Let me explain. I went to college with Mark Kleiman, who is the principal author of the blog www.samefacts.com. I get emails each time he or others post. I got one today which had two views on the recent testimony of Alberto Gonzales before the Judiciary Committee, in which he got in a dispute with Specter and basically said that the Constitution does not guarantee habeas, it merely prohibits suspending it! Keep reading to find why I got to the title above.
One of the two links in Mark's piece was to this piece by David Bromwich in New Republic Online. It is well worth reading - among other things he quotes a constitutional scholar who notes that the kind of logic Gonzales uses about Habeas could also apply to impairment of contracts. But that is not relevant to my title.
There is a long excursus about Blackwater, the private American security firm whose 4 men being lynched in Fallujah was a signal moment in this conflict. It lead to the levelling of that city by the Marines under orders from the white House, destroying all the work the Marines had been doing trying to build relationships.
Bromwich explores the history of the development of Blackwater, and notes the involvement of Dick Cheney in the idea of privatizing certain military functions - this of course places them beyond the oversight of the Congress. It also exempts them from the UCMJ, the code of military justice, and what the article does not note is that the rules promulgated by Paul Bremer effectively placed them bgeyond both the American and Iraqi judicial system. In otherwords, if they tortured or murdered there is no way to hold them to account. And it is rather clear that they did both.
But that is insufficient to justify my title. I will quote the entire paragraph which led me to that conclusion:
Some facts and figures. Blackwater was founded by ex-Navy Seals and other former fighters in the special forces, and it is located near the Great Dismal Swamp of North Carolina. It is headed by Erik Prince, a far-right Christian activist and ex-Navy Seal who made large contributions to Republican causes in the 1990s and is a significant donor to President Bush. Blackwater has 2,300 men actively deployed in various countries. It has 20,000 soldiers prepared to fight when paid for, and "the world's largest private military base" from which to launch them. In the war in Iraq, most of Blackwater's actions are unreported, and its casualties are not counted among the military dead. Among its present employees are Cofer Black, the planner of the extraordinary rendition program, and Joseph Schmitz, the former Pentagon inspector general. Fred Fielding was its lawyer until he was summoned by the White House to replace Harriet Miers as the personal lawyer for President Bush. Its current lawyer of record is Kenneth Starr. Not without reason does Scahill refer to Blackwater as "the Praetorian Guard" for this administration's present and future wars. For a president who has taxed beyond precedent the usual prerogatives of the commander-in-chief of a standing army, it must give uncommon assurance to have at his absolute command, as well, a private army whose reach is enormous and whose operations are secret.
Think of the implications. A right wing, heavily armed military unit, privately held, based in the United States, staffed by former membgers of elite military units in both the US and other nations. Note the connections to things like State and CIA (Cofer Black), to key legal figures (Fielding, Starr), and I see something even more frightening than the Brown Shirts of the SA under Hitler. 20,000+ people properly deployed is sufficient to seize control of this country.
I really believe that if the facts in this piece are correct, then we are in real danger of the members of the current administration using force to stay in power.
Read the whole piece, not just what I have quoted. Then you tell me what you think. And also tell me what we should do.
I'm at work right now, but check out Erik's contribs.
This same firm sent its machine gun toting militia to New Orleans after Katrina also.
It's clear that this is a Bush-Cheney private army. This goes way beyond war profiteers. It is unconstitutional and, I believe, illegal. Or it should be. Yet this is happening under our noses.
Thanks, Ken, for your diary. This issue needs to be up-front-and-center in all discussions of what this administration has unleashed. In addition to this 20,000 person force, there are also about 80,000 other contractors doing what our military used to do.
And so, there are really a quarter of a million troops and quasi-troops there in Iraq. Nearly double what we've been told. And I believe this privitization is a most dangerous turn of events for our nation.
I agree that potential for abuse is real enough.
I don't see the Fielding connection. Yes he was involved with the Nixon administration, but no he was not implicated in any of the goings on--he came out clean. Fielding's main crime is that he has done a lot of work for the GOP and GOP friendly clients (which isn't really a crime). He doesn't have Starr's ideological bent.
The massive export of capital alone is cause for alarm.