A Friday dump brought news discussed in this diary:
Never mind the dead civilians. Forget about the stolen guns. Get over the murder arrests, the fraud allegations, and the accusations of guards pumping themselves up with steroids and cocaine. Through a "joint venture," the notorious private-security firm Blackwater has won a piece of a five-year State Department contract worth up to $10 billion, Danger Room has learned.
And Monday morning mish-mashes only make it more maddening...
Spencer Ackerman:
If International Development Solutions, a mysterious firm partially owned by Blackwater, has its own independent office, it’s hard to find. A business records search co-locates one of the jackpot winners of a State Department contract worth up to $10 million with Kaseman LLC, the well-connected private security security firm that partnered with Blackwater arm U.S. Training Center to win the contract.
That would suggest International Development Solutions — a company few industry experts have heard of, sporting a generic, Google-resistant name — is yet another front group the company set up to win government contracts while concealing its tainted brand.
More of a mystery is why the State Department let the company get away with it.
Again.
Even more of a mystery when viewed through the lens of this remark made by then-Senator and now-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton:
"These private security contractors have been reckless and have compromised our mission in Iraq. The time to show these contractors the door is long past due. We need to stop filling the coffers of contractors in Iraq, and make sure that armed personnel in Iraq are fully accountable to the U.S. government and follow the chain of command."
--Hillary Clinton, 2008
That was a year prior to this diary in September of 2009:
There have been recent murmurings that the Xe (formerly Blackwater) contract was to run out today, September 3rd. Much to my dismay, the contract has once again been extended "indefinitely". Apparently, so we’re told, this is to provide for a timed overlap in the transfer of duties from one private security firm, Xe (formerly Blackwater), to... wait for it... another private security firm, Dyncorp.
The mind reels.
That’s right, folks.
We will apparently be ending the contract with a private security firm that has been implicated in fraud, waste, abuse, mismanagement, and murder... in order to start a new contract with a private security firm that has been implicated in fraud, waste, abuse, mismanagement, and children as sex slaves.
Well, at least they don’t have that whole "murder" thing going on.
That is, unless you count the deaths of babies that resulted from Dyncorp participation in haphazard and reckless spraying of herbicides and fumigants during operations in Columbia.
Oh, and that Iraqi taxi driver.
It now appears as though the awarding of new, additional, no-bid contracts doesn’t end with the wasteful, abusive, crusading, arms-smuggling, murderous thieves at Blackwater and Dyncorp.
Via Ackerman, we learn that the awarding of new, no-bid private security contracts to companies with long and sordid histories of fraud, waste, abuse, and outright criminal wrong-doing extends to coup launchers as well.
Meet Aegis Defense Services:
As if a Blackwater front group wasn’t enough. The State Department is also giving a slice of its $10 billion security contract to Aegis Defense Services, a company run by a notorious "mercenary king" who’s violated international arms embargoes and tried to overthrow at least two African governments.
[...]
If it wasn’t for Blackwater founder Erik Prince, Spicer might be the most colorful (and most notorious) person in the private security field. A former British commando and self-identified "Unorthodox Soldier," Spicer served in the Falklands, the Gulf war, Bosnia and Northern Ireland. But his infamy came as a private-security pioneer in the 1990s.
Spicer’s first company, Sandline International, got a $36 million deal in 1997 to guard a copper mine for the government of Papua New Guinea before an incensed Army launched a coup and briefly arrested him. Undeterred, the next year Spicer ran 30 tons of weapons to Sierra Leone’s "government in exile" in violation of a United Nations arms embargo. He’s also been connected to a 2004 coup attempt against the government of oil-rich Equatorial Guinea, as Vanity Fair recounted.
The name didn’t quite stand out at me at first, until Spencer kindly reminded readers of this incident:
Aegis’s guards in Iraq took the company viral. YouTube features a number of swagger-filled Aegis videos depicting the tough security work the company performs. But in 2005, the above "trophy video" surfaced showing Aegis guards firing on Iraqi vehicles that don’t pose obvious risks — all set, light-heartedly, to Elvis’s "Mystery Train." The U.S. military never reprimanded the company for its release.
The video Spencer references can be found here.
It's two minutes of animals on the loose.
Not only did the US military never reprimand the company for its release of that video, but they also cleared the participants in the activity depicted in the video (which all but clearly appear to be the war crime of intentionally and directly targeting civilians) of any and all wrong-doing.
Apparently, the use of civilians for target practice is an acceptable form of "engagement".
Worse, the State Department has now awarded the criminal private security company the "trophy" of $10 billion more of our hard-earned tax dollars.
The State Department has yet to respond to requests for comment about why Aegis won part of its Worldwide Protective Services contract. We’ll update this post if and when it does.
But one possible clue about the award — aside from SIGIR’s assessment — is that the new State Department contract is potentially much bigger than the last one: up to $10 billion over five years, compared to perhaps $2 billion for its predecessor.
$10 billion over five years. $2 billion per year.
How many Americans would that employ to build how many bridges? Or repair how many schools?
One wonders what just $1 billion would do for, oh, say... the Peace Corps.
How many new volunteers would that provide?
It was, after all, a campaign promise.
Double the Peace Corps
"Barack Obama will double the Peace Corps to 16,000 by its 50th anniversary in 2011 and push Congress to fully fund this expansion, with a focus on Latin America and the Caribbean."
Promise: Broken
How far could $10 billion go in the form of a Gulf Restoration Project?
A new WPA project?
Not that it need be said, but: There are any number of things $10 billion could do.
Outside of funneling it through shell company after shell company to a pack of murdering thugs with an allegiance to their profits over an allegiance to our country, of course.
It could pay for the hiring of an additional 160,000 teachers, for example.
But we all know the government can't/doesn't create jobs.
Just ask the murdering, coup-staging, arms-smuggling war profiteers now being hired in earnest...