[Peace-discuss] Blackwater: No More Security Business!

[Jenifer Cartwright]

Good news! So the Walmart of the Mercenaries is ending security ops for the US and opening up shop elsewhere (I'm guessing). So that's one down and how many more to go??
 --Jenifer

--- On Tue, 7/22/08, Roger Epperson <cgrle at yahoo.com> wrote:

From: Roger Epperson <cgrle at yahoo.com>
Subject: [Peace-discuss] Blackwater: No More Security Business!
To: peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net
Date: Tuesday, July 22, 2008, 1:28 PM

Blackwater to leave security business following problems in Iraq

    * Elana Schor and agencies
    * guardian.co.uk,
    * Tuesday July 22, 2008
    * Article history

Blackwater, the US private military contractor widely accused of abuse of power
in Iraq, is getting out of the security business.

Company executives said they are moving away from security work in the wake of
close media scrutiny of private contractors' behaviour in Iraq,
particularly a Baghdad shooting involving Blackwater employees that left 17
Iraqi civilians dead. The incident is under investigation by American law
enforcement.

"The experience we've had would certainly be a disincentive to any
other companies that want to step in and put their entire business at
risk,'' Blackwater founder and chief executive Erik Prince told an
Associated Press reporter who was given a daylong tour of the company's
headquarters.

Anne Tyrrell, a Blackwater spokesman, said the company has not planned any
"shift," but rather that the company would grow in other areas
besides private security.

"When we are seeking to expand the business we will be doing it in other
area," she said. "We don't see that market growing".

Blackwater has made hundreds of millions of dollars off of contracts to guard
US state department officials. Its seemingly ubiquitous presence, combined with
the larger-than-life personality of the conservative Prince, turned Blackwater
into an emblem for the privatised military that the Bush administration relied
upon to help wage the Iraq war.

The company also operated under broad legal immunity from criminal prosecution
in Iraq, attracting criticism from government officials in Washington as well
as Baghdad. The US Congress ultimately passed legislation bringing contracting
firms under the American military code of justice.
Blackwater's now plans to focus attention on its expansive rural training
facilities. Its North Carolina home attracts swarms of US military, law
enforcement and local officials each year.

The company also has expanded its aviation division, which provides airplane
and helicopter maintenance and also drops supplies into hard-to-reach military
bases. A 6,000-foot runway is under construction and a large map in the
company's hanger shows units based across the world, from Africa to the
Middle East to Australia.

"Our focus is away from security work. We're just not bidding on
it," Blackwater president Gary Jackson told the Associated Press.

The debate over how much of military operations should be turned over to
for-profit firms has also touched on contractors' ability to protect its
own employees. Four Blackwater workers were murdered in 2004 in the Iraqi city
of Fallujah, then a hotbed of violence, and seven more died in a roadside bomb
attack a year later.

Five British private contractors, including IT consultant Peter Moore, were
kidnapped from the Baghdad finance ministry by a Shiite militant group 14
months ago. Anguish over their plight flared this week after reports that one
of the hostages succumbed to depression and killed himself while in captivity.


      
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