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Today's Stories September 19, 2007 Paul Craig Roberts Why Did Senator John Kerry Stand Idly By? Paul Krassner The Power of Laughter Sgt. Martin Smith The New Private Warriors: Blackwater in Iraq Claud Cockburn Looking back at the Great Crash Victoria Buch Israel's Agenda for Ethnic Cleansing and Transfer September 18, 2007 Mike Whitney U.S. Banks Brace for Storm Surge as Dollar and Credit System Reel Alan Farago Interviewing Alan Greenspan: How 60 Minutes Blew It John Ross America's Great Wall: Where Will the Workers Go When They Finish It? Ron Jacobs Nooses Hung From Jena, La. to College Park, Md. Alex Doherty Britain's 9/11 "Truth Movement": Who's Responsible? September 17, 2007 Marjorie Cohn Erwin Chemerinsky and the Post-9/11 Attack on Academic Freedom Paul Craig Roberts Conservatism Isn't What It Used to Be Ricardo Alarcón The Return of C. Wright Mills Amid the Dawn of a New Era Marc Levy Fake Vets Chasing Fame Eva Liddell In 1969 We Already Knew What 2007 Would Look Like Website of the Day Propaganda: Your Job in Germany. Directed by Frank Capra, and written by Theodor Geisel Sept. 15-16, 2007 Alexander Cockburn The General Came to Washington Vicente Navarro How the U.S. Schemed Against Spain's Transition from Dictatorship to Democracy Mike Whitney Plummeting Dollar, Credit Crunch Herman Mindshaftgap Has There Ever Been a Surge? If so, Has it a Future? Ellen Cantarow Girls! Music! Palestine! Jordan Flaherty K-Ville: Fox's New Paean to the N.O.P.D. Zachary Hurwitz Julio Cusurichi on Amazonian Development September 14, 2007 Debbie Nathan New York Times reporter was a member of an illegal underage porn site, claims he was only "posing as online predator" Franklin Lamb Sabra-Shatilla, 25 Years Later Patrick Cockburn Greet Bush and Die: The Killing of Abu Risha Farzana Versey The World's Richest Muslim Tycoon Alan Farago This is Florida, Epicenter of the Housing Bust and of Public Corruption Hank Edson Bill's New Book is Giving Me a Headache September 13, 2007 Patrick Cockburn Petraeus Confided Presidential Ambitions to Iraqi Official Scott Vest, former Air Force Captain at Minot The Barksdale Nukes Andy Worthington Guantánamo: "Ghost" Prisoners Speak At Last Michael Baney Mr. Fixit of Quake-Stricken Peru Has Death Squad Past Dr. Susan Block Is U.S. Run by Secret Homintern? September 12, 2007 Paul Craig Roberts American Economy: RIP Stan Goff The Petraeus Report William Blum When Soldiers Mutiny...Only Those Fighting the War Can End It. Manuel Garcia Forgetting 9/11 Debbie Nathan Why One Sex Survey Didn't Make the Big Time September 11, 2007 Patrick Cockburn The Fakery of General Petraeus Iain Boal Specters of Malthus: Scarcity, Poverty, Apocalypse Michael Dickinson Osama on 9/11 Guerry Hoddersen Free Speech is Not Given, but Taken Bill Hatch Irish Politics in Old Time California Gary Leupp The Legacy of Luciano Pavarotti Website of the Day Elisa Salasin's "My September 11th" September 10, 2007 Uri Avnery A Big Victory Against the Wall Patrick Cockburn Petraeus's Closet Saul Landau and Farrah Hassen Screwing Up In Iraq David Michael Green Why Fred Thompson is Uniquely Qualified to be the GOP's Nominee Pius Adesanmi A Solidarity Letter to a Victim of Michael Vick Betty Schneider How to Deal With Sex Offenders   September 8 / 9, 2007 Alexander Cockburn Will the US Really Bomb Iran? Saul Landau The Irrational Drama of a Declining Empire Ismael Hossein-Zadeh Hurricane Katrina and Bush's Wars Ray McGovern Petraeus, the Westmoreland of Iraq Matthew Abraham Finkelstein's Legacy at DePaul Alan Farago The Governor and the Growth Machine Christopher Brauchli Grand Old Party Animals Rannie Amiri Battle of the Camps Fred Gardner Will Snoops Get Stopped? James L. Secor B-52 Flexing Nuclear Muscles: H-Bombs Over Barksdale Missy Comley Beattie Choices: Shall We Stay or Shall We Go Now? Ben Tripp Still in the Clover Francis Boyle The University of Illinois' Little Red Sambo Show Joe Allen and Paul D'Amato Jason Bourne vs. James Bond Website of the Weekend Drilling Wyoming: the View from Above September 7, 2007 Robert Fantina Those Iraq Reports: Bush vs. Reality John Ross Coca-Cola's Raid on a Sacred Mountain James Brooks The Occupation Within Russell Mokhiber Robert Reich and the Elimination of Corporate Criminal Liability Joshua Frank The Green Implosion Continues: Cyberlynching John Murphy John Walsh On the Green Party Mark Brenner New York Taxi Workers Strike Over Tracking Devices Mike Ferner "I Will Salute No More Forever" Website of the Day Help Save Osny Zachary's Life   September 6, 2007 Kathleen and Bill Christison Bush, Iran and Israel's Hidden Hand Allan J. Lichtman When General Petraeus Speaks, Don't Listen ... Norman Solomon The Secret Addiction