George W. Bush Sewage Plant

They ought to let the entire nation vote on it...

The proper way to take a poll

Study: Most Children Strongly Opposed To Children�s Healthcare

Damn those uppity women!

Get back there and clean his socks!:

Rome, Italy (AHN) - An Italian man was arrested after police said he kidnapped his ex-girlfriend from a pub and took her home, forcing her to wash the dishes and iron clothes.

Police said the man dragged the woman out of a pub in Genoa, shoved her into a car and took her home where he threatened her if she didn't do his dishes and ironing.

How dare she leave and make him do women's work!

If the evildoer folks have the bomb

It's because the Bush administration gave it to them.


Dr. Zaius of Zaius Nation explains:

Has everybody forgotten that Bush has already given the secrets of building an atomic bomb not only to Iran, but to every evil empire in the world? I remember when this story first broke. It's lifespan in the news cycle lasted from Friday afternoon to a Saturday morning. Supposedly the story was dropped because it was "unfair" and "too partisan" to run it because of the upcoming election.

A little over a year ago Bush put up a website that contained information that was captured in Iraq. Amongst this treasure trove the administration accidently overlooked part of the information that contained all of the secrets needed to build an atomic bomb. The website was called "Operation Iraqi Freedom Document Portal", which is of course no longer online. The damage is already done, however. Every intelligence agency in the world is constantly watching the White House website like a hawk. There can be no doubt that the nuclear secrets are now practically in the public domain.

Always new

The top ten idiots.

Always hopeful

Phila of Bouphonia's hope post.

Is Blackwater a mercenary army?

Doug, the Blackwater apologist, responds to my latest comment on this post:

You raise larger issues about the entire contingency contractor industry beyond Blackwater.

In terms of diversity, keep in mind that companies use as many locals as they are allowed to within their contracts – it just makes sense. Locals bring invaluable knowledge, language skills, connections and are far less expensive than Westerners. If local hires are not allowed by the terms of the contract (usually due to insurgent infiltration risk), then companies hire Third Country Nationals (TCNs), from all over the world. The industry has more diversity than any other I’ve seen (by the way, you may be interested to know less than 5% of our industry is security work, mostly it is logistics, demining, medical services, aviation, training etc.).

Most companies are run by former military folks, and they are the same people that they were before when they wore uniforms. Yes, they work under contracts, but that don’t mean they don’t care about the mission and the nation. Nevertheless, the better the oversight and accountability, the more it benefits the better contractors which strive to follow the rules and regulations (as increasingly convoluted as those have become!).

I can talk your ear off about the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act and UCMJ – lots of things need improvement there regarding contractor accountability, especially in terms of transparency. But we do need to get this right, we’ve used contractors in the past (700,000 in WWII, 80,000 in Vietnam, more contractors than troops in Bosnia), and we’ll need to use them in the future. Contractors are critical to supporting UN missions as well, and if you go to Darfur you’ll find all the African Union bases have been built, managed and run by private contractors. So are the AU helicopters. Effective and transparent accountability are essential for all our international peace and stability missions.

Profit margins in the industry are surprisingly tight – if you want to make money make airplanes. In the service sector the average is around 7% profit on a contract. KBR’s huge LOGCAP III contract is 1% (with a potential 2% bonus for speed/quality). That is NEVER mentioned in the media, since it makes their correspondents look like idiots when they berate ‘war profiteering’.

Contractors are NOT combatants, nor should we imply otherwise. Calling them mercenaries is simply derogatory since they clearly do not fit the legal definition in the Geneva Conventions – it’s like calling journalists ‘hacks’ or doctors ‘quacks’. In Iraq the contractors have something called the Rules for the Use of Force (RUF) which is far more limited and restrictive than the military’s Rules of Engagement (ROE) – the Pentagon has drawn a thick line between what contractors are allowed to do (protect people, places and things) and what the military does. That is as it should be – contractors support military operations, not supplant them.

No one should be above the law or unaccountable. Ensuring that in the chaos of a conflict/post-conflict operations – be it Sudan, Haiti or Iraq – ain’t ever going to be easy but we can do it. Ultimately, the better we do peacekeeping and stability operations the shorter they will be and the better it will be for the local populations suffering from the conflict.

