( SOURCES: http://www.nndb.com and Wikipedia)
Blackwater USA is ready to shift from a security role to a more "overt combat role," essentially becoming an army for hire.-statement by Cofer Black announced in a conference in Jordan in 2006-thinkprogress.org
So with friends and family like these who needs a license? Blackwater doesn't even need the government, only to collect our money to pay for their "services". So let's talk MONEY.
Blackwater makes a killing, literally and monetarily!
Blackwater's success in procuring federal contracts could well be explained by major-league contributions and family connections to the GOP. According to election records, Blackwater's CEO and co-founder, billionaire Erik Prince, has given tens of thousands to Republicans, including more than $80,000 to the Republican National Committee the month before Bush's victory in 2000. This past June, he gave $2,100 to Senator Rick Santorum's re-election campaign. He has also given to House majority leader Tom DeLay and a slew of other Republican candidates, including Bush/Cheney in 2004. As a young man, Prince interned with President George H.W. Bush, though he complained at the time that he "saw a lot of things I didn't agree with--homosexual groups being invited in, the budget agreement, the Clean Air Act, those kind of bills. I think the Administration has been indifferent to a lot of conservative concerns." - Jeremy Scahill/the Nation
Blackwater USA's Gary Jackson said, "They're paying us good money to go to places that are already ugly," he says. "If it gets real ugly, that's why they hired us in the first place."
He also said, "When there is a crisis, they have a tendency to call us first."
Government regulations state that agencies are allowed to bypass competitive bidding in cases of "unusual and compelling urgency."
One scholar, Peter Singer of the Brookings Institution, suggests that Bush's "coalition of the willing" would be more aptly described as the "coalition of the billing."- Virginian-Pilot
"The trend is growth," says Daniel Nelson, the former professor at the Pentagon's Marshall Center. "This current president and administration have -- in part because of September 11, but also because of their fundamental ideology -- taken off constraints that somewhat limited the prior administration." According to some estimates, private military companies will double their business by the end of the decade, to $200 billion a year. - Barry Yeoman/MotherJones Mag.
2006, according to an online government database, Blackwater alone has won $505 million in publicly identifiable federal contracts since 2000. About 2/3 of that amount was in no-bid contracts.
These types of military companies in business worldwide, secure an estimated $100 billion each year!
2003, Blackwater USA won a $35 million contract for their part in training our sailors each year in "force protection."
Virginia Beach police and sheriff’s deputies train exclusively at Blackwater, where the city pays the company $450,000 for the full-time use of a firing range. The city’s SWAT team travels to Moyock once a week.- Virginian-Pilot
And the bills passed to us because of our governments "frat-boy mentality" keep on rising. Don't forget Katrina now. In an interview by Alan Maass, Jeremy Scahill had a few things to say on the subject of Blackwater's role in Katrina:
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