Blackwater, now known as Xe, is a large, private army hired by the Administration of Dick Cheney and George W. Bush. It was founded by Eric Prince, an extremely wealthy, Right Wing, former Navy SEAL. He apparently attended the Naval Academy but graduated from Hillsdale College in Michigan, an organization which the last several decades seems to have become largely a diploma mill for children of Conservatives. They were hired at a cost of something like $23 million to go to Iraq and protect Paul Bremer and his team. They are security for foreign state department locations. They are Right-Wing and they are dangerous.
Blackwater, or Xe, has been under investigation by Congressional committees because some of its members have been accused of murdering Iraqi citizens. It has its headquarters in North Carolina, with another location near Mt. Carroll, IL. Its stated objective is to be a private security firm. But it has employed over 180,000 mercenary, ex-military personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan, many of whom are former members of the military from dictatorships in Latin America, and other countries. It is said to have a 14,000 person militia in North Carolina.
Blackwater, despite its very shadowy existence and its hard Right-Wing advocacy, is still funded by the Obama Administration to provide security for the State Department, among other projects, around the world. The problem is not with Blackwater around the world, it is with situations like the following right here in the United States. We have our own police forces.
The day after Katrina..before “Brownie” and his bumbling staff then running FEMA could get moving, long before George W. Bush could get focused, 150 men in black, with body armor, carrying automatic weapons, pistols strapped to their waists and riding in black SUVs with darkly tinted windows were roaming the streets of New Orleans. They were Blackwater. It is said that they were initially paid about $400,000 to show up to protect private property and government locations. They sound very efficient and they certainly sound as though they were professional. Eventually, thanks to the Bush Administration and their friends, they were able to earn over $33 million for “protection” in New Orleans and elsewhere. On whose authority were they there? Homeland Security, they maintained. Others suspected Cheney.
In just the last few days, in Hardin, Montana, a previously unknown organization that calls itself the APF (for American Police Force) showed up to take over the jail with plans to open a private security or military training center. This company has no known clients. The head of the organization, who showed up in the town, suspiciously similar to Xe’s (Blackwater’s) New Orleans exploits, with big SUVs and darkly-tinted windows. But these vehicles already had “City of Hardin Police Force” decals on their sides. No one in Hardin knew anything about it.
To say the least, with Republican Right Wingers talking about blowing up the Capit0l and starting a revolution, with others shooting doctors and gunning down guards and citizens at public museums, and with Southern Neocon Congressmen being openly disrespectful of the President by brazenly shouting out (falsely) that he is a “liar” at a nationally televised speech before the entire Congress and Adminstration in the House of Representatives–and with a 14,000-man militia in North Carolina supported by the Bush Administration…how long before Liberals wake up?
It is time to bring home the American military and the national guard, trained, disciplined, combat-ready soldiers, loyal to the government and put them on standby on American military posts. And we need to do it now. We need to shut down Iraq and bring the troops home. Yes, Bush did it. But Obama was against it. We elected Obama. So bring the troops home. And if the International Tribunals want to blame Bush..fine…let them have him. And Cheney. They caused the deaths of tens of thousands at the very least. Who are we…of all people…to harbor war criminals?
These Right Wing propagandists and tea bagging Neocons have become more than just a joke. People thought Hitler was a joke until they found out, too late, that he was dangerous and a madman. We don’t have the luxury in this country of waiting for a bunch of racist, white-supremacist, Right Wing gun-toting Southerners to start trouble again. We need to shut them down now. We don’t need more incidents like Waco and then race riots in Southern cities where these Right Wing conservatives would like to pit Blacks against Whites.
Without jobs, many African-Americans have joined and been trained by the military in large numbers. And since the Civil Rights movement, they know how to organize. Southern whites, without education, except in football, have apparently gone from being the next-best-hope of the country in the mid-1970s to becoming largely gun club members and bigots. The potential conflict between the two groups…angry African-Americans–justifiably so–and ignorant racists is being stirred up by Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, the eccentric Glenn Beck and the hate spewing Michael Savage types has now gone beyond the point of simple racist ranting.
