Blackwater, as part of the State Department's Worldwide Personal Protective Service, is protecting Barack Obama on his current trip to Afghanistan according to Jeremy Scahill, speaking today at the Gitmo panel at Netroots Nation. Jeremy was vehement in a way I haven't heard him before in exhorting us to let Obama know what we think about his attitude towards these contractors. He's pressing on us to make our voices heard now, when Obama most needs us--before the election, not after.
Update:AllisonInSeattle said it just as I stopped myself from climbing into bed to come back and say it myself. It is NOT a good thing to have OUR candidate being protected by right wing Bush-supported forces! Think about it.
Update 2: I can see that many of us don't know about Blackwater and who they really are. Maybe some Blackwater 101 diaries are in order.
In an article in The Nation Scahill writes about what Obama does support regarding contractors, which he also talked about today:
In February 2007, Obama introduced contractor reform and oversight legislation that has become the Democrats' major plan in the Congress. Obama's bill seeks to make all contractors subject to prosecution in US civilian courts for crimes committed on a foreign battlefield. The bill is not without its problems. In theory, FBI investigators would deploy to the crime scene, gather evidence and interview witnesses, leading to indictments and prosecutions.
Apart from the fact that it would be impossible to effectively police such an enormous deployment of private contractors (at present basically equal to the number of active duty US troops in Iraq), the legislation would give the private military industry a tremendous PR victory. The companies could finally claim that a legally accountable structure governed their operations, yet they would be well aware that such legislation would be nearly impossible to enforce. Perhaps that is why the industry has passionately backed this approach.
Today, Scahill emphasized the ridiculousness of sending our FBI investigators to Iraq--who would guard them while they conducted the investigations, for one thing?
In a June interview on Democracy Now, Scahill said:
Barack Obama understands this issue extremely well. His staff has been on top of this for quite some time. He—what he said to you is true. He did introduce the legislation in the Senate that has become the Democrats’ official legislation on these private security companies, and he did it eight months before Nisour Square. So, clearly, Barack Obama is someone who has been following this very closely. He understands it very intimately.
What’s interesting—and you raised this with him—is that he won’t take the step toward actually trying to ban these companies. Representative Jan Schakowsky and Senator Bernie Sanders have put forward legislation called the Stop Outsourcing Security Act in the Congress, and Barack Obama has said he’s not going to come onboard and support that legislation.
But on Barack Obama, he’s in a very complicated situation, because his Iraq plan actually is not a plan to end the occupation of Iraq. It’s to continue it with a different label attached to it. And so, you hear him there talking about how “I don’t want to replace contractors with US troops.” The reality is, and Barack Obama knows this very well, his Iraq plan could not be implemented if he was against the use of Blackwater or other private security forces. And the reality is, he’s probably going to have to use these companies for two to three years at a minimum, unless he makes it an aggressive point of trying to shut them down. He might even have to use Blackwater for the first year of his administration.
Sorry for the long quotes. Jeremy Scahill is one of the most articulate reporters I've ever witnessed. I've never posted anything on Obama before, so in case you're wondering, I will vote for him, but I don't think there's anything wrong with letting him know I disagree with him on this issue. Scahill said he understands we are "engaged" to Obama, but wants us to challenge our relationship with him.