Prairie Voice

Home Defense: A New Blackwater Course of Special Interest to Christian Warriors

By Dan Kenney

Co-Coordinator of No Private Armies

www.noprivatearmies.org

4/4/2010

In addition to training law enforcement Blackwater, now operating under the name Xe Services, is offering a course designed for any gun toting citizen. The world’s most powerful and best known mercenary company with the reputation of operating outside of the law in the war zones of Iraq and Afghanistan is now offering a new class in “Home Defense” at their 6,000 acre North Carolina and their 80 acre northwest Illinois training locations.

Blackwater’s training division is now known as U.S. Training Center. According to the US Training Center website the new course has this aim:  “The course is designed to make the armed citizen more aware of personal security whether at home or away; considerations in protecting self and family members.”

Upon closer examination of what the class entails raises questions about who may be included in the target demographic group for this new training. The training involves the following: “Introduction: This course will inform the concerned citizen on methods of protecting the home front. The students will receive classroom instruction and will engage in shoot/no-shoot, force on force realistic scenarios based on actual events that have occurred where their decision making process will be explored and tested.  This is not a basic firearms course but provides training for the time when use of your weapon becomes your only option. “ (My underlining for emphasis.)

The “students” will pay $595.00 for two days of training. The training involves the following: “Topics:

• Use of Force
• Security of weapons at home and away.
• Away from home considerations
• Gear & weapons
• Mindset/ Indications of Mental State
• Basic room clearing techniques for the homeowner
• Force-on-force scenarios
• Ballistic protection at home and away
• Dealing with the Police “

 

One must ask in which “scenarios” would a homeowner need to conduct a “room clearing?” Also who better to train a citizen on how to “deal with the police” than a company that is involved with training hundreds of police officers every year.  It would appear that Blackwater is willing to not only train the police but to train the citizen cops as well.

The only prerequisite for the class is that the “student” knows how to fire a gun. “Prerequisite:  Basic pistol marksmanship/familiarization course. This is not a marksmanship course. Handling skills are required prior to attending class.”

The equipment supplied includes: “Included Equipment: Simunition® Pistol (customer preference of Glock, Sig Sauer, Beretta), Simunition® safety gear, 100 rounds of Simunition®, holster & magazine carrier. “

Simunition is a General Dynamics-Ordnance and Tactical Systems-Canada Inc company that developed in the 1980s. Their mission, according to their website is, “to provide the most realistic training systems possible so that officers and military forces around the world can engage in experience building and ultimately lifesaving exercises.”

They also have a philosophy that includes, “helping law enforcement officers, emergency response teams and military personnel to improve their tactical skill and condition their fear response, our family of training products ultimately saves lives.” Interesting that there is no mention of citizens who take the law into their own hands; and also interesting that simulator weapons can be referred to as a “family of training products.” This brings a whole new light onto the term “family.”

The “Home Defense” course however does come with a disclaimer, “Disclaimer: This is NOT a pistol/shotgun course. Students should come prepared to operate their weapon system and be familiar with weapon handling, safety and marksmanship. Local authorities should be consulted on use of Lethal Force and the use of Lethal Force to defend lives and property.”  (My underlining for emphasis.)

Good to know. Always good to consult with “local authorities” before you use your Glock to kill someone. However they do not include a cell phone in their required gear.

Required gear according to the course description on their website:” Gear:  belt, flashlight, ear protection, clothing appropriate for climate and conditions, rain gear, and a water bottle or other hydration system. Cover garment for concealed draw is highly recommended.”

Now this kind of training for any gun carrying citizen taught by any company would be unsettling, but to have it provided by a company that is owned by Erik Prince who has been accused of murder by two former employees under sworn statements filed in a Federal court in Virginia last August is especially disturbing. According to sworn testimony by two former Blackwater employees, who were referred to as John Doe #1 and John Doe #2 for fear they may be murdered by Prince or one of his current gunmen, Erik Prince may have murdered or facilitated the murder of individuals who were cooperating with Federal authorities who were investigating the company. The former employees also alleged that Prince “views himself as a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe.”  One must ask what other crusades may he see as his mission.

Here is an excerpt from the two five page sworn statements by the former employees:

To that end, Mr. Prince intentionally deployed to Iraq certain men who shared his vision of Christian supremacy, knowing and wanting these men to take every available opportunity to murder Iraqis. Many of these men used call signs based on the Knights of the Templar, the warriors who fought the Crusades.

Mr. Prince operated his companies in a manner that encouraged and rewarded the destruction of Iraqi life. For example, Mr. Prince’s executives would openly speak about going over to Iraq to “lay Hajiis out on cardboard.” Going to Iraq to shoot and kill Iraqis was viewed as a sport or game. Mr. Prince’s employees openly and consistently used racist and derogatory terms for Iraqis and other Arabs, such as “ragheads” or “hajiis.”

One does not have to stretch too far to see a troubling possible connection between a company headed by someone who according to Jeremy Scahill in his book, Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army, was “dedicated to a Christian-supremacist agenda” and the creation of the class to train any armed citizen on how to basically be their own law enforcers, just as Prince’s mercenaries operated in Iraq. Also one can also make the parallel between the rise of armed citizen militias, some of whom have a similar “Christian-Supremacist agenda,” and the need for a class that teaches citizens the same skills that are being taught to the military and to law enforcement.

