A Special Forces Army
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The
“Proconsul” Issues Order 17
Note the Roman
framework of “proconsul.”
Bremer’s last act before leaving
Baghdad on June 28, 2004, “was
to issue a decree known as Order
17, immunizing contractors in Iraq
from Prosecution…
_______________________________
Negroponte, when
U.S. Ambassador to Honduras from 1981
to 1985, was known as the
“proconsul.” [Blackwater,
164.] “He was ‘such a
powerful ambassador in Honduras in
the early 1980s that he was known as
“the proconsul,’ a title
given to powerful administrators in
colonial times.” –Blackwater,
282. Negroponte was appointed
ambassador to Iraq in April 2004.
“Negroponte was guarded by
Blackwater’s forces upon his
arrival in Baghdad in June.”
–Blackwater, 283. The
embassy in Iraq was an estimated
staff of 3,700, including 2,500
security personnel,” ‘a
unit only slightly smaller that a
full Marine Corps regiment.’
…the Baghdad embassy would house
some five hundred CIA operatives.
At the same time Blackwater had just
been awarded a vaunted diplomatic
security contract worth hundreds of
millions of dollars.” –Blackwater,
283.
Above the Law
“Blackwater
has openly declared its forces above
the law. While resisting attempts
to subject its private soldiers to
the Pentagon’s Uniform Code of
Military Justice (UCMJ) –
insisting they are civilians – Blackwater
has simultaneously claimed immunity
from civilian litigation in the
United States, saying its forces
are a part of the U.S. Total Force.
Blackwater has argued in legal briefs
that if U.S. courts allow the company
to be sued for wrongful death of its
workers, that could threaten the
nation’s war-fighting capacity:
‘In order for responsible
federal contractors to accompany the
U.S. Armed Forces on the battlefield,
it is essential that their
immunity from liability for
casualties be federally protected and
uniformly upheld by federal courts. Nothing
could be more destructive of the
all-volunteer, Total Force concept
underlying U.S. Military manpower
doctrine than to expose the private
components to the tort liability
systems of fifty states, transported
overseas to foreign
battlefields… How the president
oversees and commands these military
operations, including his decisions
through the chain of command
concerning the training, deployment,
armament, missions, composition,
planning, analysis, management and
supervision of private military
contractors and their missions, falls
outside the role of [the
courts].’” –Blackwater,
xx, xxi.
Order 17: Immunity
From Prosecution
“On June 27,
Bremer signed 17, which declared, “Contractors
shall be immune from Iraqi legal
process with respect to acts
performed by them pursuant to the
terms and conditions of a Contract or
any sub-contract thereto.’ [Coalition
Provisional Authority Order Number
17, June 27, 2004].”
–Blackwater, 163.
A Legal Gray Zone
“Private
contractors largely operate in a
legal gray zone that leaves the door
for abuses wide open.”
–Blackwater, xxi.
In late 2006, a
one-line amendment was quietly
slipped into Congress’ massive
2007 defense-spending bill, signed by
President Bush that could subject
contractors in war zones to the
Pentagon’s UCMJ, also known as
the court martial system. But the
military has enough trouble policing
its own massive force and could
scarcely be expected to effectively
monitor an additional 100,000 private
personnel. While the five-word insert
hardly establishes a system of
independent oversight, experts will
predict it will be fiercely resisted
by the private war industry.”
– Blackwater, xxi, xxii.
In truth, a Government
accountability Office report in
December 2006 found that
“’officials were unable to
determine how many contractors were
deployed to bases in Iraq’”
– Blackwater, xxii. The military
does not know the number of
contractors or the services they are
providing to US forces, but figures
quoted now are 180,000 Independent
Military Contractors in Iraq.
A “Contractor
Brigade”
While former Secretary
of State Colin Powell declared that
‘active military is about
broken,’ Prince offered up his
own proposal to create a
‘contractor brigade’ to
supplement the conventional US
military. Prince declared he could do
it cheaper. He is a man in control of
his own army. [Blackwater, xxii].
By 476 A.D.,
historically the fall of Rome,
“A proud army made up of Romans
had long since turned into a paid
army made up of barbarians.” –Cullen
Murphy, Are We Rome? The fall of
an Empire and the fate of America. New
York: Houghton Mifflin, Co., 2007,
p.28.
Condottieri
“Centuries ago it
was not unusual for monarchs and
city-states to contract out much of
their war-fighting business to
professional mercenaries; the term condottieri,
referring to men of this
kind, comes from the Italian word for
“contract.” –Are
We Rome? Pp. 87,88.
Scouring the Earth For
Special Forces
Blackwater created a
new division, Greystone limited,
registered offshore in Barbados,
which hires new recruits from the
Philippines, Chile, Nepal, Columbia,
Ecuador, El Salvador, Honduras,
Panama and Peru – areas of earth
with some of the world’s worst
human rights records. Blackwater
scours the earth for commandos,
special forces, defense,
intelligence, and law enforcement
professionals ready at a
moment’s notice for global
deployment. It is Rome’s new
global rapid reaction, special forces
army.
Thus the difficulty
with bringing other nations on board
in the War on Terror is outflanked by
simply hiring the best special forces
each of these nations can offer and
weld it all into a giant
international Blackwater mercenary
army, ready to go anywhere instantly.
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