I hope that’s helpful.

Best regards,

doug

Thanks for your response, Doug.

I have attempted to understand why Blackwater resists the term mercenary, if and when it does apply, who has been hired by Blackwater and other defense contractors, whether it is actually cheaper to use contractors, and why, in doing research on the net, I have found hardly anyone who stands up in support of Blackwater except the Bush administration and the contractors themselves.

I'll not even get into the lawsuits.

The UN keeps its eye on private contractors and the defines the word: mercenary:

HUMAN RIGHTS COUNCIL

Seventh session

Item 3 on the agenda

PROMOTION AND PROTECTION OF ALL HUMAN RIGHTS, CIVIL, POLITICAL, ECONOMIC, SOCIAL AND CULTURAL RIGHTS, INCLUDING THE RIGHT TO DEVELOPMENT

Report of the Working Group on the use of mercenaries as a means of violating human rights and impeding the exercise of the right of peoples to self-determination

1. According to resolution Commission on Human Rights 2005/2, the Working Group on the use of mercenaries has the mandate, inter alia, to “elaborate and present concrete proposals on possible new standards, general guidelines or basic principles encouraging the further protection of human rights, in particular the right of peoples to self-determination, while facing current and emergent threats posed by mercenaries or mercenary-related activities.” In addition, the Working Group has the mandate to “monitor and study the effects of the activities of private companies offering military assistance, consultancy and security services on the international market on the enjoyment of human rights, particularly the right of peoples to self-determination, and to prepare draft international basic principles that encourage respect for human rights on the part of those companies in their activities.”

[snip]

This is shown both by the growth of transnational security companies that operate in the region as well as by the local use of private security guards instead of national police or security forces. During these country missions, the Working Group has been able to identify a growing trend to surrender the monopoly over the legitimate use of force to private, non-State actors, following the steady growth of PMSCs at the international level. These practices have involved the outsourcing or privatization of war at the international level, and of security, at the domestic level.

3. One of these phenomena is the recruitment and training of individuals originating from Latin America and the Caribbean with the objective of rendering security services to private security companies that operate in countries like Iraq and Afghanistan. The Working Group has been able to identify that the Governments of the region often lack the capacity to take appropriate action in relationship to this phenomenon, such as the registration and licensing of private military and security companies that operate within their territories or the establishment of effective management, monitoring and accountability systems, with an ultimate view to ensuring that private military and security companies offer standard procedures with regard to employment and labor conditions. A weak or insufficient national legislation, coupled with the limited economic opportunities of the population, has promoted the expansion of private military and security companies that recruit former military and policemen, and other persons from third countries, in order to render security services in low intensity armed conflict or post-conflict situations.

[snip] (my bold)

I. PARTICIPANTS (Appendix I)

The Consultation was attended by representatives of the Governments of Chile, Costa Rica, Cuba, Ecuador, El Salvador, Honduras, Panama, Paraguay and Dominican Republic, as well as by representatives of the Inter-American Institute of Human Rights, four academic experts and representatives of two associations of private military and security companies, the International Peace Operation Association (IPOA) and the British Association of Private Security Companies (BAPSC).

I can understand now the desire not to be called mercenaries, but:

mer·ce·nar·y:

–adjective

1. working or acting merely for money or other reward; venal.

2. hired to serve in a foreign army, guerrilla organization, etc.

–noun

3. a professional soldier hired to serve in a foreign army

As in hiring people from around the world to work in Blackwater:

CONTRACTOR COALITION

Coalition forces in Iraq are largely American, but contractor ranks are truely international. An unofficial online list of contractor casualties in Iraq includes men from Fiji, South Africa, Britain, Turkey, Bulgaria, South Korea, Honduras, Nepal, India, Canada, Portugal, Poland, Russia, Australia, Italy, Denmark and more

And here:

The private security personnel began to be hired in Chile in October by local representatives of Blackwater, former Chilean military personnel who according to the magazine Qué Pasa work, directly or indirectly, for the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

The hired Chilean soldiers make up less than one percent of the 15,000 mercenaries who have been sent to Iraq since the occupation began, and who, as a group, represent the second-largest military force in that country, outnumbered only by the 134,000 U.S. forces. The troops from Britain, the United States' largest coalition partner, number around 9,000.

