Mercenaries for hire. Blackwater USA: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackwater_USA
We’ve talked about how the U.S. has started to privatize their prisons and how that has demonstrated to be problematic. When a prison is mandated to make a profit there is no incentive to rehabilitate prisoners.
The prison makes more money when the prisons are full or over crowded. A privatized prison has no public accountability and no incentive to prevent inmate violence. Giving inmates the option of joining a work party in exchange for early release is not a bad thing. However, when it is all about the money and the prisons make more money the more inmates are in work camps, the whole system becomes problematic. It is a conflict of interest.
Now, on to the military. I joked about privatizing the police force or military. A military or police force mandated to make a profit is nothing but problematic. If a military private corporation makes more money when they are engaged in war, then there is no incentive for that military to make peace. The business of war becomes a bad business.
Evidently the U.S. has rapidly started privatizing their military and 911 has been the catalyst to that practice. The giant leap forward started the day before 911 with Donald Rumsfeld’s bold announcement about the Pentagon.
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We’ve already talked about how Donald Rumsfeld said the day before 911 that the greatest enemy is from within and how that enemy is the Pentagon bureaucracy in that the Pentagon can not account for 25% of what it spends and was already missing $2.3 trillion before 911. Privatizing only means zero % public accountability and huge raises for their friends who become CEOs of these private military corporations.
However, what we failed to mention was that the purpose of Rumsfeld’s dramatic news release was to set in motion their plan to privatize the military. He was addressing pentagon officials in charge of overseeing the high stake business of defense contracting – Dick Cheney’s Halliburtons, DyneCorps, and Bechtels as well as former corporate executives from Enron, Northrop, Grumman, General Dynamics and Aerospace Corporation. Enron? The U.S. government is tied to that scandal which is beginning to look a lot like AIG.
Speaking of Enron, let’s talk about Thomas White who served as senior executive of Enron before it collapsed due to fraud. In 1990 White entered the private sector as Vice-Chairman of Enron Energy Services (E.E.S.), a subsidiary of the Enron Corporation responsible for providing energy outsource solutions. White also served as a member of Enron's Executive Committee and was Chairman and Chief Executive Officer for Enron Operations Corporation.
Thomas White was appointed Secretary of the Army on May 31 2001, three months before 911 and was responsible for all matters relating to Army manpower, personnel, reserve affairs, installations, environmental issues, weapons systems and equipment acquisition, communications, and financial management. He led a work-force of over one million active duty, National Guard and Army Reserve soldiers and 270,000 civilian employees, he had stewardship over 15 million acres (60,000 km²) of land and an annual budget of nearly $70 billion.
White was immediately embroiled in controversy regarding his previous employment with Enron and what he may have known about some of Enron's questionable business practices. His retention of a sizable amount of Enron stock fueled the perception of a conflict interest.
Enron’s fraud is lengthy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enron
Thomas White’s participation was tainted: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9504E4DA1730F934A2575AC0A9649C8B63
After his conviction Kenneth Lay from Enron said: "I firmly believe I'm innocent of the charges against me," Lay said following the hearing. "We believe that God in fact is in control and indeed he does work all things for good for those who love the lord." Yet jurors found through their verdict that both men had repeatedly lied to cover a vast web of unsustainable accounting tricks and failing ventures at Enron. Pimping the church for persona gain - deranged.
Nevertheless, the wheels were set in motion in September 2000 when the Project for a New American Century released a report called Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century. This report concluded that "the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor."
Indeed this report and this process of privatizing the military adds to the many conspiracies that surround the 911 event. This whole process does affect Canada because Harper is considering sending Canadian Troops to be trained at Blackwater: http://www.thestar.com/News/Canada/article/486145
"The defense department's training requirements include insurgent tactics, surveillance and intelligence gathering, weapons, financing and propaganda."
The Star reports that this facility is run by a private company run by a former CIA director, Cofer Black. Run by the CIA. The same group that produced Operation Northwoods and has a long history of dealing guns for drugs. Sending Canadian Troops here becomes a matter of National Security in training them to perform a false flag terrorist attack on Canada to fund their corporate agenda.
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Interesting quotes from a book on Blackwater:
"When U.S. tanks rolled into Baghdad in March 2003, they brought with them the largest army of private contractors ever deployed in a war. By the end of Rumsfeld’s tenure, there was an estimated 100,000 private contractors on the ground in Iraq – an almost one-to-one ratio to active duty soldiers."
"Standard wages for PSD (personal security detail) pros [in Iraq] were previously running about $300 [per man] a day." "Once Blackwater started recruiting for its first big job, guarding Paul Bremer, the rate shot up to $600 a day."
"Bremer’s last act before skulking out of Baghdad on June 28 2004, was to issue a decree known as Order 17, immunizing contractors in Iraq from prosecution."
"While U.S. soldiers have been prosecuted for killings and torture in Iraq, the Pentagon has not held it’s vast private forces to the same standards." A privatized military that is free to commit war crimes without persecution.
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Eisenhower’s farewell speech talked about joining the arms race but gave a strict warning that "The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties and our democratic process. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together."
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