Ex-employees claim Blackwater pimped out young Iraqi girls

Source: The Raw Story

Since the revelation earlier this week of allegations by two former employees of security firm Blackwater that its owner was complicit in murder in order to cover up the deliberate killing of Iraqi civilians, explosive charges have continued to emerge.

Perhaps the most shocking of those charges — quoted by MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann on Thursday from the employees’ sworn declarations — is that Blackwater was guilty of using child prostitutes at its compound in Baghdad’s fortified Green Zone and that owner Erik Prince knew of this activity and did nothing to stop it.

The declarations describe Blackwater as “having young girls provide oral sex to Enterprise members in the ‘Blackwater Man Camp’ in exchange for one American dollar.” They add even though Prince frequently visited this camp, he “failed to stop the ongoing use of prostitutes, including child prostitutes, by his men.”

According to the two former employees, Blackwater supervisors in Iraq sometimes sent men back to the United States for wanting to “kill ragheads,” excessive drinking, steroid use, or failure to follow weapon safety procedures, but “Mr. Prince and his executives would send them back” with a reprimand to the supervisor for costing the firm money. Blackwater even fired “those mental health professionals who were not willing to endorse deployments of unfit men.”


Read more: http://rawstory.com/08/news/2009/08/07/blackwater-provided-child-prostitutes/

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Dear God!

The horrors!

The horrors that the american tax dollar has subsidized in the last 10 years or so!

It breaks my heart to see my country like this :(

Nothing less will suffice.

Don't they realize when they get the first sentence wrong it hurts the credibility of the rest of the story.

Probably something obvious that I am missing here.

In the depositions the two men testified that Prince MAY have had witnesses killed. I don't even know what that means. I hope they have a lot of evidence to go with the statements because there wasn't much of substance there.

If you follow them you can clear up "what that means". This Rawstory article doesn't use the phrase "may have", which leads me to believe what you are really complaining about is the http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090817/scahill">original story in http://www.thenation.com/">The Nation by http://www.thenation.com/directory/bios/jeremy_scahill">Jeremy Scahill. It is Scahill who uses the phrase "may have murdered or facilitated the murder of...".

But Scahill provides the links to the actual affidavits of the two witnesses. So curious readers are only a couple of clicks away from the actual original source and the original words of the witnesses, which they can then judge for themselves. So Scahill is not a "reporter", he is a **REPORTER**.

The Rawstory reporters and the OP-linked article are just reporting on an earlier article by someone else, which Rawstory will do from time to time. Some people will complain about this but I appreciate the service they provide and the fact that they always provide links through to the original story. Piggybacking off of someone else's work happens all the time in the MSM but without the honest attribution and links that are provided by Rawstory. Rawstory also does do original investigative reporting although I don't know whether these particular writers do -- I haven't paid attention to that detail.

Now that I've pointed out that reporter Scahill gave us easy access to the actual testimony, let's let it speak for itself.

John Doe #1:



John Doe #2:



The affidavits are pretty clear, so far as they go. Both of the affiants have been told by colleagues that Mr. Prince was complicit in the murders but the affiants have not seen with their own eyes Prince murdering anyone and have not heard with their own ears Prince ordering up the murder of anyone. Obviously there are more details that we would like to know: exactly who are the colleagues that told them this, exactly what did those colleagues say, and exactly how do those colleagues know. All of those details should be expected to be gotten into in the future, if our justice system still works at all. Rather than relying on the hearsay, hopefully the original sources will eventually be found and questioned about it. In other words, patience grasshopper.

The fuckup may not be due to incompetence.

:mad:

If we jail his ass, will there be a lot fewer suicides and small plane crashes?

on edit: oh look: "Erik Prince went to private schools in Michigan, earned his pilot's license at 17 and attended the U.S. Naval Academy. ..."

<http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x312169>

against Bush and Cheney...at least there is that possibility as he most likely knows a thing or two of what went on during Bush's visits to Iraq or there might be things he was ordered to do by those two.
I have always wondered what happened when Bush went to visit Saddam in prison.

countries until we know this is not true. These are allegations that would have any police officer in this country on leave without pay. I do not want to be a part of this unholy crusade.

in Post Katrina New Orleans, I cannot say for sure, actually someone I know has been hiding out since witnessing 'something' in the days after. Wouldn't tell me what, but it was enough to scare them into quitting the contractor sent there to clean up. I am also protecting their identity by not even mentioning any more than that. Several others have openly said they saw them using African Americans as target practice. Murder has no statute of limitations.

and get called simply "a pimp".

:cry:

They don't want their money to go to healthcare to protect the health of fellow Americans but they refuse to acknowledge the billions of taxes spent for contract killers such a Blackwater and KBR. We should all be so proud of all the death and pain done in our name.