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Post by moabiter on Aug 19, 2010 20:35:33 GMT -8
Not exactly a removal of troops - just more moola. Civilians take lead... in headline. Civilians to Take U.S. Lead as Military Leaves Iraq Published: August 18, 2010 To protect the civilians in a country that is still home to insurgents with Al Qaeda and Iranian-backed militias, the State Department is planning to more than double its private security guards, up to as many as 7,000, according to administration officials who disclosed new details of the plan. Defending five fortified compounds across the country, the security contractors would operate radars to warn of enemy rocket attacks, search for roadside bombs, fly reconnaissance drones and even staff quick reaction forces to aid civilians in distress, the officials said. www.nytimes.com/2010/08/19/world/middleeast/19withdrawal.html?_r=2
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Post by moabiter on Aug 19, 2010 20:36:49 GMT -8
Secret Erik Prince Tape Exposed May 3, 2010 Despite Prince's attempts to shield his speeches from public scrutiny, The Nation magazine has obtained an audio recording of a recent, private speech delivered by Prince to a friendly audience. The speech, which Prince attempted to keep from public consumption, provides a stunning glimpse into his views and future plans and reveals details of previously undisclosed activities of Blackwater. The people of the United States have a right to media coverage of events featuring the owner of a company that generates 90% of its revenue from the United States government. In the speech, Prince proposed that the US government deploy armed private contractors to fight "terrorists" in Nigeria, Yemen, Somalia and Saudi Arabia, specifically to target Iranian influence. He expressed disdain for the Geneva Convention and described Blackwater's secretive operations at four Forward Operating Bases he controls in Afghanistan. He called those fighting the US in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan "barbarians" who "crawled out of the sewer." Prince also revealed details of a July 2009 operation he claims Blackwater forces coordinated in Afghanistan to take down a narcotrafficking facility, saying that Blackwater "call[ed] in multiple air strikes," blowing up the facility. Prince boasted that his forces had carried out the "largest hashish bust in counter-narcotics history." He characterized the work of some NATO countries' forces in Afghanistan as ineffectual, suggesting that some coalition nations "should just pack it in and go home." Prince spoke of Blackwater working in Pakistan, which appears to contradict the official, public Blackwater and US government line that Blackwater is not in Pakistan. www.thenation.com/blog/secret-erik-prince-tape-exposed
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Post by moabiter on Aug 19, 2010 20:38:46 GMT -8
Thursday, September 3, 2009 Kabul U.S. Embassy Guard: Sexual Deviancy Required for Promotion In an interview with ABC News for broadcast tonight on the "World News with Charles Gibson," the guard, a U.S. military veteran, said top supervisors of the ArmorGroup were not only aware of the "deviant sexual acts" but helped to organize them. Watch Brian Ross' full report tonight on "World News with Charles Gibson" at 6:30pm... "It was mostly the young guys fresh from the military who were told they had to participate," said the guard, who talked on a phone hook-up arranged by the Project on Government Oversight, which first revealed photographs of the parties. "They were not gay but they knew what it took to get promoted," said the guard, spoke on condition that ABC News not publish his name... Sam Brinkley, vice-president of the ArmorGroup's corporate parent Wackenhut Services, defended the company's performance in Kabul.www.connectingthenewsdots.com/2009/09/kabul-us-embassy-guard-sexual-deviancy.html
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Post by moabiter on Aug 19, 2010 20:43:01 GMT -8
Pictures! Kabul Embassy Guard: Guards Seeking Promotion Pressured into Lewd Hazing Private security guards at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul were pressured to participate in naked pool parties to gain promotions or assignment to preferable shifts, according to one of 12 guards who have gone public with their complaints. (Project on Government Oversight) abcnews.go.com/Blotter/popup?id=8475646YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK.
