After nearly a decade of working overtly and covertly for the US government across the globe, the infamous mercenary firm Blackwater is apparently for sale. The company made the announcement in a brief statement Monday followed by an even briefer statement from the company's owner, Erik Prince. "Performance doesn't matter in Washington, just politics," Prince said.
Blackwater's statement does not make clear if all of Blackwater's various entities are up for sale or just its security and training business, which currently operates under the names Xe Services and the US Training Center. Prince also owns a private intelligence company, Total Intelligence Solutions, an offshore mercenary operation, Greystone Limited, a construction company, Raven Development and Paravant, which has been used as a shell company to win training contracts in Afghanistan. Prince sold his aviation division earlier this year for $200 million.
In announcing Blackwater was for sale, the company stated Monday: "Xe's new management team has made significant changes and improvements to the company over the last 15 months, which have enabled the company to better serve the US government and other customers, and will deliver additional value to a purchaser."
The most interesting aspect of this story is what will happen to Blackwater's clandestine/covert work for the CIA and the Joint Special Operations Command. The OGA (Other Government Agency) division of Blackwater has gone by different names over the years. Among these are: Blackwater SELECT, Blackwater PTC and, most recently XPG. It was this division of the company that Blackwater used for its role in the US drone bombing campaign. XPG holds a classified contract to provide security at seven US Special Forces sites along the Afghan/Pakistan border, for which Blackwater is paid $17,000 a day. Additionally, Prince has boasted that Blackwater controls four Forward Operating Bases in Afghanistan, including the closest US facility to Pakistan's border. Prince has also bragged that Blackwater runs a counter-narcotics force that has called in NATO air strikes in Afghanistan against suspected drug sites.
Exum looks at Af-Pak campaign of the Long War, revealing more about ourselves than the foe
Summary: Andew Exum’s new report reveals more about America’s defective OODA loop than about the Af-Pak War, esp our myopia (Observation) and insularity (Orientation). As other posts on the FM website have shown, this is characteristic of our geopolitical experts. The causes remain obscure. Perhaps institutional factors, esp the Pentagon dominating the discussion and funding. Perhaps cultural factors, such as success having made us stupid.
This post examines a new report by Andrew Exum (aka Abu Muqawama): “Leverage: Designing a Political Campaign for Afghanistan“, Center for a New American Security, May 2010. Exum provides an excellent example of our smart, knowledgeable, and experienced geopolitical experts writing about what are in-effect theoretical worlds. Oz, rather than Earth. Social scientists make unrealistic assumptions (e.g, the rational investor) as intermediate steps, providing analytical rigor to the process of developing accurate theories. In geopolitics, the author’s political intent encourages unrealistic descriptions and theories — to obscure, to deceive.
For example, note how Exum never describes Afghanistan as a client or puppet regime. Careful writing and euphemism disguise this important truth. On page 7 he observes “some Afghans consider Hamid Karzai to be a puppet of the United States and its allies” — but never asks if they are correct. This myopia is not just Exum’s; it’s ours. Geopolitical experts, journalists, layfolks blogging about our wars — all tend to write with similar blinders.
That's an incredible investment of blood and treasure, and one that deepens by the minute. We're spending $1 million per troop, per year in Afghanistan. To date, Congress has approved almost $300 billion in spending on the Afghanistan War. Combined with the costs for the war in Iraq, we've spent more than $1 trillion so far on war since 2001, just in direct costs. Right now, Congress is considering charging the U.S. taxpayer another $33 billion to pay for an ongoing troop increase.
And, don't forget that more than 1,000 U.S. troops have died so far in this war.
[T]he Department of Homeland Security says 'the number and pace of attempted attacks against the United States over the past nine months have surpassed the number of attempts during any other previous one-year period.'
After 104 months of war, the last 12 of which saw the U.S. triple the number of troops in Afghanistan, attempted terror attacks against our country are at an all-time high.
No one in their right mind would look at the costs and the "benefits" of this strategy and think, "Yes, I want to sink more human lives and national wealth into that!" U.S. policy in Afghanistan is broken. Inertia carries it forward, not return-on-investment.
We've seen this kind of inertia before. Pentagon Papers whistle-blower Daniel Ellsberg explained it in 1971: "It was always a bad year to get out of Vietnam." President Obama has set at start-date for a withdrawal, but no end date.
If we're not careful, we'll find that it's always a bad year to leave Afghanistan, too.
The notorious Bilderberg group made up of politicians, business leaders and other power-brokers are having their annual meeting in an exclusive Spanish resort. But who is in this Club and What's on the Bilderbergers agenda? RT is investigating.
What kind of mutual support organisation is NATO when members must make decades long commitments, at huge expense and some loss of life, to support the Unted States, but cannot make even a gesture to support Turkey when Turkey is attacked by a non-member?