Blackwater, which is based in North Carolina, is one of the 25 private military firms that are benefiting from the lucrative contracts for the stabilisation and reconstruction of Iraq financed by the United States at an average monthly cost of four billion dollars.

and further down this article:

The independent on-line publication Indymedia reported on Mar. 26 that the United States had hired retired members of the Chilean army who served under former dictator Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990), as well as ''former henchmen of South Africa's apartheid regime'' to serve as soldiers of fortune in Iraq.

Indymedia estimates the number of former South African military in Iraq at 1,500, which would make them one of the biggest contingents of mercenaries in occupied Iraq.

The private military industry is growing around the world, fed by local wars that are providing employment opportunities for former military personnel who found themselves out of a job, especially in eastern Europe, when the Cold War came to an end.

And on the idea of it being cheaper? (from October 2007):

We've done poorly at a cold cost-benefit analysis here. It's far from clear that contractors save us money; when pressed on this score by the House last week, Blackwater Chairman Erik Prince went from claiming cost savings to pleading ignorance of his own firm's profits. (He did, however, let slip that he makes at least $800,000 per year more than you do, for overseeing a force that's a tiny fraction of the size.) Oversight has been miserably lacking, as has the will to use civilian or military law to hold contractors accountable for bloody messes such as the Baghdad shootings. On balance, for all the important jobs that contractors are doing, Blackwater and its kin have harmed, rather than helped, our troops' counterinsurgency efforts.

When I mentioned to friends that I was in a conversation with someone connected to or at least supportive of Blackwater, the reaction was (besides thinking I had a death wish) as if I were talking with the Mafia... because of actions like this:

Officially, Blackwater says it forces are in New Orleans to "join the Hurricane Relief Effort." A statement on the company's website, dated September 1, advertises airlift services, security services and crowd control. The company, according to news reports, has since begun taking private contracts to guard hotels, businesses and other properties. But what has not been publicly acknowledged is the claim, made to us by 2 Blackwater mercenaries, that they are actually engaged in general law enforcement activities including "securing neighborhoods" and "confronting criminals."

And this story:

A possibly deadly incident involving Quinn's hired guns underscores the dangers of private forces policing American streets. On his second night in New Orleans, Quinn's security chief, Michael Montgomery, who said he worked for an Alabama company called Bodyguard and Tactical Security (BATS), was with a heavily armed security detail en route to pick up one of Quinn's associates and escort him through the chaotic city. Montgomery told me they came under fire from "black gangbangers" on an overpass near the poor Ninth Ward neighborhood. "At the time, I was on the phone with my business partner," he recalls. "I dropped the phone and returned fire."

Montgomery says he and his men were armed with AR-15s and Glocks and that they unleashed a barrage of bullets in the general direction of the alleged shooters on the overpass. "After that, all I heard was moaning and screaming, and the shooting stopped. That was it. Enough said."

Then, Montgomery says, "the Army showed up, yelling at us and thinking we were the enemy. We explained to them that we were security. I told them what had happened and they didn't even care. They just left." Five minutes later, Montgomery says, Louisiana state troopers arrived on the scene, inquired about the incident and then asked him for directions on "how they could get out of the city." Montgomery says that no one ever asked him for any details of the incident and no report was ever made. "One thing about security," Montgomery says, "is that we all coordinate with each other--one family." That co-ordination doesn't include the offices of the Secretaries of State in Louisiana and Alabama, which have no record of a BATS company.

The weird 'containment' of the victims of Katrina and the clear neglect of their needs really woke Americans up. The normal American reaction of wanting to help and sending supplies was blocked at every turn. Yet Blackwater was hired to run through the streets of New Orleans bristling with weaponry. Blackwater was hired for control not assistance. Why did the Bush administration assume riots would happen unless they knew they weren't going to help? Because if help had been allowed, there would have been no anger.

