Contracting Out Harpers War

Canada quietly has expanded the use of contracting out and privatization of military operations for Harpers War. Not only is Tim Horton's a private contractor working at taxpayer expense in Kandahar so is SNC Lavalin.

It is Canada's version of Bechtel and Halliburton. And like them it too has been rocked by scandals.But unlike them it is also a war-profiteer making weapons systems and small arms. It processes depleted uranium for weapons use in Iraq and Afghanistan. And your pension dollars help support them.

As this article points out if you want the real date that Canada will remain in Kandahar till, try 2012.

Since Canadian troops deployed to southern Afghanistan in the spring of 2006, the number of contractors working in support and logistics roles has more than doubled to nearly 200.

The privatized support dates back to Canada's multiple deployments in the former Yugoslavia in the late 1990s. Anticipating more overseas mission in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the federal government turned to defence-engineering giant SNC Lavalin, which won a five-year, $500-million contract that has renewal options running until 2012.

The federal government has already quietly opted to renew the contract, which has set renewal dates of 2007, 2009 and 2011.

In Afghanistan, for example, SNC Lavalin-PAE was given a five year, $400 million contract by the Canadian Department of Defense to build and maintain Camp Julien and provide laundry, food and other services to Canadian occupation forces there. And to meet the increasing demand for Quebecois bullets, SNC is building another artillery testing range on Cree land in Waswanipi, Quebec. Opposition to the project is rising in Waswanipi because the range will disrupt an important trap-line used by Cree hunters.

We even have our own version of Blackwater happening in Kabul.

Canada's diplomats in Kabul and visiting high-value targets like Prime Minister Stephen Harper are protected by a group of heavily armed gunmen hired by Saladin Security, a British firm with a long history of secretive and clandestine operations.

Department of Foreign Affairs officials in Ottawa are tight-lipped about the deal struck with Saladin, whose gun-toting employees provide perimeter security, operate checkpoints, serve as bodyguards and form a heavily armed rapid-reaction force designed to move quickly to thwart an attempted kidnapping and rescue survivors of suicide attacks or car-bombings in Kabul.

The department won't even confirm that Saladin's most recent contract - which ended in June of 2007 - has been renewed, but observers of the Canadian embassy in Kabul say Saladin employees remain on guard. Some Saladin guards, in baseball caps and paramilitary uniforms, openly patrol the road outside the Canadian diplomatic compound in Kabul.

But details of the extent of Canada's reliance on a private firm for diplomatic protection are even more scant than the now-controversial U.S. deal with Blackwater Security, the American firm whose hired gunmen killed 17 Iraqi civilians last month while protecting a diplomatic convoy.

Saladin Security, Ltd. is a private military company based out of London and headed by industry veteran Maj. David Walker. The company was orginally established as a subsidiary of Keenie Meenie Services, and financed by John Martin Southern of Blackwall Green, Ltd., in 1978 to handle local contracts. As KMS disappeared from the global stage, Saladin began taking on contracts in the Middle East and Sri Lanka.

They provide military training, weapons procurement, logistical support, post-conflict resolutions, commercial property security, and risk analysis.

Saladin trains the Omani troops and runs their airforce which is flown and maintained almost completely by British personnel. RAF bases in Oman were used as launching pads for American flights into Afghanistan. Saladin, along with KMS, aided the CIA and British Intelligence in arming and training the Mujahideen in the war against Soviet imperialism.

Saladin is currently operating in Iraq.

In 1984, KMS was approved by the British government to train the Special Task Force arm of the Sri Lankan military against the Tamil rebels. The STF was widely reported to have been committing atrocities against the Tamil population and by 1987 KMS had moved their two hundred personnel to Latin America. The British press had reported, though the company denied it, that employees for KMS were quitting their jobs because the Sri Lankan troops were out of control.

During the Iran-Contra investigations, KMS was accused of repeatedly carrying out sabotage operations in Nicaragua that included mining the Managua harbor and destroying enemy camps, buildings and pipelines.

On November 22, 1987 the London Observer's Simon de Bruxelles published a three page proposal from KMS to the CIA suggesting sending small teams of instructors into Afghanistan to train rebels in "demolition, sabotage, reconnaissance and para-medicine."

KMS was accompanied by Saladin Security (a subsidiary) and Defence Systems Limited in their training programs in Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia and Oman.

