Isn’t Wackenhut the parent company of ArmorGroup? Doesn’t that bear mentioning somewhere? Don’t they have LOTS of contracts with the USA, worldwide? Why aren’t these all under review?

Oh, and great article at the Windy, Spencer. Keep digging, I bet there’s lots more here. Terrific work.

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Very good point (although I don’t think Wack is AG’s total parent company, since that’s AG International). My next piece on this, I think, should be about Wackenhut’s homeland-security contracts.

I thought Laura Bush was all anti women sex slaves? I thought she was proud of what her husband accomplished in Iraq? I think Hugh has an other addition to his list!

In the video, the reporter states that Wackenhut does own ArmorGroup, and that it won’t have a statement until tomorrow.

It is currently paging DoubleSpeak, Inc. to get its appropriate response.

Something keeps going around in my head that there is much more to this story. Let’s see, and out of control para-military organization headed by right-wing zealots (Xe and Eric Prince) is exposed in Iraq, prostitution and extra judicial killings by companies in Afghanistan. I just don’t understand why we allow an obviously undisplined set of “soldiers” to guard our diplomats. What is the leverage that these guys are using in order to stay in business and keep their government contracts? It absolutely disgusts me.

Something else the Bush Legacy project will gloss over? I think we should have an online Bush legacy library of our own EW and Hugh could do a best of collection.

The premise for the U.S. having an immoral and unlawful presence in those two countries causes a slight disgust on my part as well.

“Mercenaries and auxiliaries are useless and dangerous; and if one holds his state based on these arms, he will stand neither firm nor safe; for they are disunited, ambitious and without discipline, unfaithful, valiant before friends, cowardly before enemies; they have neither the fear of God nor fidelity to men, and destruction is deferred only so long as the attack is; for in peace one is robbed by them, and in war by the enemy.”

http://www.xs4all.nl/~maartens…..12rem.html

Conservatives always say they value the lessons of the past? Bwahahaha!

State Dept was Condi’s thing if Katrina did not kill her political career this certainly will.

AND THE KILLIN’ GOEZ ON AND ON AND…

Citizen Spencer and the Firepup Freedom Fighters:

Where has everyone been about this issue of contractors owning the security for the most sensitive US embassies in the world??!!! Mrs. Clinton defended the outsourcing of military security to embassies during the nomination campaign and has defended the situation several times since the election.

Your friendly neighborhood Norske has been hollerin’ in the woods about this for 4 fuckin years…look at the map then close your eyes and color in all the flash points that have trained combat mercenaries as either guards or ground security. Add to that picture the 15,000 corporate mercenaries either garrisoned in North Carolina or on assignment with various “security” companies throughout the US. Then before you open your eyes remember that there are over 5 states that don’t have enough NG units to respond to a fuckin’ grass fire.

OK, now maybe you jest wanna keep yer eyes shut and hope that you ken go to sleep until this nightmare is over. These bastards have no intention of allowing ANY success for this administration, domestic or foriegn, and the sooner Obama realizes this the closer we will be to confronting the battle that is waiting for us in our front yard!

KEEP THE FAITH AND PASS THE FUCKIN’ AMMUNITION, THIS IS NOT A DRILL!!

Blackwater has a few allegations of this sort as well does any mercenary group Bush hired not engage in sex or war crimes?

But I keep on hearing how the private sector does things better, at lower cost and helps stop the growth of Big (scary) Government. The Chamber of Commerce reminds us on a daily basis, and, surely, they have our collective best interests at heart.

Banning Mercs from doing anything more than private security in America is a must they must not have combat roles or be employed by the U.S government or be allowed to work in foreign countries.
Aside from them not doing the job, committing war and sex crimes, pissing off torturing and killing innocent locals well Prince having his own private army is a threat to Democracy and Obama.

The Bush Presidency has discredited unregulated capitalism Mercs are not cheap. Unregulated food means mercury in the cat food and Swine Flu (an American hog farmer corporation in Mexico was ground zero. It brought us a banking crisis and a GM bailout.
Once the Left joked that it would be cheaper to buy everyone a Prius than fund the Iraq war for oil. Cash for Clunkers is a good start.
Next year with the GM Volt if we do do cash for Clunkers everyone will be wondering why we did not try economic warfare a long time ago.:)

WAIT A MINUTE…

Obama called single payer too “radical” and “disruptive”

but this???????

ahhhhhhhhhhh..not so much…….

lets give them all new contracts..

of MY MONEY!

This makes me absolutely sick to my stomach.

But don’t worry ..it is only giving you a public option in your health care that is disruptive and radical!

Our officeholders are frightened of the mercenary armies, I am convinced. When they travel to war zones, they are protected by them. Or, if they have spoken out against mercenaries, perhaps they are not so well protected.

