Who Got the Missing $6.6 Billion in Iraq ?

I'm going to take no risk and all and say at least half of it went into the pockets of U.S. contractors like Blackwater and Halliburton and KBR. Do you really think those motherfuckers were satisfied with the billions they were stealing directly from U.S. taxpayers?

Scarecrow at Firedoglake:

Suppose the US decided it wanted to invest $6 billion or so in the economy by paying people to fix stuff and rebuild the infrastructure of a destroyed economy. How would you do it?

Well, supposedly the people who understand these things would start with an account in an established, honest bank. Let’s call it the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. The US Treasury would direct the Feds to credit that account with the $6 billion or so, and then disburse money from the account as directed.

The Fed would then follow the instructions it was given, with electronic transfers accomplished through recorded debits here and credits to the accounts of the bank of the intended recipients, or those authorized to make the dispersants. There would be electronic records to account for every dollar. None of this would require a single actual dollar or hundred dollar bill to be created, deposited or transferred. That is not how it’s supposed to work in this millenium.

As the recipient bank received instructions for disbursements, it would in turn credit the accounts of the ultimate recipients, who could then use those credited accounts to pay the workers and providers of ultimate goods and services. The workers would have their own bank accounts, and their paychecks could even be credited to them directly, still with no actual dollar bills being required and all transactions fully recorded and traceable.

But that’s not how the Bush Administration did things in Iraq. Instead, they had the NY Fed literally stack up cash, $6.6 billion of it, into several truckloads of $100 bills, haul them to an AF base, where these huge bundles of cash were loaded onto AF planes and flown to Iraq. Once there, the bundles were thrown in sacks and distributed somehow to. . . . Uh, we have no clue. We can’t find the money and have no idea where it went.

This is mostly old news, but good grief!! It is as though they deliberately designed a plot to make it easy to steal $6.6 billion. And everyone who had anything to do with planning or approving this mindless action turned scandal should be named, shamed, and banned from any government position, forever. Many should be under arrest, or held as material witnesses to possibly the most reckless plan or egregious bank heist in history, at least until the 2008 bailouts.

What is the matter with these people?

Whatever do you mean, scarecrow? There's nothing wrong with them. They are the epitome of republican corporatism - shining examples to the world of how not to do capitalism. Or democracy.

The Real Reason Blackwater Is Still Getting Your Tax Dollars

For more than year now, only one person has gotten the ugly truth about murdering, criminal military contractor Blackwater: Jeremy Scahill at The Nation.

Now Scahill reveals the real reason Blackwater is still sucking up millions of taxpayer dollars in new government contracts:

In an interview Sunday on ABC's "This Week," CIA Director Leon Panetta made it clear that the Agency is dependent upon private security companies to operate globally. But, not just any private security companies. Specifically, Panetta said, the CIA needs Blackwater.

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Blackwater is still Blackwater. Yes, the company changed its name and yes they hired some new figureheads and yes Erik Prince says he is selling the company and leaving the government services business. But let's be clear: this is a company that remains under serious investigation by multiple US agencies and Congress for a range of alleged crimes and violations. Among these are weapons charges, murder, manslaughter, conspiracy, making false statements and using shell companies to win contracts that may not have been awarded to Blackwater if the company's true identity was clear. Most recently, McClatchy revealed that "the U.S. government and the private military contractor are negotiating a multimillion-dollar fine to settle allegations that Blackwater violated U.S. export control regulations in Sudan, Iraq and elsewhere."

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Panetta said that the CIA had reviewed Blackwater's work for the Agency "to ensure that first and foremost, that we have no contract in which they are engaged in any CIA operations," adding, "We're doing our own operations. That's important, that we not contract that out to anybody." This is simply an blatanly misleading statement.

I have talked with many US military and Blackwater sources who have told me point-blank that while Blackwater technically is hired for "security," they regularly are pulled into operations. The Blackwater guys are not dime store rent-a-cops. Many of them are former Navy SEALs or other US special forces veterans--precisely the type of men recruited by the CIA's paramilitary division for operations. The idea that the Blackwater guys are just standing around Afghanistan or any other war zone (declared or not) smoking cigarettes and admiring their tattoos while their colleagues who happen to officially work for the CIA chase the bad guys is simply not true. Blackwater forces have been a major part of sensitive US operations almost from the moment the US went into Afghanistan in 2001.

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No one is paying any attention to what should be a major part of the story of Blackwater's thriving second marriage to the current Administration: the money trail. Blackwater has spent heavily this year on lobbyists—particularly Democratic ones. In the first quarter of 2010, the company spent more than $500,000 for the services of Stuart Eizenstat, a well-connected Democratic lobbyist who served in the Clinton and Carter administrations. Eizenstat heads the international practice for the powerhouse law and lobbying firm Covington and Burling.

