Erik Prince walks free & rich, while his Blackwater underlings go to prison.

[99th_Monkey]

Does anyone even know, is Blackwater (or it's alias) still on the public dole? This article says it was during Obama's first term, but is not clear about whether they're presently being hired to do the military's dirty work.

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BLACKWATER FOUNDER REMAINS FREE AND RICH WHILE HIS FORMER EMPLOYEES GO DOWN ON MURDER CHARGES
BY JEREMY SCAHILL * Buzzflash * Oct. 22, 2014

The jury found one guard, Nicholas Slatten, guilty of first-degree murder, while three other guards were found guilty of voluntary manslaughter: Paul Slough, Evan Liberty, and Dustin Heard. The jury is still deliberating on additional charges against the operatives, who faced a combined 33 counts, according to the Associated Press. A fifth Blackwater guard, Jeremy Ridgeway, had already pleaded guilty to lesser charges and cooperated with prosecutors in the case against his former colleagues. The trial lasted ten weeks and the jury has been in deliberations for 28 days.

The incident for which the men were tried was the single largest known massacre of Iraqi civilians at the hands of private U.S. security contractors. Known as “Baghdad’s bloody Sunday,” operatives from Blackwater gunned down 17 Iraqi civilians at a crowded intersection at Nisour Square on September 16, 2007. The company, founded by secretive right-wing Christian supremacist Erik Prince, pictured above, had deep ties to the Bush Administration and served as a sort of neoconservative Praetorian Guard for a borderless war launched in the immediate aftermath of 9/11.

While Barack Obama pledged to reign in mercenary forces when he was a senator, once he became president he continued to employ a massive shadow army of private contractors. Blackwater — despite numerous scandals, congressional investigations, FBI probes and documented killings of civilians in both Iraq and Afghanistan — remained a central part of the Obama administration’s global war machine throughout his first term in office.

Just as with the systematic torture at Abu Ghraib, it is only the low level foot-soldiers of Blackwater that are being held accountable. Prince and other top Blackwater executives continue to reap profits from the mercenary and private intelligence industries. Prince now has a new company, Frontier Services Group, which he founded with substantial investment from Chinese enterprises and which focuses on opportunities in Africa. Prince recently suggested that his forces at Blackwater could have confronted Ebola and ISIS. “If the administration cannot rally the political nerve or funding to send adequate active duty ground forces to answer the call, let the private sector finish the job,” he wrote.

None of the U.S. officials from the Bush and Obama administrations who unleashed Blackwater and other mercenary forces across the globe are being forced to answer for their role in creating the conditions for the Nisour Square shootings and other deadly incidents involving private contractors. Just as the main architect of the CIA interrogation program, Jose Rodriguez, is on a book tour for his propagandistic love letter to torture, Hard Measures: How Aggressive CIA Actions After 9/11 Saved American Lives, so too is Erik Prince pushing his own revisionist memoir, Civilian Warriors: The Inside Story of Blackwater and the Unsung Heroes of the War on Terror.

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/10/22/blackwater-guilty-verdicts/

[muntrv]

1. I would love to see Prince try and take on ISIS.

[geek tragedy]

2. Generally the people shooting are the ones prosecuted

for shooting.

[Action_Patrol]

3. Oh please

Get out of here with your reason and rational thought.

[99th_Monkey]

4. Yes, being rich and powerful certainly has it's advantages

"Plausible deniability" being one of them.

What ever happened to "the buck stops here"?

[geek tragedy]

7. They don't need plausible deniability when they have

actual deniability. There was no legal basis for prosecuting anyone but the shooters.

[99th_Monkey]

8. So if I hire a goon to murder someone I want out of the way

only the shooter is guilty?

I don't believe that is accurate, unless you live in Chicago.

[geek tragedy]

12. Did Prince order those goons to open fire

on those people?

I must have missed that part.

Prince is a lowlife scumbag. That doesn't make him criminally liable in this instance.

[99th_Monkey]

13. If Prince cannot or will not control his goons

so they don't murder innocent people,
then he should be held legally responsible for
these murders.

Whether or not the law as it stands now allows
the Erik Princes of the world to get off scott-free
is not the point IMHO.

[bluesbassman]

5. The answer to your question is YES.

They are now known as "Academi" and have recently merged with another security company known as "Triple Canopy".

The article is in one sense a literal blast from the past. Blackwater changed its name to Xe Services in 2009, in part because its brand had become so toxic after Nisour Square, and then sold itself to a group of outside investors in 2010. The board of the new company, ACADEMI, includes former Attorney General John Ashcroft and former San Antonio Spurs owner Red McCombs.
http://complex.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2014/07/01/blackwaters_descendants_are_doing_just_fine

Here's a nice chronological piece on Blackwater/Xe/Academi
http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/Blackwater_Worldwide

[99th_Monkey]

9. Wow! I suspected as much.

These mercenaries have totally wormed their way into the heart of the National Security State of America.

That is some scary shit when they are still in operation with a "liberal" Democrat in the WH. These are nothing more than hired thugs & killers sans any accountability for the Erik Princes of the world.

And its all happening so quietly, like we shouldn't notice or care. And dollar to a donut, I'll get attacked for this post.

[gratuitous]

6. No sentencing yet

So we don't know for sure that the mercenaries will actually be going to prison. Also, hasn't Erik Prince been punished enough by going into self-exile somewhere we don't have an extradition treaty?

In checking around, the internets puked up this vomitous bit of hagiography from our good friends at the National Review:

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/365505/vindication-erik-prince-alec-torres

Blackwater was an amazing success story. A company born out of a desire to help America in any way possible, it provided security for diplomats, resupply aid to soldiers, relief to disaster-struck populations, and more. Yet it was ruined by the politics and policies of the government it served. Looking back on the story of Blackwater, Prince worries about the future of the country he had risked his life for and built his company to aid and protect.

[longship]

10. The AmWay family. Grand Rapids, Michigan's own DeVos's.

Rich, evil, scumbags.

Of course, then you have to also consider that the area of Michigan is also the center of the Dutch reformed church -- which is no coincidence. They are predestinationalists.

The businesses in downtown Grand Rapids are mostly closed on Sunday.

Universally horrible people.

[alarimer]

11. It's changed names so many times, who can tell?

The last I heard was that he moved it to the Middle East or Africa to provide mercenary services without legal oversight.