KMS closed down in the early 1990s, and Saladin began operating more internationally.

The BRITISH ASSOCIATION OF PRIVATE SECURITY COMPANIES (BAPSC) works to promote the interests and regulate the activities of UK based firms that provide armed defensive security services in countries outside the UK.

A Fistful of Contractors: The Case for a Pragmatic Assessment of Private Military Companies in Iraq," by David Isenberg
BASIC RESEARCH REPORT 2004.

Speaking of Blackwater they are used for training Canadian forces used in Afghanistan as well as to train the secret JTF-2 special forces, which have seen action in Iraq.

Select Canadian soldiers have been sent to Blackwater U.S.A. in North Carolina for specialized training in bodyguard and shooting skills. Other soldiers have taken counterterrorism evasive-driving courses with the private military company now at the centre of an investigation into the killings of Iraqi civilians and mounting concerns about the aggressive tactics of its workers in the field.

Canadian military police trained by Blackwater operated in Kandahar last year in support of coalition special forces. Members of the Strategic Advisory Team, which operates in Kabul, also underwent counterterrorism driving training, according to a military official.

The Ottawa-based counterterrorism unit, Joint Task Force 2, has also maintained ongoing training links to the company.

Military officials did not have further details on why Blackwater would be hired, but promised to provide those. Later, however, they did not comment on the matter.

Canadian Forces spokesman Lt.-Col. Jamie Robertson said the military does not discuss its special forces training. But he noted that Blackwater and other firms have been contracted to provide services for other units.

And the Afghan security forces used to protect the PRT in Kandahar are hired guns, euphemistically called contractors, mercenaries by any other name. And they are under the control of warlords.

So what is an occupying army, huddled behind the wire, supposed to do? Well, if you are NATO then you go ahead and pay some trustworthy locals to fight for you. That is, you hire mercenaries. Under the headline, "British hire anti-Taliban mercenaries", the Times of London reports on "newly formed tribal police who will be recruited by paying a higher rate than the Taliban."

Canadian forces, too, are getting in on the action. "For five years Col. Toorjan, a turbaned, tough-as-nails, 33-year-old soldier, has been working alongside U.S. and Canadian forces in Afghanistan as a paid mercenary commander," reports Canada's National Post. "Today, his militia force of 60 Afghan fighters guards Camp Nathan Smith, the Canadian provincial reconstruction team site (PRT) in Kandahar, and guides Canadian soldiers on their patrols outside the base." Toorjan and his armed men "wield significant influence in Kandahar's complex security web", making him a treasured ally, though before 9/11 he was "in effect a warlord", said the second-in-command of Canada's Provincial Reconstruction Team.

The use of mercenaries, it should be noted, runs counter to the International Convention on Mercenaries (1989). Canada, however, along with the USA, the UK and many others, is not a signatory to that treaty.

And the contracting out continues even when our vets retire an go looking for a new job.

OTTAWA, ONTARIO--(Marketwire - Oct. 25, 2007) - The Government of Canada today announced new measures to help retiring Canadian Forces Veterans make the successful transition from the military to new civilian careers. The Honourable Greg Thompson, Minister of Veterans Affairs; Laurie Hawn, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of National Defence; and Bram Lowsky, General Manager, Right Management, formally launched the national contract for the Job Placement Program.

The value of the contract with Right Management is for up to $18.5 million over the next four years.

Right Management is a subsidiary of Manpower Inc. the temporary placement agency that has benefited from government and corporate downsizing. The Conservatives continue the policy of the Liberals of Reinventing Government by downsizing departments and contracting out. When you contract out you no longer have to worry about staffing costs like benefits, pensions, nor pesky union grievances.

Right Management is a career transition and consulting firm operating in more than 40 countries.

Founded in 1980, Right Management was at the forefront of “inventing” the outplacement industry, and expanded globally to match the footprint of its multi-national clients.

Beginning in 1996, Right Management extended into consulting services to help clients address human resource and organizational consulting needs.

Right Management was acquired by Manpower in January 2004.

Manpower Inc. operates under five brands: Manpower, Manpower Professional, Elan, Jefferson Wells and Right Management.

Job Protection for

Canadian Reservists

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Blackwater On YouTube

I look forward to seeing this on Youtube.

