Blackwater and the Administration of Justice = Republican and Religious Right Politics

[L. Coyote]

Blackwater and the Administration of Justice
Scott Horton - Jan 19, 2008 - http://harpers.org/archive/2008/01/hbc-90002175


I spent the better part of the last year looking in some detail into a series of legal policy issues surrounding private security contractors, a process that culminated in the issuance of a report last week entitled Private Security Contractors at War: Ending the Culture of Impunity.(4 MB PDF http://www.humanrightsfirst.info/pdf/08115-usls-psc-final.pdf)

The report deals with an entire industry which has popped up like mushrooms after a spring rain. But when you examine this issue, and particularly its government relations aspects, you come very quickly to a focus on one particular company, Blackwater USA, whose baroque conduct seems to supply the material for novels, if not articles in Soldier of Fortune Magazine.

Blackwater is anything but a “normal” security contractor. Its relationship with the Bush Administration is truly extraordinary in many respects. Blackwater is an unabashedly political entity, which aligns itself fully, and ideologically with the Republican Party. Its founder and owner, Erik Prince, who has been profiled very effectively by Jeremy Scahill in his comprehensive book, Blackwater, was born to wealth and privilege in the family of an automobile parts magnate with a long track record of involvement in Republican and Religious Right politics.

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[Initech]

1. If anything, Bush should be impeached for allowing these scumfucks to continue to operate in Iraq.

[L. Coyote]

2. Too many reasons to impeach, too few patriots

[L. Coyote]

3. visibility kick