Many people believe this:

Questions have been raised about the nature in which this large force of paid mercenaries operates. Members of these security companies are highly trained ex-Special Forces personnel, many non-American, that do not have to adhere to the rules of engagement that the conventional military sets forth in order to meet international law. With salaries that can be as high as $1,000 a day, squads of Bosnians, Filipinos, Israelis, and varies other foreign nationals from nearly every "hot spot" in the world have been hired for tasks ranging from airport security to protecting American and Iraqi leaders. There is further concern that the non-American fighters loyalty to the parent company could supersede that of the United States who they are in fact representing, creating a higher probability that the United States’ image abroad will be tarnished.

And this:

* Blackwater is wrapping up work on its own armored vehicle, the Grizzly, as well as its Polar Airship 400, a surveillance blimp Blackwater wants to market for use in monitoring the U.S.-Mexico border.

A surveillance blimp? Well, now, there's an idea whose time has come. I guess.

That last item aside, however, Blackwater looks like it's going to be around for a long time, sucking on the government teat. Even if Barack Obama is elected in November, he has already made it clear that he wants a more robust diplomatic presence in Iraq and that he intends that Taj Mahal embassy to be fully used. Diplomatic security will be necessary, because it doesn't look like even Baghdad will be pacified any time soon. And, under the quite successful "Shrink the Government" program of the Bush administration, there just aren't enough government forces to protect the diplomatic corps. It would take years to hire, train, and equip what would be needed for just that one embassy.

And that's a real problem for this country. Many such government functions have been outsourced to companies such as Blackwater, frequently with "hold harmless" clauses in their contracts so that neither the US government nor other government can hold them accountable for the atrocities they may commit. There will be no accountability, no control, and for future victims, no redress.

Finally:

Erik Prince:

said, "When you want to send a package overseas, do you use the post office, or do you use FedEx?" implying that Blackwater is sort of the Federal Express of the U.S. war machine, that it's the best way to get your product delivered.

But there's actually an irony there. When you send something via FedEx, you can have your package insured against loss or damage, you can track your package. Blackwater has shown itself above any form of tracking or accountability. And when things go lethally wrong, you can't find out. There are no consequences. There's no accountability whatsoever. So even when Erik Prince tries to spin a metaphor about another corporation, it falls flat, because Blackwater is the least accountable corporation operating in Iraq right now, because its product is essentially death and destruction.

As with any defense contractor company who deals with war, even though you may say you are not combatants but contractors, your product is fear, hatred, the threat of death or death itself. Innocent people have died. And there has been no accountability.

Changing the name to Peace and Stability or a variation on the name of Blackwater, etc. doesn't really change the result nor the opinion of the world.

crossposted at American Street

Changing the landscape of Iraq

One blast wall at a time...



And, responding to the comments the Blackwater apologist made at this link:

Most contractors are locals and thus the costs are far, far cheaper than using Americans. Companies will always use locals if they have a choice, that's how they compete to win the contracts. Using locals contributes to the economy, to stability, to undermining the insurgents etc.. Two-thirds of our contractors in Iraq are Iraqis, the folks who should be doing their own security and reconstruction.

the local Iraqi economy is not being helped:

With unemployment as high as 67 percent, the imported products and foreign workers flooding across the borders have become a source of tremendous resentment in Iraq and yet another open tap fueling the insurgency. And Iraqis don't have to look far for reminders of this injustice; it's on display in the most ubiquitous symbol of the occupation: the blast wall. The ten-foot-high slabs of reinforced concrete are everywhere in Iraq, separating the protected—the people in upscale hotels, luxury homes, military bases, and, of course, the Green Zone—from the unprotected and exposed. If that wasn't injury enough, all the blast walls are imported, from Kurdistan, Turkey, or even farther afield, this despite the fact that Iraq was once a major manufacturer of cement, and could easily be again. There are seventeen state-owned cement factories across the country, but most are idle or working at only half capacity. According to the Ministry of Industry, not one of these factories has received a single contract to help with the reconstruction, even though they could produce the walls and meet other needs for cement at a greatly reduced cost. The CPA pays up to $1,000 per imported blast wall; local manufacturers say they could make them for $100. Minister Tofiq says there is a simple reason why the Americans refuse to help get Iraq's cement factories running again: among those making the decisions, “no one believes in the public sector.”

(link via dirk gently)

Doesn't this remind you of something out of WWII?