Iraqi investigators have a videotape that shows Blackwater USA guards opened fire against civilians without provocation in an incident last week in which 11 people died, a senior Iraqi official said Saturday. He said the case had been referred to the Iraqi judiciary.

While the U.S. government might want to look at Blackwater instead of Iran for weapons smuggling into Iraq. Oh yes and ask them about the tons of missing weapons that they were supposed to be guarding.

Feds probe whether Blackwater smuggled weapons into Iraq: Federal prosecutors are investigating whether employees of the private security firm Blackwater USA illegally smuggled weapons into Iraq that may have been sold on the black market and ended up in the hands of a U.S.-designated terrorist organization, officials said Friday.

File this under oops we spoke to soon.

Iraq says won't move to expel Blackwater: "If we drive out or expel this company immediately there will be a security vacuum that will demand pulling some troops that work in the field so that we can protect these institutes," spokesman Tahseen al-Sheikhly, speaking through an interpreter, told a news conference.

SEE:

Sounds Familiar

Moral Turpitude Is Spelled Blackwater



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Sounds Familiar

Gee this sounds familiar.....

a preliminary Iraqi report on the shooting involving a US diplomatic motorcade claims Blackwater security guards had not been ambushed, as the company reported, but instead fired at a car when it did not heed a policeman's call to stop, killing a couple and their infant.

Yep reminds me of other deaths in Iraq like that of the Italian Secret Agent,
where innocents are shot in their cars for failing to obey a stop sign.

Wonder if those guys were Blackwater as well. After all it's hard to tell the players without a program.

And with the Rumsfeld Doctrine of integrating private mercenaries and contracted out support services with the regular Armed forces it is even harder to tell.

But the vision that Rumsfeld sort of laid out that day would become known as the Rumsfeld Doctrine, where you use high technology, small footprint forces and an increased and accelerated use of private contractors in fighting the wars.

And the Iraq report on gung ho merc's from Blackwater goes on....

The report, prepared by the interior and defence ministries, was presented to the Iraqi cabinet and, though unverified, seemed to contradict an account offered by Blackwater that the guards were responding to gunfire by militants.

The report said Blackwater helicopters had been involved and 20 Iraqis were killed — a far higher number than had been reported before.

"There was not shooting against the convoy," the Iraqi Government's spokesman, Ali Dabbagh, said. "There was no fire from anyone in the square."

Shoot first ask questions later seems to be Blackwater's motto, which is what got them killed in Fallujah in the first place and set off the American revenge attack on that city.

SEE:

Moral Turpitude Is Spelled Blackwater

Bad News For Bush

U.S. Supplies Iraqi Insurgents With Weapons

Surge Blackout

IRAQ- THIS WAR IS ABOUT PRIVATIZATION


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Moral Turpitude Is Spelled Blackwater

This is what happens when you contract out your war to private armies.

"A state that privatizes most of its functions will inevitably defend itself by employing its own people as mercenaries-with equally profound strategic consequences. " Philip Bobbitt

- Iraq's Interior Ministry canceled the license of controversial American security firm Blackwater USA today after Iraqi officials charged that eight civilians were shot by company bodyguards accompanying a U.S. State Department motorcade the day before in Baghdad.

"It has been revoked," said Brig. Gen. Abdul Kareem Khalaf, a spokesman for the ministry. "They committed a crime. The judicial system will take action."

The decision marks Iraq's boldest step yet to assert itself against foreign security contractors, who arrived in Iraq after the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003. Blackwater has become the symbol of foreign gunmen accused by many Iraqis of speeding through Baghdad's streets and shooting wildly at anyone seen as a threat.

moral turpitude

1. depravity
2. (law) Any base or vile conduct, contrary to accepted morals, that accompanies a crime

turpitude
"depravity, infamy," 1490, from M.Fr. turpitude (1417), from L. turpitudinem (nom. turpitudo) "baseness," from turpis "vile, ugly, base, shameful," used in both the moral and the physical senses; of unknown origin. Perhaps originally "what one turns away from" (cf. L. trepit "he turns").

TURPITUDE - Everything done contrary to justice, honesty, modesty or good morals, is said to be done with turpitude.

Moral Turpitude is a legal concept in the USA, which refers to "conduct that is considered contrary to community standards of justice, honesty, or good morals"

Blackwater was founded by an extreme right-wing fundamentalist Christian mega-millionaire ex- Navy SEAL named Erik Prince, the scion of a wealthy conservative family that bankrolls far-right-wing causes.

