there is a need to ‘restore public order’ in the next Presidential election — a power that the President now can define as he sees fit — Blackwater can be deployed. If the President declares an emergency, Blackwater can be deployed. And history shows us how very quickly citizen dissent and democratic processes close down when physically intimidating men — who are armed and not answerable to the people — are abroad in the land.

Blackwater has a huge base in North Carolina and has been trying to set up camp in the San Diego area.

Wanna bet these camps have a few ... dungeons set up and ready to go in them?

Update 9/29: Jurassicpork of Welcome to Pottersville has the political overview on Blackwater. Also via jurassicpork, Paul Krugman:

Which raises the question, why are Blackwater and other mercenary outfits still playing such a big role in Iraq?

Don’t tell me that they are irreplaceable. The Iraq war has now gone on for four and a half years — longer than American participation in World War II. There has been plenty of time for the Bush administration to find a way to do without mercenaries, if it wanted to.

And the danger out-of-control military contractors pose to American forces has been obvious at least since March 2004, when four armed Blackwater employees blundered into Fallujah in the middle of a delicate military operation, getting themselves killed and precipitating a crisis that probably ended any chance of an acceptable outcome in Iraq.

Yet Blackwater is still there. In fact, last year the State Department gave Blackwater the lead role in diplomatic security in Iraq.

Mr. Singer argues that reliance on private military contractors has let the administration avoid making hard political choices, such as admitting that it didn’t send enough troops in the first place. Contractors, he writes, “offered the potential backstop of additional forces, but with no one having to lose any political capital.” That’s undoubtedly part of the story.

But it’s also worth noting that the Bush administration has tried to privatize every aspect of the U.S. government it can, using taxpayers’ money to give lucrative contracts to its friends — people like Erik Prince, the owner of Blackwater, who has strong Republican connections. You might think that national security would take precedence over the fetish for privatization — but remember, President Bush tried to keep airport security in private hands, even after 9/11.

So the privatization of war — no matter how badly it works — is just part of the pattern.

Mercenaries? What mercenaries? We're just ... uh... guarding people and stuff...

AMY GOODMAN: Blackwater has remained relatively quiet in the face of its critics. But last week, the company’s founder, Erik Prince, wrote an article to the Grand Rapids Press in response to a series of articles in the paper on Blackwater. The paper had referred to Jeremy Scahill’s book as putting Prince in the national media spotlight. I want to read some of what Erik Prince wrote.

He wrote, “Your story referred to Blackwater as ‘arguably the world’s most powerful private army.’ The Constitution does not permit the establishment of a private army, and Blackwater’s team of highly motivated and capable security professionals serve at the request of the United States government. Furthermore, Blackwater professionals do not engage in offensive missions. You would be correct in calling them a team of bodyguards, but very wrong in using a description of them as a ‘private army.’” Jeremy Scahill, your response.

JEREMY SCAHILL: You tell me what nation in the world has operatives deployed in nine other countries around the world, can boast of a force of 20,000 men to call on at a moment's notice, has a fleet of aircrafts. I mean, the nation of Costa Rica doesn’t even have a military. So in the case of Blackwater, we're talking about a heavier force than some nation-states of the world.

But on the other issue about Erik Prince saying that they only engage defensive operations, I mean, give me a break. What is more offensive than invading and occupying of a country? Blackwater is at the vanguard of the US occupation of Iraq. They’re protecting the people that the Bush administration has sent in to implement the White House agenda in Iraq. I mean, that is an inherently offensive operation.

20,000 soldiers and a private air force

This site: Blackwater Watch is tracking Blackwater's activities:

“Blackwater is a company that began in 1996 as a private military training facility in — it was built near the Great Dismal Swamp of North Carolina. And visionary executives, all of them former Navy Seals or other Elite Special Forces people, envisioned it as a project that would take advantage of the anticipated government outsourcing.

Well, here we are a decade later, and it’s the most powerful mercenary firm in the world. It has 20,000 soldiers on the ready, the world’s largest private military base, a fleet of twenty aircraft, including helicopter gunships. It’s become nothing short of the Praetorian Guard for the Bush administration’s so-called global war on terror. And it’s headed by a very rightwing Christian activist, ex-Navy Seal named Erik Prince, whose family was one of the major bankrollers of the Republican Revolution of the 1990s. He, himself, is a significant funder of President Bush and his allies.”

— Jeremy Scahill, from an interview on Democracy Now.

