Moloch's sandbox

Meanwhile, the rest of the world...

War-weary Americans will support more fighting in Afghanistan once they understand the perils of losing, President Barack Obama declared Tuesday, announcing he was ready to spell out war plans virtually sure to include tens of thousands more U.S. troops.--source

All the force  of hell and damnation is being brought down on Obama for sending more troops to Afghanistan, meanwhile laying out an exit strategy that should have them all removed in three years. Whether this is even a plan he takes seriously is one matter, but the basic contradiction has the American people in an uproar, so much so that they've forgotten for the most part that American troops leaving and America leaving are not the same thing. But no, it's still faith in the old Obama magic that will get is out of Afghanistan just like he did Iraq...right?

Two former employees of an American private military contracting firm have claimed in a Virginia court that they saw their supervisor deliberately shoot at Iraqi vehicles and civilians this summer, and that the firm fired them for reporting the incidents.--source

No, that's not Blackwater. That's a November 2006 article about Triple Canopy. This comes after CNN's April announcement that the Triple Canopy would be taking over the Blackwater/Xe contracts, due to Iraq refusing to renew their operating license due to a September 2007 shooting incident involving five of their then-employees.

Yet another example of the Obama "Change" platform brought to its realization. We're still in Iraq. Only the players are not limited to Xe (read that as Blackwater), scion of the corporate crusader and zealot Eric Prince, CIA spook Cofer Black, and other familiar, gruesome forces in this familiar war zone.

Stories already coming out about Blackwater's continuing involvement in the Middle-East (specifically Pakistan), even with it's State Department contract was due to run out on September 3, 2009. But there's one subsidiary still active that I'd like to draw your attention to.

On July 24 the Army signed an $8.9 million contract with Blackwater's aviation wing, Presidential Airways, for aviation services at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan.--ibid

Let's leave aside the fact that Bagram is a highly-controversial military prison not covered under the congressional cessation of the CIA's torture program (due to it not being military). It's set to receive paramilitary support in a highly unpopular war zone. It is a subsidiary of a micromanaged company owned by a self-avowed Christian crusader. Blackwater has been implicated by two former employees in signed affidavits as being involved in smuggling weapons illegally into Iraq. This is as opposed to the many, many legal weapons they're licensed to use (often illegally). (source here, affidavits: 1, 2)

We may wonder why, given these facts, they need the extra hardware, other than for the avowed intent of Blackwater to kill Arabs. The answer is simple, and it's what keeps us locked in a solid-state problem. This is a policy issue, and it moves beneath the very nature of American foreign policy in the middle east...and the fact that it hasn't changed for F*ck all in the past forty years.

The best way to kill any group of people is to get them to kill each other. From this comes the advantage of arming everyone in sight and letting them kill one another. Any piece written from the front there tells the story of massive sectarian violence. Sunni versus Shia is only part of it. These people follow their tribal allegiance even as relating to business deals, labor issues, marital complaints and other petty wars. It's gang violence on a systemic level, and if the various nations of the Middle East have proven anything, it is that they care enough to fight and kill over this.

Blackwater's role may be slowly shrinking, but its work is continuing through companies such as DynCorp and Triple Canopy--source

So, like the white man to the red man of old North America, like English guns sold to American Indians to shoot the French, or Spanish or whatever grudge takes your fancy. It's all a matter of quite literally capitalizing on it, and in the end we'll name a helicopter in your honor.

Which brings us to the fixers of foreign relations. Not the CIA, because as we all know the CIA spends most of its time creating problems. Also, when Congress goes looking for torturers, they fall en masse on Langley. No, in the Middle East like in most of the world, when you want to get something done, you go to the mob. In this case, the Russian mob, a well-known player in the illegal arms trade. It's been pointed out by well-known Cold War arms dealer Sarkis Soghanalian that their AK-47 is even a loss leader now, the gratis war candy handed out to keep customers happy and bloodied and thirsty for more.

Jonathan Winer, a former State Department expert, states categorically that, "There is not a major Russian organized crime figure whom we are tracking who does not carry an Israeli passport."--source

There is a triangle of crime, money and vice running through that region. The current situation, like the mujahideen of the last Afghan war, fuels the market. The error we make, and maybe the error we've been making for years is seeing it all as a matter of sides. CIA versus KGB. our side and theirs. Lets face facts: it's a marketplace. The mistake we made at the beginning of the 21st century was assuming it was all about oil. There's so much more to it than that. Everything about this place is profitable to all the wrong sort of people. It'll take more than Obama can pull off with his celebrity presidency to change that, and whatever end it comes to, it'll probably bear a strong resemblance to an existing formula.

The Existing Formula

"Capture Bin Laden, kill him and bring his head back in a box on dry ice," is CIA spymaster Cofer Black quoted as saying. Black is currently the head of Total Intelligence Solutions, and one of the founding board members of Blackwater.