Erik Prince was political at a very early age and watched as his father used his company as a cash-generating engine to fuel the rise of what we now know as the religious right in this country, as well as the Republican Revolution of 1994. His father gave the seed money to Gary Bauer to found the Family Research Council. Young Erik Prince was in the first crop of interns to serve at the Family Research Council. They gave significant funding to James Dobson and his group Focus on the Family, which is now sort of the premier evangelical organizing network in this country, the “prayer warriors.”

Personnel

Blackwater's president, Gary Jackson, and other business unit leaders are former Navy SEALs. Blackwater was founded and is owned by Erik Prince, who is also a former Navy SEAL.

Prince and Jackson are also major contributors to the Republican party. In addition, Prince was an intern in George H.W. Bush's White House and campaigned for Pat Buchanan in 1992.

Cofer Black, the company's current vice chairman, was the Bush adminstration's top counterterrorism official when 9/11 occurred. In 2002, he famously stated: "There was before 9/11 and after 9/11. After 9/11, the gloves come off." But Black is not alone, Blackwater has become home to a significant number of former senior CIA and Pentagon officials. Robert Richer became the firm's Vice President of Intelligence immediately after he resigned his position as Associate Deputy Director of Operations in fall 2005. He is formerly the head of the CIA's Near East Division.

In October 2006, Kenneth Starr, independent counsel in the impeachment case of Bill Clinton in 1999, represented Blackwater in front of the US Supreme Court in a case related to the March 2004 killing of four Blackwater employees in Fallujah, Iraq. In response to that event, Blackwater also hired the Republican lobbying and PR firm, the Alexander Strategy Group.

Ahmad Al-Rubaye / AFP / Getty Images

Blackwater USA contractors secure the site of a roadside explosion in central Baghdad in 2005. The U.S. Embassy said that the Blackwater convoy accused of killing eight civilians during a shootout on Sunday had come under fire, and some local Iraqi television accounts reported an exchange of gunfire at the scene in Baghdad.

The Iraqi government said Monday that it was revoking the license of an American security firm accused of involvement in the deaths of eight civilians in a firefight that followed a car bomb explosion near a State Department motorcade.

Interior Ministry spokesman Abdul-Karim Khalaf said eight civilians were killed and 13 were wounded when contractors believed to be working for Blackwater USA opened fire in a predominantly Sunni neighborhood of western Baghdad.

"We have canceled the license of Blackwater and prevented them from working all over Iraqi territory. We will also refer those involved to Iraqi judicial authorities," Khalaf said.

The spokesman said witness reports pointed to Blackwater involvement but said the shooting was still under investigation. It was not immediately clear if the measure against Blackwater was intended to be temporary or permanent.

Blackwater, based in Moyock, N.C., provides security for many U.S. civilian operations in the country.

The secretive company, run by a former Navy SEAL, has an estimated 1,000 employees in Iraq and at least $800 million in government contracts. It is one of the most high-profile security firms in Iraq, with its fleet of "Little Bird" helicopters and armed door gunners swarming Baghdad and beyond.

The decision to pull the license was likely to be challenged, as it would be a major blow to a company at the forefront of one of the main turning points in the war.

The 2004 battle of Fallujah — an unsuccessful military assault in which an estimated 27 U.S. Marines were killed, along with an unknown number of civilians — was retaliation for the killing, maiming and burning of four Blackwater guards in that city by a mob of insurgents.

Tens of thousands of foreign private security contractors work in Iraq — some with automatic weapons, body armor, helicopters and bulletproof vehicles — to provide protection for Westerners and dignitaries in Iraq as the country has plummeted toward anarchy and civil war.

Monday's action against Blackwater was likely to give the unpopular government a boost, given Iraqis' dislike of the contractors.

Interior Minister Jawad al-Bolani called the shootings "a crime that we cannot be silent about."

Many of the contractors have been accused of indiscriminately firing at American and Iraqi troops, and of shooting to death an unknown number of Iraqi citizens who got too close to their heavily armed convoys, but none has faced charges or prosecution.

"There have been so many innocent people they've killed over there, and they just keep doing it," said Katy Helvenston, the mother of Steve Helvenston, a Blackwater contractor who died during the 2004 ambush in Fallujah. "They have just a callous disregard for life."