There is no immediate conflict, but if there were, would anything good come from it? Would the first people to be shot, hacked to pieces, hanged or otherwise caught up in the violence they created be Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Michael Savage, Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly, Joe Scarborough, Michelle Malkin, Laura Ingraham, Ann Coulter, Neal Boortz, J. Gordon Liddy, Oliver North, Mark Levin, Hugh Hewitt, Michael Medved and the other Right Wing propagandists stirring up Right Wing hatred among the tea baggers? probably not. Who knows? No matter what, we need legislation to shut down their incendiary speech, causing so much violence. We have too many other problems to worry about. We don’t have time to wonder whether the military will be forced to put down some tin-pot rebellion from a group of racists.
As far as the Hardin, Montana situation goes, apparently the state is investigating. The Xe people say that this is not one of their divisions, but others claim that the head of American Police Force was or is a member of Blackwater. Headquartered in California, where Blackwater was trying to set up shop with another militia, APF supposedly has a contract with the town of Hardin to run some kind of detention facility there. It sounds very much like the Xe modus operandi.
Hardin isn’t the only problem. After New Orleans was flooded, there were verified reports of many black SUVs with darkly tinted windows and heavily armed men dressed in black, roaming the streets, giving people orders. They were Blackwater men. So far as can be determined they were authorized by Dick Cheney but why they were there is still a mystery, but a dangerous one. We now know that Blackwater was assigned some targets abroad that they were to attempt to assassinate. But we also know that Cheney is said to have hired private military for actions here in the United States.
These Right Wingers make no bones about their avowed use of gun violence here in the states. The editor and CEO, Joseph Farah, of WorldNetDaily.com, a openly Right Wing Internet propaganda organization, connected to the Republican Party has publicly stated, “Get armed and trained now. Don’t wait until it is too late.”
If you are not familiar with the rise of the Nazis in Germany, you had better become familiar with it, and quickly. Brutal, thuggish groups that were never brought under control that we now refer to as the brown shirts, the S.A., were as much a part of the growth of the Nazis as were the speeches of Hitler or the radio propaganda of Herr Goebbels. The Right Wing in this country clearly has no desire any longer to become a force in the democratic process. They have given only lip service to bi-partisanship while totally…all of them…as a group voting “NO” on every piece of legislation that the People elected our current government to enact. They don’t want health care for the people. They don’t want to see the start of green energy manufacturing plants and an entire modernization of the electrical grid. They do not want to see the growth of flex-fuel automobiles or advanced battery technology. They didn’t even want to create jobs for the millions thrown out of work by the scandalous Bush financial catastrophe.
But the Boehner and McConnell and Cheney forces, their 14,000-strong lobbyists, who have spent over $400 million–thus far–to try to defeat health care for all Americans…encourage Right Wing demonstrations, racists signs, radio talks of assassinations, rebellions and revolution. That is how the Nazis started. Exactly the same way. Accuse, accuse, accuse.. Try to discredit everything the government does so that you can create anarchy. Out of the chaos you create, make yourselves–in this case the Republican Right Wing–the friends of the average citizen, the majority of the people. Yes, it may seem laughable now…but they will try to take over by using propaganda to make themselves seem like the ones offering help. They will try to demonize the government and make the people forget who it was who proposed the legislation for fairness in health care, more jobs in new energy manufacturing, keeping jobs in the U.S., stopping the financial community from ruining lives, stopping as many foreclosures as possible…all these things they will try to shout over. And with all these talk show hosts they can do it.
Above all, more than the huge money to Republicans from corporations, more than the control of media, more than the lies and propaganda…more than all of it…we need to shut down these private armies or we will be in grave danger of real revolution…men with guns. Remember the old saying, you can get a lot with a smile, but you get more with a smile and a gun.
This is serious. Start looking into it and talking to your friends about it. Keep it in the forefront of the minds of your representatives. Not since the Civil War, not even the Civil Rights era (when we had all Americans in the military…our military…and no private armies) have we had such a risk of mass violence. We need to shut it down now. The government under Bush started funding these groups. The government under Obama can shut them down. Let’s get back to thinking “ballots” not “bullets.”