Not understanding the references to the Praetorian Guard, I researched it. One paragraph stands out:

Although its name has become synonymous with intrigue, conspiracy, disloyalty and assassination, it could be argued that for the first two centuries of its existence the Praetorian Guard was, on the whole, a positive force in the Roman state. During this time it mostly removed (or allowed the removal of) cruel, weak, and unpopular emperors while generally supporting just, strong, and popular ones. By protecting these monarchs, thus extending their reigns, and also by keeping the disorders of the mobs of Rome and the intrigues of the Senate in line, the Guard helped give the empire a much needed stability that led to the period known as the Pax Romana.

Only after the reign of Marcus Aurelius, when this period is generally considered to have ended, the guard began to deteriorate into the ruthless, mercenary and meddling force for which it has become infamous.

Just read how many emperors were killed by these guards and how they began to reign themselves.

Just what we need in a democracy: Palace coups.

Update: Bernard Weiner of Common Dreams:
Outsourcing” jobs overseas is only the tip of the iceberg. How about the CheneyBush Administration “outsourcing” our military, our intelligence-gathering, our nation’s soul?

Taking private enterprise way beyond what is reasonable, or desirable, or safe, the CheneyBush Administration has turned over a huge raft of national-security functions to those not adequately trained, not accountable to the public or the law, not showing up on the political radar.

In short, CheneyBush have created what amounts to their own private legions — soldiers, intelligence analysts, security guards, construction experts, supply specialists, et al. — in effect, a “mercenary” force bought and paid for by the American taxpayer.

That’s why there will probably be no draft: There is no guarantee of loyalty from those dragooned into service. Besides, many draftees have politically-connected constituencies. But when one’s mercenary “volunteer” forces are totally beholden to the paymaster for their livelihood and under-the-table payoffs, they will dance with them that brung ‘em.

These are no small numbers. It’s estimated that in addition to the 160,000 regular troops in the field in Iraq, CheneyBush control anywhere from 60,000 to 100,000 private assets (”independent contractors”). Nobody’s even sure under what “rules of engagement” these guys — many in security and reconstruction fields — operate, or whether they are accountable to anyone other than their corporate bosses’ and the financial “bottom line.”

History shows us the dangers involved when leaders have large extra-institutional forces at their command, such as the Praetorian Guards and Legions of ancient Roman Caesars, Hitler’s Brownshirts, Saddam’s Republican Guards, the private militias of political and religious leaders today in Iraq, Blackwater forces in control of New Orleans after Katrina, etc. By and large, these mercenaries swear allegiance to their employer, not to the rule of law, not to any constitution. The catastrophic damage done to democracy by the existence, and power, of these private forces can’t be over-stated.

News flash: Blackwater, the huge corporation that CheneyBush rely on for most of the non-military functions in Iraq and elsewhere, is buying combat aircraft. Do we really want a private air force, effectively operating under the aegis of the Executive Branch, conducting secret ops in our names?

The origins of Blackwater

Truthdig has the interview with Jeremy Scahill:

Scahill: Blackwater USA was founded by a man named Eric Prince. And Eric Prince is ... currently in his late 30s, but at the time of founding Blackwater in 1996 he was believed to be the wealthiest person that had ever enlisted in the U.S. Navy SEALs, which is widely considered to be the most elite force within the U.S. military. And Eric Prince came from a very conservative evangelical Christian family in the state of Michigan. His father was a pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps businessman who started a very successful auto parts manufacturing business called Prince Manufacturing. And what the company was best known for was inventing the now ubiquitous lighted sun visor. Any time you’re in your car and you pull down that visor and it lights up, that’s Eric Prince’s family that invented that. So this company was very successful throughout the 1980s and 1990s, and really, young Eric Prince watched as his father used his very successful business as a cash-generating machine to fund the rise of the Republican revolution in 1994 that brought Newt Gingrich and the Contract With America to power. To give the kick-start money to Gary Bauer to start his group, the Family Research Council. They were heavy funders of James Dobson and Focus on the Family. And so young Eric Prince grew up in this family that was very strict Calvinist in their religion and then real free-market-gospel followers. And so he saw this sort of model from his father, and that really has been the model that he has picked up and ran with as he’s built up his Blackwater empire.

The largest private military base in the world

Is right here in the United States. Owned by Blackwater. (links from Bouphonia)

Beginning on a swampy 5,000 acre plot of land near Moyock, North Carolina, Blackwater has in the last ten years expanded their headquarters to 7,000 acres, making it the world's largest private military base.