Warfighting abroad in all its forms for private profit should be outlawed. Blackwater should be investigated and nationalized. If its employees don’t like their new federal payscale, they can go work for foreign tyrants and despots. They have no place in our democracy, and are dangerous to it.

Norske,

These private armies now outnumber regular forces in Iraq and Afganistan, they are owned by the same folks who brought us the financial meltdown and they eventually are going to come home from the middle east and have nothing to do.

“Susan Pitcher, a spokeswoman for Wackenhut Services, the Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., company that owns ArmorGroup, declined to comment on Tuesday’s POGO report.”

Wackenhut is known in some circles as the Shadow CIA. (see link above)

They’re also notorious for union-busting in this country.

Wackenhut’s institutional stockholder is Britain’s Barclays Global Investors International, which you will remember was bought by Blackrock, well connected Investment firm that has been described as a pioneer of mortgage backed securities in the United States.

From the NYT;

“For BlackRock, the purchase is the latest in a string of acquisitions that have made the firm a giant investment manager with $1.3 trillion in assets. The firm has advised the federal government on its financial bailout efforts, and is managing billions of dollars worth of troubled assets from Bear Stearns and the American International Group for the Federal Reserve.”

W4B;

So let’s look at it this way;

If you want to know why nobody in Washington DC stands up to the likes of AIG, Blackrock, Barcleys, the FED, and all the rest of the W$ pirates, it’s because they have their own personal army comprised of the most wantonly depraved individuals on the planet and you wouldn’t want a bunch of pschopaths like that to show up at your house would you?

If you think the tea-baggers are bad, just wait till The Armor Group, Wackenhut, Blackwater, Xe, or whatever they’re calling themselves shows up in your town.

Blackwater was hired to help with security in New Orleans after Katrina.

Norske, I know you’re paying attention, but most people are not.

Follow the money and you’ll get the right answer every time. Officials in government contracting authority spend nearly all of their time laying the ground work for lucrative second careers in the very private sector companies they are supposed to oversee. If companies like Armorgroup and Blackwater (XE) go down the crapper where does that leave the careful plans of their Federal Bureaucrat patrons?

They don’t have the Rendon Group to finesse the PR or the news media anymore.

I suspect there will be a WHOLE lot of stuff start coming out now.

The BIG pustulant swamp of corruption WILL be drained.

General Smedley Butler was spot on almost one hundred years ago. War is a racket.

Thanks for your work on this issue.

And just where IS the SOS on this issue? Has anyone heard “boo” from our illustrious Sec of State?
hello????

Buehler????

This is why I stopped watching “24″, that and the fact that Fox has been banned from my household permanently.

“We” use these clowns because they are not accountable to anyone. They are outlaws in the literal sense that the laws do not recognize them or allow for their conduct. This means that slimy politicians with criminal inclinations can have the illusion of deniability. It also means that there is lots of loose, unaudited money that can be vacuumed up by the providers of these “services”.

That mercenaries behave the way they do is no mystery. Pick up a copy of “Soldier of Fortune” some time. Consider the types it would appeal to. The people that hire mercenaries and the people that become them love this kind of behavior and equate it with toughness and military skill, even though real professional soldiers (in the US at least) have always recognized it for what it is: criminality and ill discipline.

As I understand it, current mercenaries call themselves “private security contractors” because, since the 20th century, international law has defined mercenary soldiers as illegal combatants. They cannot claim the protections and immunities guaranteed POWs, real soldiers, or civilians. Mercenaries are equivalent to terrorists and bandits captured on the battlefield: they can be tried and punished for their actions and, in some cases, for merely being mercenaries. Many of the mercenaries that the CIA employed in Angola were tried and executed after that ill-advised adventure collapsed, including at least one American. Britsih and South African mercenaries hired by Margaret Thatcher’s son are serving long prison terms in Equatorial Guinea, even though they all claimed to be security contractors.

Britsih and South African mercenaries hired by Margaret Thatcher’s son are serving long prison terms in Equatorial Guinea, even though they all claimed to be security contractors.

Yes, but this generation of mercenaries will claim they’re Cheney campaign workers.

What is ArmorGroup? – Times OnlineAug 10, 2009 … ArmorGroup was founded in 1982 as Defence Systems Limited (DSL) to provide protective security services to oil and gas companies.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news…..790620.ece – Similar

Mr. Ackermann might find this Kos story from a couple of years ago pretty germane to this thread:

Daily Kos: DHS forcing secrecy pledges to cover up its’ security flawsTags: DHS, homeland security, Michael Chertoff, Bush Administration, Wackenhut, … is a wholly owned subsidiary of the London-based Group 4 Securicor. …
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/4/21/11506/2257 – Cached – Similar

Thanks for this post Spencer.

I guess they won’t answer your queries because they figured banning alcohol in the barracks will make all the sex slavery go away.