The Sound of Doves Crying is the Sound of Money For Elites.

In my last post I introduced you to Erik Prince. He attended the Naval Acadamy for three semesters, got his degree at Hillsdale, joined the military, became a Navy SEAL, founded a security company named Blackwater that made him a billionaire and a CIA asset, only to be forced to sell his company when the government decided that we didn’t like the way he was conducting business after all. I’ll leave the link for those who want a refresher.

https://wordpress.com/post/tiredmidnightblogger.com/5265

In this post I intend to dig deeper into the controversy surrounding Erik Prince. I intend to share what happened during the Nisour Square Massacre, the aftermath of Prince losing his company, and the more recent efforts of Prince to convince Trump that we needed a mercenary war in Afghanistan. Then in the next post I’m hoping to share with you why this affects you.

Nisour Square Massacre

I’m ashamed to admit I didn’t remember this incident. The things I’m sharing are mostly things I’m learning, sometimes right before typing this. Here are the sites I’m quoting for the Massacre.

https://www.grunge.com/617219/the-untold-truth-of-the-blackwater-massacre/

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7033332.stm

https://www.wired.com/2009/01/blackwater-bann-2/

In 2008, BBC reported that “The Iraqi government has accused Blackwater security guards of killing the civilians on the morning of 16 September 2007, while they were escorting an American diplomatic envoy in Baghdad.

“The company said the civilians were killed during a shootout after one of their convoys came under attack in Nisoor Square, in an affluent neighbourhood of the capital. They said the guards reacted lawfully to gunfire deliberately aimed at them.

“The Iraqi government, citing eyewitness reports, concluded that the Blackwater guards fired on civilians without provocation.”

Details had been sketchy at the time, but the Washington Post reported from the embassy report “dated the day of the attacks.

“According to those accounts, Blackwater teams encountered a car bomb, a shootout and a standoff between Blackwater guards and Iraqi security forces. Each Blackwater team usually consists of three or four armoured vehicles.

“The report said the incident began when a car bomb exploded at 11.53 near a financial compound in Baghdad, while a US official was visiting. It also said:

• Two Blackwater teams transported the official back to the fortified Green Zone
• Another Blackwater unit was dispatched to the scene of the car bomb to deal with the aftermath of the blast.
• This unit, however, was then ambushed and “engaged with small arms fire” from “multiple nearby locations” in Nisoor Square.
• One of the Blackwater teams that had transported the official back to the Green Zone was re-dispatched to help out in Nisoor Square.
• The re-deployed unit found itself stuck at an intersection in Nisoor Square and was confronted by Iraqi police and army. A US forces quick reaction team was sent to help rescue the unit.

“Separately, The Washington Post quoted a US official familiar with the investigation as saying that at least one Blackwater guard drew a weapon on his colleagues and shouted at him to “stop shooting”.

Reading this article is definitely trying my patience. It sounds almost like one side says there was a car bomb, while the other side says there was a rocket or grenade launched. Either way, a car exploded, and Blackwater guards opened fire into a crowd of civilians. Honestly, I find myself doubting both sides of the story.

Grunge.com shares this: “Blackwater Security Consulting, also known as Blackwater Worldwide, was founded in 1997 by Al Clark and Erik Prince as a private security firm. Initially, they worked providing training support to law enforcement and the justice department, but as Prince once stated, their “corporate goal [was] to do for the national security apparatus what FedEx did to the postal service.” Essentially, Prince wanted a “free-market version” of military training.”

“In 2002, Blackwater received its first contract from the United States government. NPR reports that sometime after the Al-Qaeda bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen in October 2000, where 17 sailors were killed, Blackwater won a $46 million contract from the U.S government for “training sailors in counterterrorism.” After the September 11th attacks, Blackwater expanded their security-related work and followed the U.S. military into Afghanistan. And after the United States invaded Iraq in March 2003, Blackwater won a $25 million contract to provide security for L. Paul Bremer, an American diplomat who led the transitional government following the invasion. Blackwater was even hired by the Department of Homeland Security during Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and according to PBS, collected “more than $70 million in hurricane-related contracts.”

“With the contract to provide security for L. Paul Bremer, Blackwater essentially “cement[ed] its presence at the center of conflict in Iraq,” per PBS. Between 2004 and 2008, the State Department [awarded] Blackwater more than $1 billion in contracts.”

Evidently the State Department was run with a cavalier attitude toward spending that reminds me of Ryan Walters ovesight of Oklahoma covid relief spent on Christmas trees and Pac Man machines. An audit was eventually run, and it was proven that Blackwater essentially pocketed $55 million and change too much, but as of the writing of the Grunge article, there had been no efforts to collect. “Blackwater’s contracts for protecting American diplomats also weren’t limited to Iraq. They were also contracted for personal protective services in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Haiti, Israel, and Palestine.” Finally, some drunk guards crashed $180,000 armored vehicle into a concrete barrier, and even the State Department had had enough.

Tired Blogger side note…politicians don’t care about how much of our money is wasted, but bad pr is unforgivable.

“The New York Times reports that when Richter [State Department investigator] confronted Daniel Carroll, Blackwater’s Iraq project manager, about this on August 21, 2007, Carroll became incredibly aggressive and told Richter “that he [Carroll] could kill me [Richter] at that very moment and no one could or would do anything about it as we were in Iraq.”

“According to the memo Richter wrote to State Department officials in Washington after the incident, “Mr. Carroll’s statement was made in a low, even tone of voice, his head was slightly lowered; his eyes were fixed on mine. I took Mr. Carroll’s threat seriously. We were in a combat zone where things can happen quite unexpectedly, especially when issues involve potentially negative impacts on a lucrative security contract.” Two days after the meeting with Carroll, Richter and Thomas were told by an embassy official to “leave Iraq immediately.”

Wired.com tells a pretty damning tale. “More than any other private military firm in Iraq, Blackwater had a reputation for recklessness and violence. Think about the drunken Blackwater contractor, who killed a bodyguard of Iraq’s vice president on Christmas Eve, 2007. Or the car full of people a Blackwater detail ran off the road, in September 2006. Or the Nisour Square shooting that left 17 dead, in September 2007. ” They discuss how, after Iraq banished Blackwater from the chaos, the other companies simply hired most of the Blackwater employees to fill State Department edicts. It must be good to run the State Department. Though it sounds like being an investigator for them sucks.

Long and the short, people were threatened with assassination (we were only kidding….) innocent people were slaughtered, and mistakes were made. Some of them are likely more understandable than I know, but having said that…

I wonder how much mercy I would be shown if I had been the one to pull the trigger?

This one is getting a bit long winded. I’m going to call this good for now, and will continue in Wednesday’s post with the aftermath of the Nisour Square shooting, and if I take care of that in fewer words, I may explain how Prince attempts to return to glory.

Not that I really blame him. I suppose this blog is my effort at restoring my former glories. Till next time, make mine Marvel!