And now, Blackwater is trying to move into California:

All of which gets us to California, the other destination on Blackwater’s westward expansion radar. The company has apparently been running roughshod over the political process of establishing a 824 acre training facility in a little rural community East of San Diego. This is being documented now by multiple media sources. One writer from the Daily Kos describes the secluded and obviously vulnerable Potrero, California by saying, “It's not exactly an urban metropolis, the population is only 978, and about a quarter of those people live below the poverty level.” Despite its pastoral surrounding landscape, “it could be anywhere in America really.”
Using politicians on the inside to hasten a quick turnaround on an environmental review, Blackwater is pulling its usual shadowy tricks and has for the most part completely circumnavigated any real due public process. If you read the Daily Kos article, it quotes Don Bauder from the San Diego Reader (who has been watching this deal intently), he reports how the people of the county there are vehemently opposed to the facility, and that Blackwater got the County’s approval pretty much behind the scenes without any public meetings or additional hearings.

When will we demand and get accountability from this corporation?

Update: More on Blackwater:

So what will happen with Blackwater's expansive vision? Much may come down to politics. Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) recently singled out Blackwater in an oversight hearing on Iraq contracting practices. During that hearing -- which featured testimony from families of Fallujah ambush victims -- a company attorney confirmed that one of its contract employees had shot and killed an Iraqi security guard in the protected International Zone. The company whisked the contractor out of the country; no charges against the shooter have been made public.The killing could make an interesting test case for new laws governing contractors on the battlefield.

The legal environment is shifting rapidly for companies like Blackwater, and a recent change in law – quietly inserted into a defense authorization bill by Sen. Lindsey Graham ( R-S.C.) – would place contractors operating in places like Iraq under military jurisdiction. It may also help close the legal loophole that allowed contractors, previously exempt from Iraqi law, to escape prosecution for wrongdoing.

Rumsfeld and Cheney loved to play post-nuclear shadow government games

With the Pentagon's assistance in deep bunkers from back in the cold war era:

The games were designed to test a program known as COG, Continuity of Government, and they concerned the ability of the government to continue to function during and after a nuclear attack. Everything about these exercises was secret. "There are seven levels of classification used in the government," one former senior Pentagon official told me when I raised the subject. "You are asking about the most secret level of all." Plans to enable the government to survive a nuclear attack dated back to the early days of the cold war, when vast bunkers were excavated in the countryside around Washington in which the various organs of government could take shelter. At least one of these, in the rural Virginia town of Culpeper, was even supplied with Barbie dolls for the diversion of officials' children sitting out the war underground. Over the years these efforts became ever more elaborate, and of course vastly more expensive. A major development occurred in the early 1980s, when Ronald Reagan was sold not only on the notion of a missile defense shield, but also on the practicality of fighting a prolonged strategic nuclear war, lasting up to six months. This decision lent added emphasis to the need for keeping the machinery of government going amid the radioactive ruins.
[snip]
This highly secret program was known as Project 908, and among the individuals earmarked to take power when disaster struck was Donald Rumsfeld. Every so often he would disappear from his Chicago office, leaving no word of where he was headed, or why. Once off the map, he would be moved on a military transport to one of the secret headquarters created as part of the COG network.
[snip]
Rumsfeld loved these games. There were others who were frequent players in the exercises, notably Dick Cheney. "Cheney and the others often had other priorities," recalls the former Pentagon official. "Rumsfeld always came." He wasn't just trying to organize a devastated country. He was fighting World War III, or at least simulating what nuclear theory suggested such a conflict would be like.

Herein lies an aspect of Rumsfeld's career -- and character -- that remained deeply buried even after word of his participation in the COG exercises leaked out. Faced with the most awesome choices a simulated environment could present, placed in a situation that was designed and advertised as a rehearsal for what might one day be terrifyingly real, Rumsfeld had one primary response. He always tried to unleash the maximum amount of nuclear firepower possible.

Gee... nuclear wars, secret bunkers, shadow governments.... why does this sound so familiar?

Waxman digs Blackwater out of the shadows

To answer some questions about what they were doing in Iraq with the taxpayer's money...

As Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) gears up for the second day of his House Hearings on Waste, Fraud and Abuse of Taxpayer Dollars, the focus will shift to North Carolina-based Blackwater International.

