Saturday, September 09, 2006
Our Mercenary Army
This is getting a lot of coverage, so I will return to it: ABC is running The Path to 9/11, a fictionalized docu-drama with some conversations completely made up. Disney is ABC’s parent company. I already noted that in 2003 they jettisoned a docu-drama on Reagan because of the cries from the right. In 2004 Disney refused to distribute Farenheit 9/11, even though it was made by a subsidiary, because, in the words of Michael Eisner, he didn’t want to get political: he "did not want a film in the middle of the political process where we're such a nonpartisan company and our guests, that participate in all of our attractions, do not look for us to take sides." Things change, apparently.
Of course, the drama can’t be criticized before it’s released because it’s not in its final cut, despite the fact that ABC sent copies out to conservatives so they could pimp it on their shows. If it can’t be commented on before it’s publicly released then why did they screen it? Of course, Clinton officials were refused when they asked to see it.
Conservative hacks who excoriated CBS back in the day are jumping on board this time around.
This is, however, just a small part of the misinformation pumped daily into the American mainstream by the mainstream media. The only thing at stake here is Clinton’s legacy and maybe the opinions of some people in a very general way as to the effectiveness of democrats in the War on Terror. The sad truth is, however, that ignorant votes count as much as informed ones.
Many more stories are buried and ignored by the MSM, and this collective action results in a far more severe bent to the news than active distortion, which must be minimized because of the attention it brings as well as the possible lawsuits. According to Amnesty International, for example, half of the interrogators at Abu Ghraib were civilians and many had no formal training in interrogation. Some were former Apartheid-era South African “hitmen,” as documented by the Amnesty International report. They were considered by the administration to be outside the law, as they were not bound by military codes and were exempted from prosecution for war crimes by the decree of Paul Bremer, the US-installed provisional governor of Iraq at the time. In fact, it’s estimated that half of the $46 billion dollar classified intelligence budget is handled by private contractors in general, for everything from satellite operation to the administration of urine tests.
It might come as no surprise, recalling the massive international network of mercenaries, foreign nations, and private lenders that Reagan’s administration used to fund the contra rebels and others in Central America in the 1980s (and thus to circumvent Congressional spending limits): the Sultan of Brunei, Israel, ex-military personnel and private companies all pitched in. This has been repeated in Iraq, where mercenary companies like Blackwater are recruiting thousands in Central and South America for soldiers to serve in Iraq. Many of those are ex-military from the darkest chapters of this hemisphere’s history. US contracts have also been dispersed to people like Victor Bout, a shady Russian arms dealer implicated in selling arms to dictatorships in Africa.
What we’re talking about here is a mercenary army of truly questionable moral character, though the problem is that might be the point. Several commentators, some anonymous, have alleged that this is a purposeful plan: relegate shady activities to private contractors largely outside the law, which also provides plausible deniability if anything bad happens.
These are thugs, according to an anonymous former special operations officer in the Amnesty International report, and Richard Goldstone, former chief prosecutor of the U.N. International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. An anonymous intelligence officer in Kuwait, where Blackwater’s recruits are flown before their assignment, added that the Central and South American recruits are chosen because those nations have experienced “dirty wars” and “have military men well-trained in dealing with internal subversives. They are well-versed in extracting confessions from prisoners.”
Indeed. I’m sure that the military and ex-military people coming out of Chile, Guatemala, Peru, and Colombia are very well versed in “extracting” confessions, though I pray they are not using the same techniques. “Submarining” was one of my favorites, used by Pinochet’s DINA secret police when he ruled Chile from 1973-1989. It involved shoving a victim’s head underwater (much like waterboarding) until they drowned or almost drowned, except that the “water” was frequently vats of human feces.
# posted by BitterHarvest @ 9:30 PM 