Comparing what we were hiding from the Red Cross:

WASHINGTON — The U.S. military hid the locations of suspected terrorist detainees and concealed harsh treatment to avoid the scrutiny of the International Committee of the Red Cross, according to documents that a Senate committee released Tuesday.

"We may need to curb the harsher operations while ICRC is around. It is better not to expose them to any controversial techniques," Lt. Col. Diane Beaver, a military lawyer who's since retired, said during an October 2002 meeting at the Guantanamo Bay prison to discuss employing interrogation techniques that some have equated with torture. Her comments were recorded in minutes of the meeting that were made public Tuesday. At that same meeting, Beaver also appeared to confirm that U.S. officials at another detention facility — Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan — were using sleep deprivation to "break" detainees well before then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld approved that technique. "True, but officially it is not happening," she is quoted as having said.

A third person at the meeting, Jonathan Fredman, the chief counsel for the CIA's Counterterrorism Center, disclosed that detainees were moved routinely to avoid the scrutiny of the ICRC, which keeps tabs on prisoners in conflicts around the world.

"In the past when the ICRC has made a big deal about certain detainees, the DOD (Defense Department) has 'moved' them away from the attention of the ICRC," Fredman said, according to the minutes.

The document, along with two dozen others, shows that top administration officials pushed relentlessly for tougher interrogation methods in the belief that terrorism suspects were resisting interrogation.

Where we had elected officials assuring the public that all was good at Gitmo and Iraq:

WASHINGTON, June 27 - Senators from both sides of the aisle competed on Monday to extol the humane treatment of detainees whom they said they saw on a weekend trip to the military detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. All said they opposed closing the center.

And:

WASHINGTON – House Armed Services Committee Chairman Duncan Hunter is using menus to defend U.S. conduct at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, detention facility.

In a TV interview show Sunday and a Capitol news conference Monday, Hunter, R-El Cajon, brandished the menus for the Guantanamo detainees' meals as a partial rebuttal to allegations that suspected terrorists and anti-U.S. fighters there were being mistreated.

[snip]

"The inmates in Guantanamo have never eaten better, they've never been treated better and they've never been more comfortable in their lives. . . . And the idea that somehow we are torturing people in Guantanamo is absolutely not true, unless you consider having to eat chicken three times a week is torture," Hunter said at the news conference.

To what the Nazis did?:

Succumbing to pressure following the deportation of Danish Jews to Theresienstadt, the Germans permitted the International Red Cross to visit in June 1944. It was all an elaborate hoax. The Germans intensified deportations from the ghetto shortly before the visit, and the ghetto itself was "beautified." Gardens were planted, houses painted, and barracks renovated. The Nazis staged social and cultural events for the visiting dignitaries. Once the visit was over, the Germans resumed deportations from Theresienstadt, which did not end until October 1944.

More on the hoax:

In December 1943, the Nazis told the Council of Elders of Theresienstadt about the Embellishment. The commander of Theresienstadt, SS Colonel Karl Rahm, took control of planning. An exact route was planned for the visitors to take. All buildings and grounds along this route were to be enhanced by green turf, flowers, and benches. A playground, sports fields, and even a monument were added. Prominent and Dutch Jews had their billets enlarged, as well as had furniture, drapes, and flower boxes added.

But even with the physical transformation of the Ghetto, Rahm thought that the Ghetto was too crowded. On May 12, 1944, Rahm ordered the deportation of 7,500 inhabitants. In this transport, the Nazis decided that all orphans and most of the sick should be included to help the facade that the Embellishment was creating.

The Nazis, so clever at creating facades, didn't miss a detail. They erected a sign over a building that read "Boys' School" as well as another sign that read "closed during holidays."9 Needless to say, no one ever attended the school and there were no holidays in camp.

On the day that the commission arrived, June 23, 1944, the Nazis were fully prepared. As the tour commenced, well-rehearsed actions took place that were created specially for the visit. Bakers baking bread, a load of fresh vegetables being delivered, and workers singing were all queued by messengers who ran ahead of the entourage.

Godwin's law is broken. The Bush and all of his loyal Bushies are the new Nazis.

Sometimes jokes

Expose the truth faster than any rant...



And cats are always the purrfect vehicle...