Put that together with two other important facts about Blackwater and you get a clear picture of why this company continues to win contracts. First, Blackwater does have the market pretty well cornered on providing large numbers of seasoned special forces veterans, security clearance in-hand, ready for rapid deployment. This results from a dramatic over reliance on using private companies--specifically Blackwater-- for security that has expanded rapidly over the past decade. The US government has not moved to create its own force that could provide these services despite the need for them created by US foreign policy. Second, Blackwater has been involved with so many sensitive operations for a decade and knows where the bodies are buried and who buried them. Those are not the kind of people you simply cut loose without fear of consequences.

Blackwater has spent heavily on Democratic lobbyists in 2010 and clearly it has paid off. Despite the investigations, the indictments, the trail of dead bodies, George W Bush's favorite mercenary company is thriving under the Obama Administration. After its original sugar daddy left town, Blackwater has happily remarried. Over the past two weeks, the Administration has awarded nearly a quarter billion dollars in new US government contracts to Blackwater to work for the State Department and CIA in Afghanistan and other hot zones globally.

Read the whole thing.

The Murderers Your Tax Dollars Buy

Any bets on how soon two of its employees being indicted for murder will pose the slightest obstacle to Blackwater/Xe sucking up more billions of taxpayer dollars in defense contracts?

Ten years? A hundred? Bueller?

Justin Elliott at TPM:

Amid a busy news week, the indictment Wednesday of a pair of former Blackwater contractors for the alleged murder of two Afghan civilians hasn't gotten much attention. But the case has the potential to become a big problem for the U.S. war in Afghanistan, and for Blackwater's future business prospects in that country.

The particulars of what happened last May 5 -- including whether the contractors had been drinking and whether they were acting in self-defense -- are in dispute, but everyone agrees the shooting occurred after a traffic accident in Kabul.

The charges have attracted attention for coming so soon after a federal judge dismissed a case against Blackwater contractors who allegedly killed 17 civilians in Baghdad's Nisour Square in 2007. That shooting also unfolded after a traffic incident.

The contractors in the Kabul case, Christopher Drotleff, 29, and Justin Cannon, 27, were arrested last week in Corpus Christi, TX, and Virginia Beach, VA, respectively. The case is being prosecuted by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Virginia.

Read the whole thing for details.

A Last Fuck-You from the Loyal Bushies

Zandar brings us the bad news:

And the charges against the Blackwater Five have been thrown out.

A federal judge dismissed manslaughter charges Thursday against five Blackwater security guards in the 2007 deaths of Iraqi civilians in a Baghad square, finding that prosecutors wrongly used the men's own statements against them.

The September 2007 shootout in Baghdad's Nusoor Square left 17 Iraqis dead and two dozen wounded. The killings led Iraq's government to slap limits on security contractors hired by Blackwater, now known as Xe, and other firms.

U.S. District Judge Ricardo Urbina found that the government's case was built largely on "statements compelled under a threat of job loss in a subsequent criminal prosecution," a violation of the Fifth Amendment rights of the five men charged.

"In their zeal to bring charges against the defendant in this case, the prosecutors and investigators aggressively sought out statements the defendants had been compelled to make to government investigators in the immediate aftermath of the shooting and in the subsequent investigation," Urbina wrote in a 90-page decision.

Federal prosecutors "repeatedly disregarded the warnings of experienced, senior prosecutors assigned to the case" in doing so, he found.

Urbina also sharply criticized prosecutors and federal agents who developed the case, calling their explanations for using the guards' statements "all too often contradictory, unbelievable and lacking in credibility."

So that's it then. 17 dead and there's not enough evidence to even convict on manslaughter charges. Of course it's not like it mattered...they're just Iraqis, after all. Why would anyone think that would matter?

Gosh, it's almost like the Bushies put together such a terrible, incompetent case in 2007 that it was destined to fail, then handed it to Obama.

Now, where have I seen that play before?

Unfortunately, this won't be the last fuck-you from Smirky/Darth and the loyal bushies. Until and unless the White House faces the necessity of rounding up every single one of the lying motherfuckers and prosecuting them for war crimes, shit like this is going to poison and destroy everything President Obama tries to accomplish.

Yemen Will Have to Wait; War Number Three is Already Hot in Pakistan

No, I don't mean unmanned drones dropping bombs or covert spies along the border. I mean full-on, regular-military, killing-people war.

Jeremy Scahill at the Nation investigates reports of Blackwater operating in Pakistan, and discovers far more:

At a covert forward operating base run by the US Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) in the Pakistani port city of Karachi, members of an elite division of Blackwater are at the center of a secret program in which they plan targeted assassinations of suspected Taliban and Al Qaeda operatives, "snatch and grabs" of high-value targets and other sensitive actions inside and outside Pakistan, an investigation by The Nation has found. The Blackwater operatives also assist in gathering intelligence and help direct a US military drone bombing campaign that runs parallel to the well-documented CIA predator strikes, according to a well-placed source within the US military intelligence apparatus.