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Post by moabiter on Aug 19, 2010 20:47:52 GMT -8
Pentagon Contractor Profits Rise - Along With Casualties May 23, 2010 - 2:45pm On the other side of the world from Afghanistan, in the lovely town of Broken Arrow, Okla., defense contractor L-3 opened a new facility last November because since 2001 it has “almost tripled annual bookings and annual sales,” according to local company vice president Greg Campbell. Its employment of area residents has grown steadily to 100, an increase of 30 in the past five years. The Broken Arrow plant is a division of L-3 Communications Holdings Inc., one of the nation’s top 7 defense contractors, and which AP says last month reported an 11 percent rise in first-quarter earnings. It earned profits of $219 million on revenue of $3.62 billion, owing to the Pentagon’s need for airborne and network communications. People in Broken Arrow likely will tell you they are proud to be contributing to the “defense” of the United States. And besides, there are no suicide bombings on Vancouver Street. You’d hardly know there was a war on. www.antemedius.com/content/pentagon-contractor-profits-rise-along-casualties
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Post by moabiter on Aug 19, 2010 20:53:16 GMT -8
The Afghan Scam The Untold Story of Why the U.S. Is Bound to Fail in Afghanistan Instead, the Bush administration perpetrated a scam. It used the system it set up to dispense reconstruction aid to both the countries it "liberated," Afghanistan and Iraq, to transfer American taxpayer dollars from the national treasury directly into the pockets of private war profiteers. Think of Halliburton, Bechtel, and Blackwater in Iraq; Louis Berger Group, Bearing Point, and DynCorp International in Afghanistan. They're all in it together. So far, the Bush administration has bamboozled Americans about its shady aid program. Nobody talks about it. Yet the aid scam, which would be a scandal if it weren't so profitable for so many, explains far more than does troop strength about why, today, we are on the verge of watching the whole Afghan enterprise go belly up. The Jolly Privateers It's hard to overstate the magnitude of the failure of American reconstruction in Afghanistan. While the U.S. has occupied the country -- for seven years and counting -- and efficiently set up a network of bases and prisons, it has yet to restore to Kabul, the capital, a mud brick city slightly more populous than Houston, a single one of the public services its citizens used to enjoy. When the Soviets occupied Afghanistan in the 1980s, they modernized the education system and built power plants, dams, factories, and apartment blocs, still the most coveted in the country. If, in the last seven years, George W. Bush did not get the lights back on in the capital, or the water flowing, or dispose of the sewage or trash, how can we assume Barack Obama will do any better with the corrupt system he's about to inherit? www.tomdispatch.com/post/175019/ann_jones_the_afghan_reconstruction_boondoggle
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Post by moabiter on Aug 19, 2010 20:57:14 GMT -8
SECURITY FOR SALE by Fariba Nawa, Special to CorpWatch May 2nd, 2006 Nearly every big contractor in Afghanistan hires a security firm to protect its employees, offices, guesthouses, and equipment. There are also the foreign security firms that focus on Afghan police and military training. Security makes up another huge sector of foreign business in Afghanistan. The American embassy in Kabul spends up to 25 percent of its budget on security.67 Recently, there was almost a change of guard at U.S. embassy security booths. The existing contractor, British firm Global Risk Strategy, was outbid by the American firm MVM Inc. MVM was founded in 1979 by three former members of the U.S. Secret Service, and is now run by a former Drug Enforcement Agency supervisor. For a little less than $25 million, MVM was hired to protect the U.S. embassy and its staff in Kabul, on the condition that all of its recruits speak English and be handy with a gun. MVM initially recruited African guards to do the job, but shortly after their arrival in Kabul, they disappeared, apparently because they felt the job had been misrepresented to them. Our source says they were allowed out of their contracts, but asked to pay for their hire and transport to the embassy. (It’s not clear whether they paid or not.) Then MVM hired Peruvians to replace the Africans, but they arrived on the scene minus the two requirements: English and marksmanship. www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=14077
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Post by moabiter on Aug 19, 2010 21:02:17 GMT -8
Teachers’ Day in Afghanistan May 23, 2009 Today is Teachers’ Day—3 Saur–in Afghanistan. On this day, schools remain open, and students celebrate with gifts, presentations and programs arranged for their teachers. The plight of Afghanistan’s teacher is untold. It has the lowest salary for its teachers in the world. Only around 6 percent of the budget is being used on education sector. Teachers are financially one of the worst hit people of the society. A teacher’s salary in Afghanistan is about 5000 Afghanis (100 USD). Above this fixed salary, teachers are faced up with another serious problem nowadays. The Government has been failed to give salary to majority teachers across the country for the last couple of months. According to the new system of paying salaries, teachers have to go to national banks for their monthly salary. Most teachers have been unpaid since last five to two months. The other day i was traveling in public taxi to Bazaar. Two teachers talking in the taxi about the conditions, were saying they are unpaid since last five months. “Now we have to go to banks for our salary, make lines. First of all many of us did not have a bank account for this. When compelled to open one, now we have to make lines an entire day to wait our turn for the salary. And at the end of the day, we are said, the Government has not transferred your salaries in your accounts,” the teachers were talking with each other. kabulperspective.wordpress.com/2009/05/23/teachers-day-in-afghanistan/
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