February 28, 2008
Obama and Clinton both support Blackwater!!!!


March 3, 2008
Obama To Boost Security Contractors Rap

A senior foreign policy adviser to leading Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has told The Nation that if elected Obama will not "rule out" using private security companies like Blackwater Worldwide in Iraq. The adviser also said that Obama does not plan to sign on to legislation that seeks to ban the use of these forces in U.S. war zones by January 2009, when a new President will be sworn in. Obama's campaign says that instead he will focus on bringing accountability to these forces while increasing funding for the State Department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security, the agency that employs Blackwater and other private security contractors.

But therein lies a problem. The U.S. Embassy in Iraq is slated to become the largest embassy in world history. If Obama maintains that embassy and its army of diplomats and U.S. personnel going in and out of the Green Zone, which his advisers say he will, a significant armed force will be required for protection. The force that now plays that role is composed almost exclusively of contractors from Blackwater, DynCorp and Triple Canopy. And at present, these contractors are not held accountable under U.S. law. Obama and a host of legal experts, including in the Justice Department, acknowledge that there may be no current U.S. law that could be used to prosecute security contractors for crimes committed in Iraq, such as the killing of seventeen Iraqi civilians last September in Baghdad's Nisour Square.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/03/03/opinion/main3899924.shtml?source=RSSattr=Opinion_3899924

July 29th, 2008
Blackwater protected Barack Obama in Afghanistan

So who do you think protected Obama and his fellow senators Jack Reed and Chuck Hagel during their recent and much ballyhooed congressional delegation trip to Afghanistan? Yep, that’s right – Blackwater.

In his Washington Whispers column, the well-connected Paul Bedard reports that Obama was overheard saying that “Blackwater is getting a bad rap”.  http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/tobyharnden/4747337/Blackwater_protected_Barack_Obama_in_Afghanistan/

Apr 8, 2009
Obama's Blackwater?

Federal records obtained by AlterNet reveal a multi-million dollar contract for a private U.S. paramilitary force operating out of Jerusalem.

On the campaign trail, Barack Obama's advisers said he "can't rule out [and] won't  rule out" using mercenary forces, like Blackwater. Now, it appears that the Obama  administration has decided on its hired guns of choice: Triple Canopy, a Chicago  company now based in Virginia. It may not have Blackwater's thuggish reputation, but  Triple Canopy has its own bloody history in Iraq and a record of hiring mercenaries  from countries with atrocious human rights records. What's more, Obama is not just  using the company in Iraq, but also as a U.S.-government funded private security  force in Israel/Palestine, operating out of Jerusalem.

It's hardly a surprise that Obama is continuing the use of mercenaries in Iraq and  beyond (Triple Canopy itself maintains offices in Abu Dhabi, Nigeria, Peru, Jordan  and Uganda); nevertheless, members of Congress -- whose actions when Bush deployed  these private armies were too little, too late -- have a responsibility to  investigate his use of companies whose profits are intimately linked to a  continuation of war. Moreover, Obama's choice of this particular company should be  investigated, both by the House and Senate, before May 7th when Obama's mercenaries  become the official paramilitary force in Iraq. As for Triple Canopy's role in  Israel, Obama's administration should explain exactly what these forces are doing on the U.S. government payroll.  http://axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/Article_55386.shtml

August 23, 2009
Obama administration uses Blackwater in drone killings

Under Obama, the close links between the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and Blackwater have continued. These relationships reveal not only the corruption and conflicts-of-interest that are ubiquitous in the multi-trillion dollar world of military contracting. It raises the question of where the US military—ostensibly controlled by the elected representatives of the American people—ends, and Blackwater, a for-profit entity accountable to no one, comprised largely of former US military special operations personnel, begins.  http://www.voltairenet.org/article161769.html

September 16, 2009
Why Is Obama Still Using Blackwater?

"I saw women and children jump out of their cars and start to crawl on the road to escape being shot," said Iraqi lawyer Hassan Jabar Salman, who was shot four times in the back during the incident. "But still the firing kept coming and many of them were killed. I saw a boy of about 10 leaping in fear from a minibus--he was shot in the head. His mother was crying out for him. She jumped out after him, and she was killed."

Salman says he was driving behind the Blackwater convoy when it stopped. Witnesses say some sort of explosion had gone off in the distance, too far away to have been perceived as a threat. He said Blackwater guards ordered him to turn his vehicle around and leave the scene. Shortly after, the shooting began. "Why had they opened fire?" he asked. "I do not know. No one--I repeat no one--had fired at them. The foreigners had asked us to go back, and I was going back in my car, so there was no reason for them to shoot." In all, he says, his car was hit twelve times, including the four bullets that pierced his back.

Ridgeway, the Blackwater operative, admitted that he and the other Blackwater operatives "opened fire with automatic weapons and grenade launchers on unarmed civilians." None of the victims that day "was an insurgent," he said, adding that "many were shot while inside of civilian vehicles that were attempting to flee." Ridgeway said one Iraqi was shot "while standing in the street with his hands up."

Mohammed Abdul Razzaq and his 9-year-old-son, Ali, were in a vehicle immediately behind Ahmed and Mahasin, the first victims that day. "We were six persons in the car--me, my son, my sister and her three sons. The four children were in the back seat." He recalled that the Blackwater forces had "gestured stop, so we all stopped.... It's a secure area so we thought it will be the usual, we would stop for a bit as convoys pass. Shortly after that they opened heavy fire randomly at the cars with no exception." He said his vehicle "was hit by about thirty bullets, everything was damaged, the engine, the windshield the back windshield and the tires.

"When the shooting started, I told everybody to get their heads down. I could hear the children screaming in fear. When the shooting stopped, I raised my head and heard my nephew shouting at me 'Ali is dead, Ali is dead.' "

"My son was sitting behind me," he said. "He was shot in the head and his brains were all over the back of the car." Razzaq remembered, "When I held him, his head was badly wounded, but his heart was still beating. I thought there was a chance and I rushed him to the hospital. The doctor told me that he was clinically dead and the chance of his survival was very slim. One hour later, Ali died." Razzaq, who survived the shooting, later returned to the scene and gathered the pieces of his son's skull and brains with his hands, wrapped them in cloth and took them to be buried in the Shiite holy city of Najaf. "I can still smell the blood, my son's blood, on my fingers," Razzaq said two weeks after his son died.  http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090928/scahill3