[THS] Erik Prince: Afghans Are Barbarians Who Crawled Out Of The Sewer

[The Harder Stuff in news and commentary]

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article25379.htm

Afghans Are Barbarians Who Crawled Out Of The Sewer.

Secret Erik Prince Tape Exposed

By Jeremy Scahill

May 04, 2010 "The Nation" - - Erik Prince, the reclusive owner of the Blackwater
empire, rarely gives public speeches and when he does he attempts to ban
journalists from attending and forbids recording or videotaping of his remarks. On
May 5, that is exactly what Prince is trying to do when he speaks at DeVos Fieldhouse
as the keynote speaker for the "Tulip Time Festival" in his hometown of Holland,
Michigan. He told the event's organizers no news reporting could be done on his
speech and they consented to the ban. Journalists and media associations in
Michigan are protesting this attempt to bar reporting on his remarks.

Despite Prince's attempts to shield his speeches from public scrutiny, The Nation
magazine has obtained an audio recording of a recent, private speech delivered by
Prince to a friendly audience. The speech, which Prince attempted to keep from
public consumption, provides a stunning glimpse into his views and future plans and
reveals details of previously undisclosed activities of Blackwater. The people of the
United States have a right to media coverage of events featuring the owner of a
company that generates 90% of its revenue from the United States government.

In the speech, Prince proposed that the US government deploy armed private
contractors to fight "terrorists" in Nigeria, Yemen, Somalia and Saudi Arabia,
specifically to target Iranian influence. He expressed disdain for the Geneva
Convention and described Blackwater's secretive operations at four Forward
Operating Bases he controls in Afghanistan. He called those fighting the US in
Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan "barbarians" who "crawled out of the sewer." Prince
also revealed details of a July 2009 operation he claims Blackwater forces coordinated
in Afghanistan to take down a narcotrafficking facility, saying that Blackwater
"call[ed] in multiple air strikes," blowing up the facility. Prince boasted that his forces
had carried out the "largest hashish bust in counter-narcotics history." He
characterized the work of some NATO countries' forces in Afghanistan as ineffectual,
suggesting that some coalition nations "should just pack it in and go home." Prince
spoke of Blackwater working in Pakistan, which appears to contradict the official,
public Blackwater and US government line that Blackwater is not in Pakistan.

Prince also claimed that a Blackwater operative took down the Iraqi journalist who
threw his shoes at President George W Bush in Baghdad and criticized the Secret
Service for being "flat-footed." He bragged that Blackwater forces "beat the Louisiana
National Guard to the scene" during Katrina and claimed that lawsuits, "tens of
millions of dollars in lawyer bills" and political attacks prevented him from deploying a
humanitarian ship that could have responded to the earthquake in Haiti or the
tsunami that hit Indonesia.

Several times during the speech, Prince appeared to demean Afghans his company is
training in Afghanistan, saying Blackwater had to teach them "Intro to Toilet Use"
and to do jumping jacks. At the same time, he bragged that US generals told him the
Afghans Blackwater trains "are the most effective fighting force in Afghanistan."
Prince also revealed that he is writing a book, scheduled to be released this fall.

The speech was delivered January 14 at the University of Michigan in front of an
audience of entrepreneurs, ROTC commanders and cadets, businesspeople and
military veterans. The speech was titled "Overcoming Adversity: Leadership at the Tip
of the Spear" and was sponsored by the Young Presidents' Association (YPO), a
business networking association primarily made up of corporate executives. "Ripped
from the headlines and described by Vanity Fair magazine, as a Tycoon, Contractor,
Soldier and Spy, Erik Prince brings all that and more to our exclusive YPO speaking
engagement," read the event's program, also obtained by The Nation. It proclaimed
that Prince's speech was an "amazing don't miss opportunity from a man who has
'been there and done that' with a group of Cadets and Midshipmen who are months
away from serving on the 'tip of the spear.'" Here are some of the highlights from
Erik Prince's speech:

Send the Mercs into Somalia, Yemen, Saudi Arabia and Nigeria

Prince painted a global picture in which Iran is "at the absolute dead center... of
badness." The Iranians, he said, "want that nuke so that it is again a Persian Gulf
and they very much have an attitude of when Darius ran most of the Middle East
back in 1000 BC. That's very much what the Iranians are after." [NOTE: Darius of
Persia actually ruled from 522 BC-486 BC]. Iran, Prince charged, has a "master plan
to stir up and organize a Shia revolt through the whole region." Prince proposed that
armed private soldiers from companies like Blackwater be deployed in countries
throughout the region to target Iranian influence, specifically in Yemen, Somalia and
Saudi Arabia. "The Iranians have a very sinister hand in these places," Prince said.
"You're not going to solve it by putting a lot of uniformed soldiers in all these
countries. It's way too politically sensitive. The private sector can operate there with a
very, very small, very light footprint." In addition to concerns of political expediency,
Prince suggested that using private contractors to conduct such operations would be
cost-effective. "The overall defense budget is going to have to be cut and they're
going to look for ways, they're going to have to have ways to become more efficient,"
he said. "And there's a lot of ways that the private sector can operate with a much
smaller, much lighter footprint."

Prince also proposed using private armed contractors in the oil-rich African nation of
Nigeria. Prince said that guerilla groups in the country are dramatically slowing oil
production and extraction and stealing oil. "There's more than a half million barrels a
day stolen there, which is stolen and organized by very large criminal syndicates.
There's even some evidence it's going to fund terrorist organizations," Prince alleged.
"These guerilla groups attack the pipeline, attack the pump house to knock it offline,
which makes the pressure of the pipeline go soft. they cut that pipeline and they
weld in their own patch with their own valves and they back a barge up into it. Ten
thousand barrels at a time, take that oil, drive that 10,000 barrels out to sea and at
$80 a barrel, that's $800,000. That's not a bad take for organized crime." Prince
made no mention of the nonviolent indigenous opposition to oil extraction and
pollution, nor did he mention the notorious human rights abuses connected to
multinational oil corporations in Nigeria that have sparked much of the resistance.

Blackwater and the Geneva Convention

Prince scornfully dismissed the debate on whether armed individuals working for
Blackwater could be classified as "unlawful combatants" who are ineligible for
protection under the Geneva Convention. "You know, people ask me that all the time,
'Aren't you concerned that you folks aren't covered under the Geneva Convention in
[operating] in the likes of Iraq or Afghanistan or Pakistan? And I say, 'Absolutely not,'
because these people, they crawled out of the sewer and they have a 1200 AD
mentality. They're barbarians. They don't know where Geneva is, let alone that there
was a convention there."

It is significant that Prince mentioned his company operating in Pakistan given that
Blackwater, the US government and the Pakistan government have all denied
Blackwater works in Pakistan.

Taking Down the Iraqi Shoe Thrower for the 'Flat-Footed' Secret Service

Prince noted several high-profile attacks on world leaders in the past year, specifically
a woman pushing the Pope at Christmas mass and the attack on Italian Prime
Minister Silvio Berlusconi, saying there has been a pattern of "some pretty
questionable security lately." He then proceeded to describe the feats of his
Blackwater forces in protecting dignitaries and diplomats, claiming that one of his
men took down the Iraqi journalist, Muntadhar al-Zaidi, who threw his shoes at
President Bush in Baghdad in December 2008. Prince referred to al-Zaidi as the
"shoe bomber:"

"A little known fact, you know when the shoe bomber in Iraq was throwing his shoes
at President Bush, in December 08, we provided diplomatic security, but we had no
responsibility for the president's security--that's always the Secret Service that does
that. We happened to have a guy in the back of the room and he saw that first shoe
go and he drew his weapon, got a sight picture, saw that it was only a shoe, he re-
holstered, went forward and took that guy down while the Secret Service was still
standing there flat-footed. I have a picture of that--I'm publishing a book, so watch
for that later this fall--in which you'll see all the reporters looking, there's my guy
taking the shoe thrower down. He didn't shoot him, he just tackled him, even though
the guy was committing assault and battery on the president of the United States. I
asked a friend of mine who used to run the Secret Service if they had a written
report of that and he said the debrief was so bad they did not put it in writing."

While the Secret Service was widely criticized at the time for its apparent inaction
during the incident, video of the event clearly showed another Iraqi journalist, not
security guards, initially pulling al-Zaidi to the floor. Almost instantly thereafter, al-
Zaidi was swarmed by a gang of various, unidentified security agents.

