SUPPORT THE TROOPS - STOP BLACKWATER #2

Back in the 1930's tough, machine gun-toting gangsters terrorized American cities and grew rich by extorting protection fees from their cornered victims. Since then, the protection racket has evolved into a game played by elected officials in positions of power and their corporate allies. No longer are the dons and the thugs from our neighborhoods. Today's protection rackets are run by the capos who were elected to the White House and their gangster appointees.

While thousands of desperate, terrified people languished in New Orleans after the hurricane and thousands of our troops fought for their lives in Iraq without kevlar vests in armored vehicles that offered little protection, Eric Prince, the CEO of Blackwater USA, danced the "Katrina Hustle" in D.C. with the powers that be to the tune of $73,000,000.

Despite the fact that the so-called insurrection of armed criminals was proven almost immediately to have been exaggerated way out of proportion by panicked officials and a frenzied press, Blackwater mercenaries, equipped for combat, were quickly deployed to "Baghdad on the Bayou". There they protected Katrina's victims who were in need of food, water, and shelter by brandishing loaded weapons in their faces.

Blackwater mercenaries fed no one, did not provide comfort or medical services, located no lost relatives, cleared no debris, moved no trailers, and built no houses. They occupied the stricken city for months at a cost to the taxpayers of $243,000 per day. What did the hired gun thugs do to earn such an extraordinary daily sum? They menaced.

There are 200,000 homeless veterans living on the streets of America on any one night and 500,000 veterans without needed care or shelter during the course of a year. Our vets are being ignored by the Bush administration, who instead, magnify or manufacture threats, and hype fear to justify the diversion of millions of dollars to private corporate armies like Blackwater.

Buoyed by his successful scam during the New Orleans disaster, Blackwater's head crusader Eric Prince, has decided to increase his harvest of our tax dollars by diversifying into the natural disaster business. The disaster protection racket will serve as a stop gap for loss of income should the war in Iraq end and the anti-war, peace movement succeed in stopping Cheney, and John McCain for that matter, from bombing Iran. Prince has applied for disaster operating licenses in all of the coastal states in the country and is trolling for millions in no-bid government contracts.

Floods? Earthquakes? Fires? Tornados? Tsunamis? Hurricanes? We will be paying millions of dollars for Blackwater and their guns to be first responders, who much like the Americans after rescuing Iraq, will overstay their welcome on the taxpayer's tab. If disaster were to strike your area, imagine months of Blackwater thugs swaggering around your town and the Bush making you pay for it? Talk about a protection racket! Commandant Prince may even launch his spy blimp to keep an eye on you and yours while you try to rebuild your lives. I wonder how much we paid for his toy airship?


Meanwhile, troops who have suffered the devastation of Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) while serving in Iraq, are being deliberately misdiagnosed as having "personality disorders" and then stealthily hustled out of the military under Chapter 5-13's. They are said be suffering from pre-existing conditions and therefore denied the care and benefits their war injuries warrant. Wow, seriously injured legitimate service members denied the care due them while Bush and Cheney pay to build private armies whose loyalty can be bought.

Corporatists Donald Rumsfeld and Richard B. Cheney have long propagandized government outsourcing and the privatization of the military as money saving programs. The opposite is true. This scheme is designed to deposit obscene amounts of regular people's money directly into the pockets of the corporate power structure while bypassing oversight of any kind. Private militias like Blackwater that are run by corporate warlords answer to the dollar; not the American people. We must stop these corporate killers from sapping the funds needed by our legitimate troops in Iraq and the thousands of injured and disabled veterans.

PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) is ravaging the soldiers still serving in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and is rampant in our veteran population. Mental health treatment for the thousands of soldiers and veterans racked with PTSD is sporadic, uneven, and woefully inadequate. Approximately 5,000 neglected heroes per year among all living vets are driven to suicide by this insidious, devastating malady. While night terrors haunt their dreams many American veterans with PTSD suffer their nightmares on our streets at night. Americans cannot afford Blackwater.

We all pay our taxes. The money was and is available to take care of our troops but this administration has chosen instead to grow its own private mercenary army and supply it with the best, state-of-the-art equipment. We know money was wasted on Blackwater during the aftermath of Katrina. How much tax money are we throwing away on Blackwater's shadowy operations overseas? Below is an aerial photo of the Blackwater's military base in Moyock, North Carolina. Did my tax dollars pay for this... ?


And this...?

SUPPORT THE TROOPS - STOP BLACKWATER
Americans do not need or want the protection of an expensive, illegitimate, private army of mercenaries whose loyalties are questionable. We cannot afford to squander our money, our democracy, or our freedom.

...Kitchen Window Woman...
Resident Scholar, American Patriot Institute