of Thomas Friedman Yifat Susskind Hurricane Felix's First Responders: Courage and Tragedy on the Miskito Coast Catherine Fenton Why I Am Going to the Protest Laura Santina Can the War Machine be Contained? Farzana Versey Fission Kashmir Yves Engler Haiti: Where a Wage of $2 a Day is Too Much for the Lords of Industry to Pay Kelly Overton Bang Bang; Shoot Shoot: Is Hunting Racist? Michael Simmons One Jew's Views: The Strange Genius of Drew Friedman and Kominsky Crumb Website of the Day Dams and Genocide in Guatemala     September 5, 2007 Stan Goff The End Begins Michael Dickinson Working for Mother Teresa: Memoirs of a Rebellious Volunteer Matthew Abraham Standing Firm with Norman Finkelstein and DePaul's Heroic Students: a Defining Moment Patrick Cockburn The Basra Debacle Dave Lindorff Beware the Wounded Beast Paul Craig Roberts Who Are the Fanatics? Clifton Ross Ecuador and the Struggle for Latin American Unity Elizabeth Schulte Katrina's Forgotten Refugees Joseph Grosso Labor Day in New York City Ben Terrall Where's Nancy? On Trying to Protest Pelosi in San Francisco Website of the Day A Guide to Narco Dollars   September 4, 2007 Jean Bricmont Why Bush Can Get Away with Attacking Iran Patrick Cockburn Cut and Run in Iraq Ron Jacobs The Haditha Massacre: Spinning a War Crime Tom Kerr Buried Alive on San Quentin's Death Row Gary Leupp The Case of Jose Maria Sison Sonja Karkar The Weeping Olive Trees of Palestine Heather Gray The Best and Worst of America: 9/11, Joseph Lowery and the Lethal Silence of Billy Graham Fidel Castro The Super-Revolutionaries Jackie Corr Home Depot Comes to Butte--Begging Bowl in Hand Sunsara Taylor Katrina and the Progress of the System Website of the Day Colombia Journal   September 3, 2007 Patrick Cockburn Brits Flee from Basra Eamon McCann Qana, Derry: The Dead Lie in Familiar Shapes Joshua Frank The End of the Green Party? Chris Floyd Post-Mortem America: Bush's Year of Triumph Marjorie Cohn A Look at Bush's Iran War Plans Walter Brasch The News Drones: How Fake Photos Helped Lead the US to War in Iraq Matt Reichel Redefining the American Dream Website of the Day Don't Get Fooled Again   September 1 / 2, 2007 Alexander Cockburn Entrapment Snares Larry Craig Andy Worthington Britain's Guantánamo Saul Landau The Tragic Ordeal of the Cuban Five David Keen An Occident Waiting to Happen: Intellectuals and the War on Terror Patrick Cockburn The Collapse of Iraq's Health Care Services Diana Johnstone Back in Uncle Sam's Pocket George Longstreth, MD & Karen Longstreth, RN The Sorrows of Occupation: Life in the West Bank Linda M. Woolf A Sad Day for Psychologists--a Sadder Day for Human Rights Ralph Nader Wrapping the World with Advertising Fred Gardner The Trial of Mollie Fry, MD Ben Tripp Enquiry in America Today David Michael Green American Indigestion: Why Bush Governs from the Gut Missy Comley Beattie Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places: What the GOP Hasn't Learned About Tolerance Michael Dickinson Who's Cheating: Remembering Princess Diana Paul Krassner Assholes of the Week: From Larry Craig to Wesley Clark Ron Jacobs A Sports Nation of Millions Poets' Basement Buknatski, Davies and Mickey Z   August 31, 2007 Jeff Gibbs Why I Am Not Going to the Protest Paul Craig Roberts The War Criminal in the Living Room Ray McGovern Do We Have the Courage to Stop War with Iran? Robert Weissman The Benchmarks Iraq is Missing Matt Vidal Subprime Lending and Shady Mortgages Robin Mittenthal The Biofuels Trap Chris Kutalik Auto Makers Push Health Care Trust Solution for Industry in Crisis Richard Forno Watching Freedom's Watch Binoy Kampmark Dianified Dave Zirin Kenneth Foster Lives Website of the Day Free the Jena 6   August 30, 2007 Gary Leupp Larry Craig on the Seat John Ross Dead Forest Defenders Anthony DiMaggio Arabic as a Terrorist Language: the Right-Wing Assault on the Gibran Academy Jordan Flaherty Racism and Criminal Justice in New Orleans Michael Donnelly The Sierra Club Greenwashes Al Gore (and Desecrates John Muir) Russell Mokhiber Whiskey is for Drinking, Water is for Fighting Dennis Brutus and Patrick Bond Global Financial Apartheid William S. Lind The Truth Tellers Martha Rosenberg They Call Him Dr. Cruel Jeff Leys / Brian Terrell Seasons of Discontent: a Presidential Occupation Project Website of the Day Bragg: "Old Clash Fan Fight Song" August 29, 2007 Patrick Cockburn Maliki and The Mass Shia Pilgrimage to Kerbala Winslow T. Wheeler The Costs of the Afghanistan War David Rosen The GOP's Outed All-Stars: The Forced Freeing of Gay Men from the Republican Closet Dave Zirin Confronting Katrina Paul Craig Roberts More Shame, More Sorrow Diane Farsetta Christie Todd Whitman's Nuclear Spinning Wheel Ben Davis Who Won't Stand Up for Kenneth Foster?: Charles Rangel, For One Alan Farago The Housing Crisis and the Environment Jenna Orkin Echoes of 9/11: Another Fire at Ground Zero Don Monkerud The Vanishing American Vacation Richard Nasser Surfing Gaza: More Uplifting News from NPR Website of the Day Don't Sleep on the Struggle   August 28, 2007 Uri Avnery The Language of Force Bill Quigley Katrina, Two Years Later Joshua Frank The Fight to Save the Rocky Mountains China Hand "I am Alden Pyle:" Bush's Vietnam Fantasy Firmin DeBrabander Drug Wars: From Afghanistan to Baltimore Charles Peña Nuclear Fear Factor Andy Worthington Good Riddance, Gonzales Ramzy Baroud Abbas and the Abyss Anthony Papa Roger Stone's New Patsy Ashley Smith Drawing the Line at Kennebunkport Website of the Day B is for Bomb August 27, 2007 Jorge Mariscal The General Reports Bill Christison Why the US and Israel Should Lose Middle East Wars Manuel Garcia, Jr. 911 Emergency! Calling Robert Fisk!: You are Now Entering a Black Hole Anthony DiMaggio Chronicle of a Coup Foretold?: Bush, al-Maliki and the Press Bruce A. Roth India and the New Nuclear Era John Walsh Abe Foxman's Genocide Denial Roadshow, Part 2 Dave Lindorff Gonzo's Gone Ron Jacobs Taking It to the Streets Binoy Kampmark Poshed Up: Why the Beckhams Should Go Back to Brighty Russell D. Hoffman My Favorite Scientist: John Gofman, Bane of the Nuclear Industry Website of the Day George W. Told the Nation             Subscribe Online

September 19, 2007 Blackwater in Iraq The New Private Warriors By Sgt. MARTIN SMITH Jeremy Scahill's Blackwater: the Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army is a tour de force of investigative journalism and a work that should be read throughout the antiwar and emerging GI resistance movements. Currently, the employees of the 180 "private contractor" companies operating in Iraq, who supply everything from logistical support to security services, comprise more employees than U.S. combat troops. While American forces have relied on mercenaries in previous wars, the government's campaign to privatize the war effort is distinctly new and has grave implications. Scahill points out that the current push towards "guns for hire" is neither an accident nor the flawed strategy of an errant president. Rather, the use of private contractors dates back to the early 1990s with the downsizing and restructuring of the armed forces. Both Republican and Democratic administrations have taken part in it. The military began a massive privatization drive under then-Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney during Bush Sr.'s administration. According to Scahill, "The idea was to free up the troops to do the fighting while private contractors handled the backend logistics. . . .More contractors meant fewer troops, and a much more politically palatable troop count." By August 1992, Halliburton, soon to be headed by Cheney himself, led the support work for the military for the next five years, during Bill Clinton's presidential tenure. Clinton continued the privatization agenda, and Halliburton received lucrative contracts for services during the Balkans and the Kosovo conflicts. The Clinton years helped open the door for the Rumsfeld Doctrine, which promoted the use of private contractors for all aspects of war, including combat. Erik Prince, a former Navy SEAL from a wealthy establishment family, saw financial opportunity in these developments and formed Blackwater USA in 1997. While privatization schemes for the military crossed party lines, Prince and the crew at Blackwater are decisively partisan. Prince is a participant in and major donor to fundamentalist religious and right-wing causes, while the upper echelons of Blackwater's staff reads like a who's who of the extremist theocon Right, including Paul Behrends and Joseph Schmitz. What began as a training facility for law enforcement personnel and special operation forces in North Carolina has become a corporation providing the world's most powerful mercenary army, what Scahill terms the "Praetorian Guard for the Bush administration's 'global war on terror.'" Blackwater currently has forces deployed in at least nine countries, including over 2,300 mercenaries. Moreover, private contractor companies are now hiring the most notorious global thugs, including Chilean commandos who served under General Augusto Pinochet and white apartheid-era South African Special Forces. Blackwater's success, Scahill writes, has grown from two key factors. One, through Prince's connections with Christian/Republican causes, he has garnered a powerful lobbying arm composed of well-connected former federal officials and military brass. Through these ties, Blackwater has been able to win key government contracts and shift its services to meet the