Jeremy Scahill: Blackwater in Afghanistan
February 26th, 2010 § Leave a Comment
Jeremy Scahill, award-winning investigative journalist and author of Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army, appeared on MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show on Wednesday after attending a hearing by the Senate Armed Services Committee on their investigation of some of Blackwater’s (Xe’s) activities in Afghanistan.
Rachel Maddow:
Jeremy, what do you think is the most serious about the new charges that have been levelled against the company?…We’re learning about the criminal history and the history of incompetence and misconduct among the people that Blackwater is hiring. It seems important because they’ve had this reputation that they hire only very elite people, that seems to be over now.
Jeremy Scahill:
Right. Two of the guys that have been indicted now on manslaughter charges in the United States for killing 2 Afghans civilians, its been revealed that one of them had gone AWOL from the military, had tested positive for cocaine. Another had been on a do-not-deploy list and then Blackwater transferred him over to Paravant, this shell company, so that he could be redeployed to Afghanistan. So I think that when you take the combination of the fact that Blackwater is essentially lying to the US military, is in possession of hundreds of illicit weapons, is killing Afghan civilians, and is overall endangering the lives of US forces through their misconduct, what you have is a very lethal cocktail. And the fact that the Obama administration is now leaning toward giving Blackwater, not a multi-million dollar contract Rachel, but a 1 billion dollar contract to train the Afghan national police, I think should sound emergency warning bells for subpoenas to be issued to Erik Prince and other Blackwater executives to go in front of congress and answer for all the crimes their personnel have committed.