In addition this is also could be an attempt to bring in more money since last month Blackwater was stopped by GOA from winning a multi-billion dollar contract from the US Army to train Afghan police. Now the contract has to be re-bid and DynCorp is in the running as well. Prince is also selling off his own private air force, Aviation World Services with its subsidiary Presidential Airways for $200 million to AAR Corp. This will mean a cut of another 240 employees after last year layoffs that resulted with the cancellation of the contract to build the Grizzly, an armored vehicle.

The former employees also testified that Erik Prince lives in fear of being prosecuted by the Federal government for the many illegal activities he is suspected of being involved with, such as smuggling illegal arms into Iraq, some of which were sold on the Black Market, tax evasion, wrongful death lawsuits which number in the double digits at last count, etc.

One thing all of this points to is that if you poke a desperate polecat with a stick he is bound to fight back. I wish this meant the downfall of Blackwater and the Prince’s Dark Kingdom were near, but I fear that it only means that a reshaping is taking place and who knows what dark hole it will raise from next.

 

 

 

 

By Dan Kenney
No Private Armies
December 19, 2009

Recently I gave a talk to a group of democrats about the danger of outsourcing our security to private military and security companies like Blackwater, Triple Canopy, and others. Part of my talk includes looking at the profits made by pentagon contractors such as Raytheon, Boeing, KBR, etc.. During the questions and comments portion the chair of the committee said, “By your definition of military contractor I would be one, I have worked for Raytheon for over 35 years.”

He said that I should not include Raytheon in with Blackwater. “Raytheon is a good company that provides what our soldiers need, they are nothing like Blackwater.” In a sense he was saying that Raytheon was a “good” military contractor and that Blackwater was a bad one. I have given this talk many times and this is the first time someone challenged me with the possibility that there are “good” war profiteers and there are bad.
The next person to speak said that she agreed with the chair and she felt it was not a good idea to take on these companies right now with the economy the way it is, because “they provide a lot of jobs.” She implied these multi-billion dollar companies that make their money from war are “good” companies to have because of the employment they provide. .

On my drive home I puzzled over what they had said. Could it be that I should present the information about pentagon contractors like Boeing and Raytheon in a separate program? So I decided I needed to take a closer look at Raytheon.
I learned that Raytheon, which means “light from the gods,” is the fifth largest defense contractor in the world and the fourth largest in the United States, with annual revenues of over $20 billion. More than 90 percent of Raytheon’s revenues were obtained from defense contracts. Many of their contracts with the U.S. defense department are “no bid contracts.”

Raytheon is the maker of “Bunker Buster” bombs, Tomahawk and Patriot missiles. Raytheon manufactured the missile that killed 62 civilians, most of them women and children, in a Baghdad market in 2003. Hundreds of Raytheon million dollar cruise missiles have been fired on Afghanistan killing more untold hundreds of civilians. The Tomahawk missiles were used during “shock and awe” in 2003 killing hundreds in Iraq.
The missile that killed 62 in a Baghdad market on a Friday night in 2003 had been manufactured in Texas. Apparently it malfunctioned and did not hit its intended target.

The company refused to take responsibility for the malfunction.
In 2009 Raytheon came out with the “Silent Guardian” or Active Denial System (ADS). It is designed to protect military personnel against small-arms fire without the use of lethal force. Transmitted at the speed of light over a 700 yard distance, the “Pain-Ray” as it is also known, is a millimeter-wave beam that penetrates 1/64th of an inch beneath the skin, causing the water molecules to bubble, producing an intense burning sensation, compared to that of a red hot iron. It has been referred to as the “Holy Grail of crowd control.”
Like Blackwater Raytheon has also had its share of rule violations and illegal behavior. Raytheon has paid millions of dollars in fines for illegal activities. Some of the fines were paid in settlements for several cases of overpricing and inflated costs. Other fines followed guilty pleas for illegally obtaining secret Air Force budget and planning documents and for submitting false claims for work done on missiles.

Raytheon is also fighting a civil action suit that was filed by over 1,000 property owners in St. Petersburg, Fla. The resident accuse Waltham, Mass. based Raytheon of polluting the soil and groundwater around its St. Petersburg, Fla.
So it appears that there are many similarities between Blackwater and Raytheon after all.

What about the jobs? Raytheon does employ over 80,000 workers worldwide. Boeing has over 155,000 and GE over 320,000. CACI employs over 12,000, Dyncorp another 15,000.and Triple Canopy has over 2,000 in Iraq alone. Blackwater’s information about how many they employ is difficult to find, however Gary Jackson former president of Blackwater said in an interview back in 2007 that they had a list of over 25,000 contractors. There is no question that these pentagon contractor companies provide employment, after-all this is what the “military industrial complex” is all about. The issue of employment, the livelihood of millions depending upon the creation of weapons, distributing weapons, on and on; this is the heart of the problem with creating an economy based on war. However we need to face the fact that an economy that is based on weapons and war is not sustainable; in fact it may lead to our own destruction.

One must ask where is the line to be drawn separating the one who drops the bomb from the one who helps create or manufacture the bomb? Is one less responsible for the death of those innocent individuals killed? Is one who works for a company that manufactures the missiles that kill the children less responsible for their deaths? Are those who have their tax dollars pay for the missiles any less responsible for the killings by the missiles? If it were not for our tax dollars how would our government pay the war profiteers? And if my tax dollars are among those used to pay for the missile am I not also responsible in some way? Are we not all responsible in some way for what is done in our names?
It is these questions that lead to an impasse as we struggle for a world without war profiteers: a world of peace instead of one of war.

I have answered one question for myself however, and that is I will continue to talk about Raytheon and Boeing, and the other companies who profit from war in the same presentation as Blackwater and other private military security companies. I have yet to find a “good” war profiteer.