The source, who has worked on covert US military programs for years, including in Afghanistan and Pakistan, has direct knowledge of the program. He spoke to The Nation on condition of anonymity because the program is classified. The source said that the program is so "compartmentalized" that senior figures within the Obama administration and the US military chain of command may not be aware of its existence.

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The previously unreported program, the military intelligence source said, is distinct from the CIA assassination program, which the agency's director, Leon Panetta, announced he had canceled this past June. "This is a parallel operation to the CIA," said the source. "They are two separate beasts." The program puts Blackwater at the epicenter of a US military operation within the borders of a nation against which the United States has not declared war--knowledge that could further strain the already tense relations between the United States and Pakistan. In 2006 the United States and Pakistan struck a deal that authorized JSOC to enter Pakistan to hunt Osama bin Laden, with the understanding that Pakistan would deny it had given permission. Officially, the United States is not supposed to have any active military operations in the country.

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"It wouldn't surprise me, because we've outsourced nearly everything," said Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, who was Secretary of State Colin Powell's chief of staff from 2002 to 2005, when told of Blackwater's role in Pakistan. Wilkerson said that during his time in the Bush administration, he saw the beginnings of Blackwater's involvement with the sensitive operations of the military and CIA. "Part of this, of course, is an attempt to get around the constraints the Congress has placed on DoD. If you don't have sufficient soldiers to do it, you hire civilians to do it."

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One of the concerns raised by the military intelligence source is that some Blackwater personnel working on the classified JSOC contract are being given rolling security clearances above their approved clearances. Using Alternative Compartmentalized Control Measures (ACCMs), he said, the Blackwater personnel are granted clearance to a Special Access Program, the term for highly classified "black" operations. An ACCM allows Blackwater personnel access at "an ultra-exclusive level above top secret. That's exactly what it is: a circle of love." Blackwater, therefore, has access to "all source" reports that are culled in part from JSOC units in the field. "That's how a lot of things over the years have been conducted with contractors," said the source. "We have contractors that regularly see things that top policy-makers don't unless they ask."

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Some of the Blackwater personnel, he said, work undercover as aid workers. "Nobody even gives them a second thought."

So don't be surprised when Afghans start killing innocent aid workers. Meanwhile, the Blackwater and CIA spy programs are providing cover for actual military action by the Department of Defense's Joint Special Operations Command:

The military intelligence source said that the drone strike that reportedly killed Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud, his wife and his bodyguards in Waziristan in August was a CIA strike, but that many others attributed in media reports to the CIA are actually JSOC strikes. "Some of these strikes are attributed to OGA [Other Government Agency, intelligence parlance for the CIA], but in reality it's JSOC and its parallel program of UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles] because they also have access to UAVs. So when you see some of these hits, especially the ones with high civilian casualties, those are almost always JSOC strikes." The Pentagon has stated bluntly, "There are no US military strike operations being conducted in Pakistan."

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The military intelligence source explained that the CIA operations are subject to Congressional oversight, unlike the parallel JSOC bombings. "Targeted killings are not the most popular thing in town right now, and the CIA knows that," he said. "Contractors and especially JSOC personnel working under a classified mandate are not [overseen by Congress], so they just don't care. If there's one person they're going after and there's thirty-four people in the building, thirty-five people are going to die. That's the mentality." He added, "They're not accountable to anybody, and they know that. It's an open secret, but what are you going to do, shut down JSOC?"

In addition to working on covert action planning and drone strikes, Blackwater SELECT also provides private guards to perform the sensitive task of security for secret US drone bases, JSOC camps and DIA camps inside Pakistan, according to the military intelligence source.

Mosharraf Zaidi, a well-known Pakistani journalist who has served as a consultant for the United Nations and European Union in Pakistan and Afghanistan, says that the Blackwater/JSOC program raises serious questions about the norms of international relations. "The immediate question is, How do you define the active pursuit of military objectives in a country with which not only have you not declared war but that is supposedly a frontline non-NATO ally in the US struggle to contain extremist violence coming out of Afghanistan and the border regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan?" asks Zaidi, who is currently a columnist for the News, the biggest English-language daily in Pakistan. "Let's forget Blackwater for a second. What this is confirming is that there are US military operations in Pakistan that aren't about logistics or getting food to Bagram, that are actually about the exercise of physical violence, physical force, inside Pakistani territory."

There is much, much more, including details on how Smirky/Darth let Rumsfeld create a rogue JSOC, and how revelations in the Pakistani press about Blackwater's activites has enraged the population. The whole thing is well worth your time.