Pentagon gives Blackwater new contract

[subsuelo]

Source: Asia Times

WASHINGTON - A United States-based private security firm received a contract worth up to US$92 million from the Department of Defense amid hard questions about its involvement in two separate violent incidents in Iraq.

"Blackwater has been a contractor in the past with the department and could certainly be in the future," said the US's top-ranking military officer, General Peter Pace, last week.

The future arrived just two hours later when the Pentagon released a new list of contracts - Presidential Airways, the aviation unit of parent Blackwater, was awarded the contract to fly Department of Defense passengers and cargo around Central Asia.

The announcement comes as a cloud of suspicion gathers around the "professional military" firm for its actions as a State Department security contractor in Iraq in which at least eight Iraqis and possibly as many as 28 were killed, including a woman and child.

Read more: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/IJ02Ak04.html

[adadem]

1. Nice payoff

for all the Prince and DeVos family donations to the republicans.

What really irks me is that not one of their kids has done into the military to fight in the war their family so wholehearted supported.

--

Blackwater's success in procuring federal contracts could well be explained by major-league contributions and family connections to the GOP. According to election records, Blackwater's CEO and co-founder, billionaire Erik Prince, has given tens of thousands to Republicans, including more than $80,000 to the Republican National Committee the month before Bush's victory in 2000. This past June, he gave $2,100 to Senator Rick Santorum's re-election campaign. He has also given to House majority leader Tom DeLay and a slew of other Republican candidates, including Bush/Cheney in 2004. As a young man, Prince interned with President George H.W. Bush, though he complained at the time that he "saw a lot of things I didn't agree with--homosexual groups being invited in, the budget agreement, the Clean Air Act, those kind of bills. I think the Administration has been indifferent to a lot of conservative concerns."

Prince, a staunch right-wing Christian, comes from a powerful Michigan Republican family, and his father, Edgar, was a close friend of former Republican presidential candidate and antichoice leader Gary Bauer. In 1988 the elder Prince helped Bauer start the Family Research Council. Erik Prince's sister, Betsy, once chaired the Michigan Republican Party and is married to Dick DeVos, whose father, billionaire Richard DeVos, is co-founder of the major Republican benefactor Amway. Dick DeVos is also a big-time contributor to the Republican Party and will likely be the GOP candidate for Michigan governor in 2006. Another Blackwater founder, president Gary Jackson, is also a major contributor to Republican campaigns.

More:

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0922-22.htm

[Solly Mack]

2. America has no shame

[Magleetis]

3. Good job men

Murdering mercenaries getting paid big bucks to be on the ultimate hunting trip. We should all be proud.

[Tesla]

6. REMEMBER????

We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.
Dwight D. Eisenhower


Why are the Amerikans so forgetful??

[Magleetis]

12. It almost

seems to be too late. I fear that we have become the death star.

[coalition_unwilling]

14. Can we now modify Ike's original phrase to "military-industrial-

congressional-media complex"? They are all complicit.

[ccpup]

4. will the Dems ever

look into these contracts and ask those necessary tough questions that are begging to be asked?

[liberal renegade]

7. It's not very likely.

[subsuelo]

11. Kucinich likely would

[Canuckistanian]

5. Ridng that gravy train for as long as possible

They know that their days are numbered.

But I think some Pentagon officials should be subpoenaed along with Condi and others at the State Dept.

[Larry Ogg]

8. It’s a good idea to keep these military contractors on the payroll,

as their services could be needed here in the U.S. on a moments notice.

The owners of Blackwater should be in prison for fraud at minimum, but instead they are awarded with huge contracts. My guess is that we the people will be safe as long as we continue to keep a blind eye as to what’s going on. And by blind eye I mean, the corporately owned conservative biased main stream media…

[OneBlueSky]

9. well . . . once you've privatized war, there's not much else left . . .

someday soon we'll be looking at . . .

- the Blackwater House of Representatives . . .

- the Halliburton Senate . . .

- the Diebold Supreme Court . . .

I mean, if we can name ballparks and football stadiums (or is it "stadia?") after contributors, why not the government itself? . . . . .

- how about the General Electric "Shock & Awe" War on Iran? . . .

hell, this might even earn us enough to reduce the debt a bit . . .

pondering . . .

nah, they'd either spend it or pocket it . . .

[Vidar]

13. Not to mention the Enron Federal Accounting Office.

[BRLIB]

10. Certainly they also deserve the "Medal of Freedom"!

Each and every butcher in that shop.

[Megahurtz]

15. Ugh!

Disgusting.:grr: More paid killers even though Iraq wants them gone. This Country sickens me anymore.