Blackwater's 'Drug War' Bonanza - Village Voice

[WillyT]

Blackwater's 'Drug War' Bonanza
posted: 11:59 AM, September 19, 2007 by Harkavy

$15 billion of your money up in smoke for under-fire mercenary company, other defense contractors.


Good year for Blackwater: The mercenary army, under fire
in Iraq, just landed a huge drug-war contract and claims
to be building this "remotely piloted airship vehicle (RPAV)."

<snip>

While Blackwater's mercenaries beg for mercy for killing a baby and 19 other people in Baghdad on Sunday, they're already working on another lucrative government contract on yet another foreign adventure: the "war on drugs."

In a major new outsourcing deal reported by only a few outlets, including the Army Times, Blackwater will divvy up a $15 billion pot of government gold, along with four huge defense contractors: Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, and Arinc.

Blackwater claims to be building remote-control spy airships. Purty darn good for an army based in a little North Carolina town — no, it's Currituck, not Mayberry.

Arinc, a Maryland-based major supplier of airplane surveillance and passenger-counting equipment, is particularly stoked about the deal, which it announced on the sixth anniversary of 9/11:

ARINC already has a wealth of hands-on experience supporting just this type of program. We now expect to play a key role developing and fielding new solutions at the cutting edge of drug interdiction.

Hang on, Arinc, you're getting ahead of yourselves. Here's how GovExec.com's Katherine McIntire Peters describes this other privatized war, which apparently is necessary because, even with the privatized war in Iraq, we still don't have enough troops to conduct all these wars:

Hang on, Arinc, you're getting ahead of yourselves. Here's how GovExec.com's Katherine McIntire Peters describes this other privatized war, which apparently is necessary because, even with the privatized war in Iraq, we still don't have enough troops to conduct all these wars:


The contract, worth up to $15 billion over the next five years, illustrates the extent to which the Defense Department is relying on contractors to perform critical missions while combat forces are stretched thin by operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In response to specific task orders issued under the indefinite delivery indefinite quantity contract, companies will develop and deploy new surveillance technologies, train and equip foreign security forces and provide key administrative, logistical and operational support to Defense and other agencies such as the Drug Enforcement Administration.

According to the work statement provided to bidders, the vast majority of the drive will be conducted overseas.

Blackwater clearly knows how to deal with foreigners. But how does a little ol' company get to share our wealth with such huge defense contractors? No doubt it's got low friends in high places.

<snip>

Link: http://www.villagevoice.com/blogs/bushbeat/archive/2007/09/blackwaters_dru.php

Lead Zeppelin indeed.

:mad:

[EST]

1. This puts a so-called private security company directly at war with

the American people and should be highly illegal. Perhaps the un-nuanced support for second amendment rights will prove the wisest, as private citizens have to take it upon themselves to rid the world of Blackwater.
People are really, really stupid.

[tridim]

2. If they're not careful there's going to be a "War on Blackwater"

I know I wouldn't go quietly if a Blackwater Op tried to apprehend me.

[yella_dawg]

3. Yet another vested interest...

in keeping drugs laws in place.

One that has its own army.

[WillyT]

4. Yep...

Do they have the right to arrest, or just a license to kill?

Or... will they just be the new middle-men?

:shrug:

[Peace Patriot]

5. This is about the Bush Cartel's OTHER war--the one in South America, that you

may not have heard about.

They can't just declare war against democracy in South America. Bad P.R. Instead, they have the "war on drugs." But it's all about the same thing as Iraq: oil.

Lots and lots of it--also gas, minerals, forests, fresh water and resources--in the Andes region, where a huge, peaceful, democratic, leftist (majorityist) revolution is leading the entire continent (and central America as well) to the left. Leftist governments elected in Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Uruguay, and, in central America, Nicaragua. Paraguay will likely be next, followed by Peru. A leftist may get elected also, this year, in troubled Guatemala, and a leftist came within a hairsbreadth--0.05%--of winning the presidency of Mexico last year.

The Bolivarian revolution in the Andes has as its major tenets, a) social justice (for instance, using oil and other resource profits to help the poor); b) self-determination for Latin American countries (anti-US dominance and interference; anti-global corporate predators; anti-World Bank/IMF loan sharks; and--very significantly--anti-US "war on drugs"); and c) regional cooperation (the Bank of the South; Mercosur and other trade groups--anti-NAFTA; mutual aid and development projects).

