Blackwater: Protection At Any Cost

(CBS)  The burned cars and charred bodies in Nisour Square last month shook loose some painful memories for Adam Hobson.

In 2005, he was working as a political aide in Baghdad, when a Blackwater guard in his convoy killed a young Iraqi.

"It's by far the worst thing that's ever happened to me," he told CBS News correspondent Elizabeth Palmer. "It wasn't until I got back to the embassy that I found out that car had been full of Iraqi civilians and that someone had died."

In Nisour Square a month ago, 17 more died in a hail of Blackwater bullets. Hassan Jabbar, a lawyer, was almost one of them, shot in the back as he tried to escape.

Now - a month later - his body is healing, but his faith in America is broken.

"They pretend it's democracy," he weeps. "But they're killing people."

Erik Prince, the founder of Blackwater U.S.A., told CBS News chief foreign correspondent Lara Logan, in an interview to air on 60 Minutes, that he welcomes any additional oversight the U.S. government would impose on his armed guards, and that he supports the prosecution of his men should any of them be found to have acted badly when they opened fire on a Baghdad street, resulting in 17 Iraqi deaths, and at least 24 others wounded.

"We absolutely want more oversight. We welcome the accountability. We want a good name for this industry," Prince said, acknowledging that his and other private security companies operating in Iraq have acquired bad reputations. "I'm glad the FBI's investigating. I'm glad they can be a neutral party. And if there's further investigation or prosecution even needed, if someone really did wrong and meant badly, I'm all supportive," he told Logan in an interview conducted Friday at Blackwater's North Carolina headquarters.

"Sure, you know, mistakes can be made. I'm not saying anyone, our guys, no one's perfect," Prince tells Logan. "But bad things don't generally happen by themselves."

While a U.S. military report has concluded the Blackwater team was not fired upon in the incident at Nisour Square, Prince vigorously defended the training of his men and believes they acted according to the rules of engagement under which the U.S. military operates. He also says he has evidence they were fired upon: "The fact is three of our vehicles had pock marks in them from incident reports that I saw. So, clearly, our guys were not shooting at each other," said Prince.

"Sure, you know, mistakes can be made. I'm not saying anyone, our guys, no one's perfect," Prince tells Logan. "But bad things don't generally happen by themselves."

By now the worst Rambo-like excesses of Blackwater are staples on YouTube. By contrast, Adam Hobson says most of his guards were highly professional, but he says there should be some way of punishing those who commit crimes like murder.

"What incentive do they have to operate correctly when there is no oversight?" he asks. "I think that's what the real problem is."

Janessa Gans also spent time guarded by Blackwater as a diplomat in Iraq.

Now, back in the U.S. teaching at a college in Illinois, Gans tells her students that while she focused on building democracy, her Blackwater guards focused on protection - at any cost.

"It was a we're getting from point A to point B and nothing will stand in our way," Gans says. "And if anyone - if there's a hint of anyone approaching - we view that as a terrorist threat."

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More of Adam Hobson's story | More of Janessa Gans' story

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But when those terrorist threats turned out to be civilians - scared, hurt or even killed by Blackwater - she says it defeated the purpose of her mission.

"I think the overall purpose of my job in building bridges with the Iraqis and positively affecting their lives was hindered by some of the aggressive tactics and the stance that private security contractors such as Blackwater displayed," Gans says.

Adam Hobson agrees: "I went to a meeting and somebody died because of it, and it made the meetings in the future seem a lot less important."

Iraqis are hoping the victims of Nisour Square were the very last to die for the sake of American meetings.

[terrorislam1]

THE LIBERAL MAIN MEDIA AND DEMONIC-RAT BS PROPOGANDA MACHINE

The death knell of your ethics has been enabled by your parent organizations who have chosen to align themselves with political agendas. What is clear to me is that you are perpetuating the corrosive partisan politics that is destroying our country and killing our service members who are at war.
http://www.militaryreporters.org/sanchez_101207.html

Sanchez Blasts Media, But Media Only Highlight His Criticism of Bush
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/brent-baker/2007/10/15/sanchez-blasts-media-media-only-highlight-his-criticism-bush

Sanchez Assaults Drive-By Media
http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_101507/content/01125112.guest.html

Retired general issues sharply worded rebuke of ''unscrupulous reporting''
http://blogs.usatoday.com/ondeadline/2007/10/retired-general.html

Sanchez: Media''s Reporting of Iraq War Endangered Soldiers'' Lives
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,301676,00.html

[andor3]

It is naive to pretend that Blackwater security is required by the situation in Iraq. Fact is, Blackwater security and other US policy *creates* the dangerous climate. intentionally. That has to be the goal because anyone who knows anything of history or occupation knows the violence and antagonism could easily be reduced by the US if they wanted to--and clearly they don''t want less violence.

Why? Because continued violence justifies continued occupation, which leads to continued profits for certain corporations and entities.

In a way it is hard to blame Blackwater for being such complete screw-ups, since that is their mission. On the other hand, it is a dream contractor job--to be paid to create the situation that will justify extending your contract longer.

[spike896]

incog-nito: Yeh, its all about the money but not an "inflated ego", we were just trying to survive each day, just like your Armed Forces, wherein the iraqi insurgents are trying to kill us. By the way, they are also trying to kill each other down there.

mc-dazz: I donot need your respect or anybody''s for being there. Its a job, why don''t you blame your politicians and their "interest". Thanks anyways, you are a professional like the Blackwater guys, right?

