[Peace-discuss] US' real enemy in Mideast (II)

[C. G. Estabrook]

	Scahill: ‘The war is in Pakistan right now’
	By David Edwards and Muriel Kane
	Friday, December 4th, 2009 -- 12:04 pm

    *US's unofficial war in Pakistan will 'create enemies,' author says

In the wake of President Obama's plan to increase the number of US troops in 
Afghanistan, questions are being raised about the use of private contractors in 
US operations there. The acknowledgment by Eric Prince, founder of military 
contractor Blackwater, that he has been serving for years as a CIA asset only 
intensifies these concerns.

For Jeremy Scahill, author of the bestselling book Blackwater, however, the real 
concern is not Afghanistan but Pakistan, where according to an article in the 
New York Times, "the White House has authorized an expansion of the C.I.A.’s 
drone program."

"We need to view this sober reality," Scahill told MSNBC's Rachel Maddow on 
Thursday. "The war is in Pakistan right now. There's no question about it. The 
question, though, is how much it's going to expand. ... These are actions that 
are going to destabilize Pakistan and are going to create new enemies for the 
United States because of the high civilian casualties. ... Here you have 
military operations inside a country that we don't have a declaration of war 
against."

Scahill emphasized that the most destabilizing actions come not from the CIA but 
from Blackwater mercenaries, whom he recently described in The Nation as working 
for US special forces to "plan targeted assassinations of suspected Taliban and 
Al Qaeda operatives, 'snatch and grabs' of high-value targets and other 
sensitive action inside and outside Pakistan."
Story continues below...

The drone attacks outsourced to Blackwater are the source of the highest numbers 
of civilian casualties. Scahill told Maddow that one of his sources is a "very 
well-placed military intelligence source [who] is offended at the idea that you 
have these operations happening outside of the military chain of command and 
with no oversight from the Congress."

"Blackwater has been operating under the cover of a training program," Scahill 
explained. "Blackwater is training the Pakistani Frontier Corps, which is a 
federal paramilitary force that is hunting down high-value targets in the 
frontier province. A former Blackwater executive told me that the line is being 
crossed -- that Blackwater guys are actually going out on these raids."

Scahill also revealed a few interesting tidbits about Eric Prince's decision to 
out himself as a CIA asset, saying, "I see this sort of as Eric Prince taking 
out an insurance policy for himself. ... Eric Prince is in the cross-hairs now 
of the Congress, the federal investigators, and others ... and it's a way of 
trying to insulate himself from future attacks."

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