cutting-edge needs of a growing security-industrial-complex. Two, Blackwater has benefited from the post-9/11 geopolitical climate. Scahill explains how the "war on terror" has proven to be a boon for Blackwater and a "key ideological underpinning of legitimating private contractors and security." Beyond this, the instability in Iraq has benefited the entire mercenary industry, diverting expenditures away from reconstruction. The more effective the Iraqi resistance becomes against U.S. regular forces, the greater the call for increased private security services. On March 31, 2004, four Blackwater contractors were ambushed and their bodies mutilated by an angry mob in Fallujah. To date, Blackwater has evaded prosecution for its negligence in how their employees were sent out on a mission ill-equipped and unprepared. Yet rather than calling into question the role and mission of private contractors, the incident played into the war propaganda machine by providing the pretext by which to exact revenge and launch one of a series of devastating military attacks against the people of Fallujah. A week after the ambush, Prince met with key members of the Senate Committee on Armed Services. "The mercenary gold rush was on," as Scahill put it. With the reality of a resistance movement on the rise in Iraq, "Blackwater was thrust into the fortunate position of a drug rep offering a new painkiller to an ailing patient at the moment the worst pain was just kicking in." At the same time, Blackwater won a contract to begin operations in the oil- and gas-rich Caspian Sea region. Acting as a "backdoor U.S. military deployment" instead of sending in divisions of the U.S. Armed Forces--which might be politically unpalatable to Russia--Blackwater served a dual function. They both protected the oil and gas operations in the region and laid the foundation for a possible forward operating base to attack Iran. On June 2004, Paul Bremer passed the infamous Order 17, which granted sweeping immunity for the actions of contractors in Iraq. That is, mercenaries were now no longer accountable under any military or national laws or codes of conduct. Contractors had free reign to potentially commit atrocities or war crimes with impunity. Scahill points out that at the time, the United States began to move towards "the Salvador option," the use of death squads to foment sectarian divisions in Iraq, with the appointment of John Negroponte as ambassador to Iraq. Facing no criminal prosecution, mercenaries were free to potentially utilize assassinations, repression, and torture as methods aimed to stoke divisions in Iraq and pacify the resistance. Scahill includes a brilliant chapter on Blackwater's rapid deployment to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, pointing out the irony that guns for hire arrived faster than government relief and rescue services. Preying on the racist fears of the white elite, Blackwater marketed itself as a force capable of protecting business interests from Black "looters" and "criminals." As Chris Kromm, editor of Gulf Coast Reconstruction Watch described, "That's what happens when the victims are black folks vilified before and after the storm-instead of aid, they get contained." Blackwater was able to utilize Katrina to further expand its ever-widening list of services, which now included "humanitarian aid" and domestic security details for natural disasters. While Louisiana's National Guard was in Iraq, Blackwater was on hand to provide so-called "relief" via black t-shirts, wraparound sunglasses, and guns. Scahill does not shy away from asking the larger questions. What are the consequences for democracy when military services are outsourced to corporate entities with no accountability? What are the implications of a government that relies upon paramilitary organizations that flought U.S. law and potentially the Constitutional rights of its citizens? While some may argue that the use of mercenaries represents the telltale sign of the decline of U.S. Empire, Scahill's work puts Blackwater and private contractors in a different light. The rise of the security-industrial-complex represents the potential staying power and resilience of U.S. imperialism around the globe. Scahill's Blackwater is a clarion call to the Antiwar Movement to redouble its efforts by demanding not only that coalition soldiers be pulled out of the Middle East-but that, in addition, that all occupying foreign forces, including those of Blackwater, withdrawal immediately as well. Martin Smith, former Sgt. USMC, is Midwest regional coordinator of Iraq Veterans Against the War. He can be reached at: martin@ivaw.org This review originally appeared in the ISR. Your Ad Here

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