Helvenston is now part of a lawsuit that accuses Blackwater of cutting corners that ultimately led to the death of her son and three others.

The question of whether they could face prosecution is legally murky. Unlike soldiers, the contractors are not bound by the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Under a special provision secured by American-occupying forces, they are exempt from prosecution by Iraqis for crimes committed there.

Khalaf, however, denied that.

The embassy also refused to answer any questions on Blackwater's status or legal issues, saying it was seeking clarification on the issue as part of the investigation, which was being carried out by the State Department's diplomatic security service and law enforcement officials working with the Iraqi government and the U.S. military.

Is there even a license to revoke? Buzz on the contractor street is that it isn't clear how this development will affect Blackwater. Allegedly, Blackwater doesn't have a "license" to revoke, and its contracts with the State Department and CIA may not be immediately affected. This could play out in an interesting (albeit depressing) powerplay between the al-Maliki, Iraq's Ministry of Interior, and the U.S. Government.

The issue of accountability is a troubling one, however, as Scahill reveals the Blackwater operatives are essentially above the law in Iraq. They can’t be prosecuted under military law because they’re civilians. But they have little to worry about from civilian law in the chaos of Iraq.

At one point in the book, a politician confronts a military official and claims Blackwater agents can get away with murder, and the official more or less admits he’s right. It’s a point that’s highlighted by another video featuring an alleged mercenary shooting people at random on a highway in Iraq (YouTube link).

It was inevitable. Private military contractors have been involve din all sorts of questionable incidents, since the very start of the Iraq enterprise. U.S. military officers frequently expressed their frustrations with sharing the battlefield with such private forces operating under their own rules and agendas, and worry about the consequences for their own operations. For example, Brigadier General Karl Horst, deputy commander of the US 3^rd Infantry Division (responsible for Baghdad area) tellingly put it two years back, “These guys run loose in this country and do stupid stuff. There’s no authority over them, so you can’t come down on them hard when they escalate force. They shoot people, and someone else has to deal with the aftermath.”

Karel Prinsloo/AP, File

A U.S. private security officer, with his face covered against dust, on board a Chinook helicopter in Iraq.

Blackwater Guards Accused of Past Deaths

By DEBORAH HASTINGS – 2 hours ago

NEW YORK (AP) — In the past year, employees of the Blackwater USA security firm have been involved in other incidents in which they were accused of killing civilians and security forces in Iraq.

On Dec. 24, 2006, a drunken Blackwater employee shot and killed a bodyguard for Iraq's Shiite vice president, Adel Abdul-Mahdi, according to Iraqi and U.S. officials.

The contractor had gotten lost on the way back to his barracks in the Green Zone and fired at least seven times when he was confronted by 30-year-old Raheem Khalaf Saadoun, an official in the vice president's office said on condition of anonymity because the case is still under investigation.

The contractor fled after the incident. Eventually, he made his way to the U.S. Embassy, where Blackwater officials arranged to have him flown home to the U.S., said American officials.

Blackwater spokeswoman Anne Tyrrell said earlier this year the company was cooperating with investigators from the Justice Department and the FBI. She declined to provide further details.

In May, Blackwater guards under contract to the State Department were involved in two other shootings in Iraq.

In one, a Blackwater guard shot to death an Iraqi deemed to be driving too close to a security detail near the Interior Ministry in Baghdad, enraging Iraqis. At the time, Tyrrell said the guard acted lawfully and appropriately, given the incident reports and witness accounts.

A day earlier, Blackwater guards and Interior Ministry forces exchanged gunfire on the streets of the capital. A passing U.S. military convoy intervened and stopped the fighting.

The Nation's Jeremy Scahill describes the rise of Blackwater USA, the world's most powerful mercenary army.

"As the government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Musselmen (Muslims) ... it is declared ... that no pretext arising from religious opinion shall ever product an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries....
"The United States is not a Christian nation any more than it is a Jewish or a Mohammedan nation."

-- Treaty of Tripoli (1797), carried unanimously by the Senate and signed into law by John Adams (the original language is by Joel Barlow, US Consul)

SEE:

IRAQ- THIS WAR IS ABOUT PRIVATIZATION

Bad News For Bush

U.S. Supplies Iraqi Insurgents With Weapons

Surge Blackout

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