The Bolivarian revolution--a very democratic movement--is the biggest threat to global corporate predator exploitation in Latin America since the communist movement of the 1950s-1980s, and much more of a threat because it is unassailable on democratic principles and democratic change. Venezuela, for instance, has far, far more transparent elections than we do. Hugo Chavez is a genuine representative of his people--genuinely popular and completely legitimate. In fact, the people of Venezuela STOPPED a violent rightwing military coup against him in 2002. He owes them. Similarly, in Bolivia, Ecuador, Argentina and other countries, real leaders are getting elected, as the result of awesome grass roots political organization and long hard work on democratic institutions, as well as in reaction to decades of U.S.-supported brutal economic and political oppression, and the disaster of NAFTA.

So, what's a fascist to do? We can't have this--democracy in South America. The Bushites have poured millions (of our tax dollars) into rightwing political groups, and have tried everything in the book to destabilize these countries and re-install rightwing dictatorships, and they are losing, big time. The old tactics don't work. But the new--and most lethal--counter-offensive to Latin American democracy is the "war on drugs," by which the Bushites are pouring BILLIONS of dollars into Colombia and their few other client states (including Mexico), to empower the rightwing in these countries, to militarize them, to support mass killings of union organizers, peasant farmers and political leftists, and to use Colombia and other "war on drugs" countries as launching pads for subversion and outright war on the Andes democracies in particular (Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Argentina).

In Colombia, rightwing paramilitaries with very close ties to the Uribe government (including the head of the military, the former head of intelligence and many Uribe office holders)--and closely tied to the Bush billions in military aid (our taxpayer dollars--have been chainsawing union organizers and throwing their body parts into mass graves, slaughtering whole villages, and organizing plots to assassinate Hugo Chavez and other Bolivarian leaders, destabilize their countries and impose rightwing dictators. These rightwing paramilitaries are into major drug trafficking and weapons trafficking.

Also, Blackwater is active in Colombia--recruiting and training for Iraq, among other things. Colombia is the main center of fascist activity in the region.

Bolivia now has a president--the first indigenous president of Bolivia, Evo Morales--who is a former coca leaf grower, and who campaigned with a wreath of coca leaves around his neck. The Bolivarians see the "war on drugs" as a war on the poor. The coca leaf is a sacred plant in the Andes--essential to survival in the frigid climate and high altitudes of the Andes mountains, and used for thousands of years as a medicine. The small peasant farmers who grow small amounts coca leaves for local use also produce organic food to feed their families and communities. The big drug lords and crime gangs, and criminal corporations like Chiquita and Monsanto, use the "war on drugs" to drive the small farmers off their land (and into urban squalor), by terrorizing them (torture, murder) and spraying of toxic pesticides (which kill all crops, poison animals and damage human DNA). THIS is why Morales and others oppose the US "war on drugs." The "war on drugs" is extremely corrupt, and, under the Bushites, you can imagine just how corrupt.

The "war on drugs" also gives the Bushites a FOOTHOLD for actual war against Latin American democracies. It wouldn't surprise me if they have literal war plans for that purpose. They probably have a map with all the Andes oil fields carved up among major corporate oil predators, like they did in Iraq. There are thousands of U.S. military personnel in South America, and war plans probably include those, as well as Blackwater mercenaries and rightwing paramilitaries. This may seem absurd. I wouldn't put it past the likes of Dick Cheney and John Negroponte. They've done it before (in the illegal war against the Sandinista government in Nicaragua, in the 1980s.)

But I think the "war on drugs" primarily is a way to funnel billions of dollars to the worst elements in Latin American society, to foment trouble and boost their political fortunes, and of course to fatten military contractors and further the police state at home and abroad. As an anti-drug effort, the "war on drugs" is an utter failure. Drug trafficking has never been more lucrative or widespread. But as a POLITICAL tool--used to stir up as much trouble as possible for leftist governments, and literally to torture and kill the political opposition--it is invaluable to war profiteers, corporations and local rich elites. The U.S. will not win a literal war in Latin America, and they are losing the political war--but when has that ever stopped the Bush Cartel? Where there is oil, they make war, of one kind or another.