[my2cents6]

Blackwater USA is only doing the excellent job that it is contracted to do in Iraq. This is war. Civillians who are in a war torn country get killed as well as those in uniform. When children are carrying guns bigger than they are and know how to use them and women are strapped with bombs and sent out to kill in that manner people must kill or be killed. This is war and as horrible as it is.....anyone who is in the way of the war may be killed. For some reason all the military of the USA who have lost limbs or have given their life for those of us who are their mothers and/or wives or brothers and sisters so we can remain free. Freedom is not free and everyone needs to remember that first of all! Those who are employed by Blackwater USA are highly trained and previously in the military and put their life on the line every minute of every day to secure the life of another. Please remember this when you are casting stones about information that is not necessarily the truth when put out on the air waves or in the news papers. These are people trying to survive just like our military are trying to do. And all this is done to make this wonderful country, USA, continue to be free.

[patlynn1]

I am greatly disappointed in Lara Logan''s interview of Erick Prince. It was abundantly apparent that that she had not even skimmed Jeremy Scahill''s book on Blackwater. And to let pass Mr. Prince''s defense of "Prince has seen his own dead employees treated like trophies by terrorists. Four of them were killed, burned, mutilated and hanged in Fallujah in 2004" was reprehensible. Ask the families of the dead why they are sueing Blackwater for violating employee contracts. Please revisit Blackwater with more information.

[missingamerica]

Prince will probably be out of the office for the next few days attending the funeral of Bob Denard, who died Saturday.

[watcher269-2009]

Secular schools can never be tolerated because such schools have no religious instruction, and a general moral instruction without a religious foundation is built on air; consequently, all character training and religion must be derived from faith ... we need believing people.
~ Adolf Hitler

I like your Christ; I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.
~ Mohandas Gandhi

The same people that wrote the bible thought the world was flat.
~ Unknown

Stopping terrorism is simple. Just quit *** around with other people''s countries and the terrorists will go home. But the government of the United States wants to go on *** around with other people''s countries, refuses to stop, indeed views it as Manifest Destiny for the United States Government to persist in *** around with other people''s countries, and views the inconvenience, increased tax burden, loss of civil liberties, and even deaths among the American people as just another cost of doing business.
~ Michael Rivero

If god created us in his image we have certainly returned the compliment.
~ Voltaire

Git yer guns, the liberal folks are gonna let the coloreds and women vote!
~ Unknown

Work like you don''t need the money. Love like you''ve never been hurt. Dance like nobody''s watching.
~ Satchel Paige

Be happy while you''re living, for you''re a long time dead.
~ Scottish proverb

What you do speaks so loud that I cannot hear what you say.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

[watcher269-2009]

Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich.
~ Napoleon

Every war when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defense against a homicidal maniac.
~ George Orwell

It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal god and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious, then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.
~ Albert Einstein

You know your god is man-made when he hates all the same people you do.
~ [Usenet]

We must question the story logic of having an all-knowing all-powerful God, who creates faulty humans, and then blames them for his own mistakes.
~ Gene Roddenberry

A conservative is a man who is too cowardly to fight and too fat to run.
~ Elbert Hubbard

Men who believe absurdities will commit atrocities.
~ Voltaire

Never be deceived that the rich will allow you to vote away their wealth.
~ Lucy Parsons

If child molestation is actually your concern, how come we don''t see Bradley tanks knocking down Catholic churches?
~ Bill Hicks, 1993, referencing the Waco siege

The ink of the scholar is holier than the blood of the martyr.
~ Prophet Muhammad

[watcher269-2009]

Man is certainly stark mad: he cannot make a worm, yet he will make gods by the dozen.
~ Michel de Montaigne

Which is it, is man one of God''s blunders or is God one of man''s?
~ Nietzsche

Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.
~ Denis Diderot

The injury we do and the one we suffer are not weighed in the same scale.
~ Aesop

Invisible Pink Unicorns are beings of awesome mystical power. We know this because they manage to be invisible and pink at the same time. Like all religions, the Faith of the Invisible Pink Unicorns is based upon both logic and faith. We have faith that they are pink; we logically know that they are invisible because we can''t see them.
~ Steve Eley

All great truths begin as blasphemies.
~ George Bernard Shaw

Civil disobedience, that%u2019s not our problem. Our problem is that people are obedient all over the world in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity, and war, and cruelty. Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves, and all the while the grand thieves are running the country. That''s our problem.
~ Howard Zinn

They made a wasteland and called it peace.
~ Tacitus

Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is man''s original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion.
~ Oscar Wilde

[watcher269-2009]

What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty and democracy?
~ Mohandas Gandhi

A terrorist is someone who has a bomb but can%u2019t afford an air force.
~ William Blum

A time will come when a politician who has willfully made war and promoted international dissension will be ... surer of the noose than a private homicide.
~ H. G. Wells

The Church says that the earth is flat, but I know that it is round, for I have seen its shadow on the moon, and I have more faith in a shadow than in the Church.
~ Ferdinand Magellan

When you give food to the poor, they call you a saint. When you ask why the poor have no food, they call you a communist.
~ Archbishop Helder Camara

Kill a man, and you are an assassin. Kill millions of men, and you are a conqueror. Kill everyone, and you are a god.
~ Jean Rostand

I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.
~ Stephen Roberts