War Profiteer of the Month: Blackwater

"Blackwater was founded in 1997 from a clear vision developed from an understanding of the need for innovative, flexible training and operational solutions to support security and peace, and freedom and democracy everywhere.

Our founder is a former U. S. Navy SEAL. He created Blackwater on the belief that both the military and law enforcement establishments would require additional capacity to train fully our brave men and women in and out of uniform to the standards required to keep our country secure.

Blackwater USA consists of nine separate business units: Blackwater Training Center (the largest private firearms and tactical training center in the U. S.), Blackwater Target Systems, Blackwater Security Consulting, Blackwater Canine, Maritime Security, manufacturing of custom Armored Vehicles, Parachute Jump Team, Aviation, and Raven Development Group. We also have relationships with our strategic partners, Aviation Worldwide Services and Greystone Ltd.

We are not simply a "private security company." We are a professional military, law enforcement, security, peacekeeping, and stability operations firm who provides turnkey solutions. We assist with the development of national and global security policies and military transformation plans. We can train, equip and deploy public safety and military professionals, build live-fire indoor/outdoor ranges, MOUT facilities and shoot houses, create ground and aviation operations and logistics support packages, develop and execute canine solutions for patrol and explosive detection, and can design and build facilities both domestically and in austere environments abroad.

Blackwater lives its core values of excellence, efficiency, execution, and teamwork. In doing this, we have become the most responsive, cost-effective means of affecting the strategic balance in support of security and peace, and freedom and democracy everywhere." hurrah!!

Blackwater is one of a growing number of private security contractors, the company and its secretive, mega-millionaire, right-wing Christian founder, Erik Prince, position Blackwater as a patriotic extension of the US military, and its employees are required to take an oath of loyalty to the Constitution. They are hiring military veterans for jobs previously assigned to the military. 15,000 private security agents from the United States, Britain and countries as varied as Nepal, Chile, Ukraine, Israel, South Africa and Fiji were employed in Iraq during the time of the attack.

In March of 2004, it was reported that Blackwater had flown a group of about 60 former Chilean commandos, many of who had trained under the military government of Augusto Pinochet, from Santiago to its training camp in North Carolina. From there they were taken to Iraq.

In an interview with the Chilean newspaper La Tercera, a former Chilean army officer, Carlos Wamgnet, 30, who was going to Iraq, said: "We are calm. This mission is nothing new for us... in the end, this is an extension of our military career."

John Rivas, 27, a former Chilean marine, said the work in Iraq would provide a "very good income" that would allow him to support his family...I don't feel like a mercenary," he added.

According to Gary Jackson, President of Blackwater USA:

"We scour the ends of the earth to find professionals - the Chilean commandos are very, very professional and they fit within the Blackwater system.

In one of the most infamous incidents of the war in Iraq: On March 31, 2004, four private American security contractors get lost and end up driving through the center of Falluja, a hotbed of Sunni resistance to the US occupation. Shortly after entering the city, they get stuck in traffic, and their small convoy is ambushed. Several armed men approach the two vehicles and open fire from behind, repeatedly shooting the men at point-blank range. Within moments, their bodies are dragged from the vehicles and a crowd descends on them, tearing them to pieces. Eventually, their corpses are chopped and burned. The remains of two of the men are strung up on a bridge over the Euphrates River and left to dangle. The gruesome image is soon beamed across the globe. For most people, the gruesome killings were the first they had ever heard of Blackwater, one of the biggest and deadliest private military contractors in the world.

Please go to their website it's incredible what they say!