The secretive security firm made headlines in Iraq when, in March 2004, four Blackwater employees were ambushed and gruesomely killed. Six more were killed in April 2005 when their Mi-8 helicopter was shot down.

Blackwater's ill-fated presence in Iraq has been especially curious because, for many of their missions, no one could find the U.S. contract that actually authorized them to working there.

Until now. Yesterday, the Army finally disclosed who had sub-contracted Blackwater's operations -- and it's none other than our good friends Halliburton (via AP)

Pair this article up with this post, and it really gets interesting.

Update: More updates.

More Updatiness: 2/8: Blackwater email shows lack of equipment. Article shows how indifferent the Republicans were to the widows of the killed contractors and how they defended the Blackwater company.

Cheney's shadow government

Digby: (Update: quoting David Kurtz of Talking Points Memo)

I had always known that Cheney was running the show, but I assumed he did it purely by using the power of the executive branch and manipulation of the presdient. I had no idea that he might have secretly carved out a previously unenumerated institution that derives its power from both the legislative and executive branches. What in the hell has really been going on in this administration?

Larry Wilkerson called it a "cabal" around Dick Cheney. But it seems to have been more than that. They created a shadow government and developed a constitutional theory to support it.

The undemocratic streak in the Republican Party continues apace. Each time they get power, they seek ways to weaken the nation's understanding of what is acceptable in our democracy and what our constitution provides. (And keep in mind that it is entirely self-serving --- they will turn all of that around without a moment's thought when it suits them to challenge the opposition.)

Add this along with this post :

Take a look at this interview with Jeremy Skahill about Blackwater mercenaries, the ties to Cheney, and the Christian right. Then tell me you aren't afraid they will turn this group against us.

Update: Mimikatz of the Next Hurrah notices too:

So not only have Cheney and his staff expanded the powers of the presidency under the theory of the "unitary executive," they have arrogated many of these powers to themselves under the guise of the "unique office" Dick holds. From his early order to shoot down the fourth of the 9/11 planes, Cheney has been directing foreign, national security and energy policy and, probably, much else as well in secret, while Bush attends ceremonial functions and prances about as "the decider" amid wall-to-wall press coverage.

But the new Democratic Congress, the folks who evicted Cheney from his prime office space in the Capitol Building, now have the ability to investigate the office of the VP and expose some of its doings. Even more important, they have the power to bring articles of impeachment based on the results of those investigations and/or the results of the Scooter Libby trial, so ably chronicled by our own Emptywheel in posts too numerous to mention. (Just loook to the right.) It is past time to tackle this job. It must be done before Bush/Cheney have a chance to take us to war with Iran based on some cross-border incident or shoot-down of one of our meandering planes.

Let your representatives know you want to see this done as soon as possible. Perhaps as part of the budget process. How does the VP account for his staff? Who actually works there, and what do they do? That is certainly a place to start, but the real issues go much, much deeper, to the heart of our democratic government and to the people's right to know what is being done in our name and on our dime..

If you want to see the shadow government Bush and Cheney have set up

Take a look at this interview with Jeremy Scahill about Blackwater mercenaries, the ties to Cheney, and the Christian right. Then tell me you aren't afraid they will turn this group against us.

More information connecting Blackwater with the Big Surge.

And with New Orleans.

Update: Review of a book by Robert Pelton on mercenaries 'Licensed to Kill':

It is an intended tribute to the author that very few people in the world could have written a book this witty and informative aside from him. That naturally raises the question: Just who is Robert Young Pelton? Originally from Canada, he moved to the US to make his fortune, which he did with enough success that one day he decided to get out of it and start traveling to the world's hot spots and war zones as a neutral observer and chronicler of the truth, which is never an easy thing to ascertain.

As an author Pelton is best known for his classic work The World's Most Dangerous Places, which is sort of an underground Fodor's guide to surviving war zones and other assorted mean, nasty and dangerous places, from Grozny to Baghdad.

[snip]
But if Idema represents the pond-scum side of the private security world, the following chapter, which explores the creation of Executive Outcomes and Sandline, two private military firms that were prominent in the 1990s and helped propel the industry into public prominence, offers a fascinating look into that rarified world where high finance and venture capital, old boys' networks, multinational corporations, foreign policy, the legacies of colonial empires, and public relations intersect. It is surprising to realize what a small world it really is. It provides an invaluable perspective for better understanding an industry that is attempting to "find the sweet spot - the balance between naked aggression and passive peacekeeping - the neo-mercenary", as Pelton puts it.