Mission Control – writing a Harvard thesis

May 7 marked the end of the Blackwater contract work for the State Department. Triple Canopy, one of two other private security firms on the State Dept. “WPPS” contract, took over their work, garnering $1 billion in new task orders.

AFP reports that

Linked agreements such as that for Presidential Airways, part of Blackwater that operates helicopter escorts throughout the country for secure air travel, will expire soon.

Without Blackwater in the operation, I doubt there will be spectacular problems like the ones  Blackwater experienced.

Bill Sizemore reports today that soon after the September 2007 Nisoor Square shootings, Blackwater guards tried to smuggle arms out of Iraq before an investigation got underway. The contractor who was asked to smuggle them out, John Houston, a former Army Spec Ops soldier, has been charged with attempted smuggling. AP reports that a second man, Michael Henson was also charged. The report says that several AK-47s were seized.

It seems that the “surge” of 20,000 U.S. soldiers expected to go into Afghanistan this year is bringing militants in the Afghan/Pakistan border together. “Government to government” diplomacy is one level of how things work but the people of each country and the situation on the ground in Waziristan seems to be shaping up differently.  Local militants who hate each other have begun to band together to work against the surge, under the ancient process of “an enemy of mine enemy is my friend”.

Check it out for the The Harvard Crimson’s take of the Iraq war. It has many articles and angles, from the ROTC debate to reporters coverage of the war.

Scahill reported this morning on alternet.org (and now its on HuffPo) that Erik Prince just announced he will leave Blackwater and focus on an entirely different business ( a private equity venture).  Joseph Yorio replaces Gary Jackson (now “former President”) and Danielle Esposito (who’s been with Blackwater for a decade) will become Exec. VP.  AP reports Prince will remain as Chairman but not CEO.

In a letter to staff, Prince acknowledged that the “PR challenges were bigger, more relevant than he realized”. Guess he was one of those CEOs who just surrounded himself with a small, tone deaf inner circle that couldn’t or wouldn’t pass on the bad news: many Americans didn’t approve of the way Blackwater conducted itself in Iraq. (Guess this is the exception to the rule that even bad publicity is better than none at all.)

How the cocky have fallen. First Shrub and now Prince. Not a big shock actually now that OIF is in far saner and grown-up U.S. hands.

The best part is that this video is legit. It’s not a 23/6 caricature. It does have that “TV Land/A-Team” feel. Is it possible for a company to jump the shark?

The AP is reporting that Blackwater has changed its name. To an unpronouceable idiotic non-word: Xe.

In the periodic chart, Xe = xenon — an ordorless, colorless substance.

Nice try.

NYT is reporting that the U.S. military is not coordinating with Iraqi forces as they are required to do by the newly-minted Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA). Alissa Rubin writes on 2/6:

Iraqi leaders in Kirkuk Province have charged that twice in the last two weeks the American military violated the hard-won security agreement signed in November by attacking Iraqi criminal suspects without coordinating with Iraqi security forces.

In a raid by the U.S., two men were detained, and one was killed. She quoted a high-ranking Iraqi commander

In the future, he said, military forces undertaking raids outside the city of Kirkuk without coordinating with his division would be treated as “hostile forces.” The only exceptions, he said, were “situations where a terrorist is arrested wearing an explosive belt or planting a bomb.”

Hope this doesn’t get ugly. It’s not like the U.S. military hasn’t had to untangle coordination problems in the past in Iraq…

Seems I wasn’t the only one to be put off by the spurious PR and “public optics” all over the Raven23 website  (see earlier post, 12/16/08). Brandon Friedman, a veteran, at HuffPost had a similar reaction

[the website] is designed to provide positive publicity for the accused former guards. It’s also one of the most disingenuous, inappropriate things I’ve seen in a good while.

What we have here is a move to elicit sympathy for the accused guards by painting them as patriotic soldiers and marines who were only doing their duties in Iraq. We see their initial entry photos, deliberately intended to make them seem younger than they are, even though they’re now much older. In fact, every aspect of the portrayal makes it look as though soldiers and marines are going on trial here. But they’re not. Rather, these indictments were handed down to five highly-paid contractors who were working for Blackwater Worldwide on behalf of the U.S. State Department. But they were in no way associated with the U.S. military.

And that’s the part that really bugs me. Because here’s the deal as I see it: You don’t get to go over to Iraq for Blackwater, kill 14 civilians–justifiably or not–and then come back and play it off as if you were just doing your duty as a soldier or marine. Because you weren’t.

However, at this point, with the economy tanking, banks failing, and jobs disappearing, I doubt that Iraq generally is on anyone’s radar anymore, never mind Blackwater or Nisoor Square.

My TD and I sat down Wed. for about 40 minutes to review her comments from her first read of the complete draft. She likes the work. No need for further research. Just “wring out the fat” and redundancies and move some material around/re-org. a bit.

She prefers to read the next/final revision on a long flight so I’ll try to get it to her by early March for a South American trip.

One of the very few comments on content: she wants to know just how are these contractors armed? RPGs? Machine guns? Pistols? She wants me to paint a clear picture that they aren’t like security guards at the mall but somewhat more like soldiers, without the uniform.

The fact is even tho RPGs are not allowed, some PSCs have been caught carrying them in Iraq : )

Maybe I”ll include RYP’s (Pelton’s) picture of the PSC crew in Iraq (see last week’s BWater post).