Blackwater's Forward Operating Bases

Prince went into detail about his company's operations in Afghanistan. Blackwater has
been in the country since at least April 2002, when the company was hired by the
CIA on a covert contract to provide the Agency with security. Since then, Blackwater
has won hundreds of millions of dollars in security, counter-narcotics and training
contracts for the State Department, Defense Department and the CIA. The company
protects US Ambassador Karl Eikenberry and other senior US officials, guards CIA
personnel and trains the Afghan border police. "We built four bases and we staffed
them and we run them," Prince said, referring to them as Forward Operating Bases
(FOBs). He described them as being in the north, south, east and west of
Afghanistan. "Spin Boldak in the south, which is the major drug trans-shipment area,
in the east at a place called FOB Lonestar, which is right at the foothills of Tora Bora
mountain. In fact if you ski off Tora Bora mountain, you can ski down to our
firebase," Prince said, adding that Blackwater also has a base near Herat and another
location. FOB Lonestar is approximately 15 miles from the Pakistan border. "Who else
has built a [Forward Operating Base] along the main infiltration route for the Taliban
and the last known location for Osama bin Laden?" Prince said earlier this year.

Blackwater's War on Drugs

Prince described a Narcotics Interdiction Unit Blackwater started in Afghanistan five
years ago that remains active. "It is about a 200 person strike force to go after the
big narcotics traffickers, the big cache sites," Prince said. "That unit's had great
success. They've taken more than $3.5 billion worth of heroin out of circulation.
We're not going after the farmers, but we're going after the traffickers." He
described an operation in July 2009 where Blackwater forces actually called in NATO
air strikes on a target during a mission:

"A year ago, July, they did the largest hashish bust in counter-narcotics history, down
in the south-east. They went down, they hit five targets that our intel guys put
together and they wound up with about 12,000 pounds of heroin. While they were
down there, they said, 'You know, these other three sites look good, we should go
check them out.' Sure enough they did and they found a cache--262,000 kilograms
of hash, which equates to more than a billion dollars street value. And it was an
industrialized hash operation, it was much of the hash crop in Helmand province. It
was palletized, they'd dug ditches out in the desert, covered it with tarps and the
bags of powder were big bags with a brand name on it for the hash brand,
palletized, ready to go into containers down to Karachi [Pakistan] and then out to
Europe or elsewhere in the world. That raid alone took about $60 million out of the
Taliban's coffers. So, those were good days. When the guys found it, they didn't
have enough ammo, enough explosives, to blow it, they couldn't burn it all, so they
had to call in multiple air strikes. Of course, you know, each of the NATO countries
that came and did the air strikes took credit for finding and destroying the cache."


December 30, 2009 CIA Bombing in Khost

Prince also addressed the deadly suicide bombing on December 30 at the CIA station
at Forward Operating Base Chapman in Khost, Afghanistan. Eight CIA personnel,
including two Blackwater operatives, were killed in the bombing, which was carried
out by a Jordanian double-agent. Prince was asked by an audience member about
the "failure" to prevent that attack. The questioner did not mention that Blackwater
was responsible for the security of the CIA officials that day, nor did Prince discuss
Blackwater's role that day. Here is what Prince said:


"You know what? It is a tragedy that those guys were killed but if you put it in
perspective, the CIA has lost extremely few people since 9/11. We've lost two or three
in Afghanistan, before that two or three in Iraq and, I believe, one guy in Somalia--a
landmine. So when you compare what Bill Donovan and the OSS did to the Germans
and the Japanese, the Italians during World War II--and they lost hundreds and
hundreds of people doing very difficult, very dangerous work--it is a tragedy when
you lose people, but it is a cost of doing that work. It is essential, you've got to take
risks. In that case, they had what appeared to be a very hot asset who had very
relevant, very actionable intelligence and he turned out to be a bad guy... That's
what the intelligence business is, you can't be assured success all the time. You've
got to be willing to take risks. Those are calculated risks but sometimes it goes badly.
I hope the Agency doesn't draw back and say, 'Oh, we have to retrench and not do
that anymore,' all the rest. No. We need you to double down, go after them harder.
That is a cost of doing business. They are there to kill us."


Prince to Some NATO Countries in Afghanistan: 'Go Home'

Prince spoke disparagingly of some unnamed NATO countries with troops in
Afghanistan, saying they do not have the will for the fight. "Some of them do and a
lot of them don't," he said. "It is such a patchwork of different international
commitments as to what some can do and what some can't. A lot of them should just
pack it in and go home." Canada, however, received praise from Prince. "The
Canadians have lost per capita more than America has in Afghanistan. They are
fighting and they are doing it and so if you see a Canadian thank them for that. The
politicians at home take heavies for doing that," Prince said. He did not mention the
fact that his company was hired by the Canadian government to train its forces.

Prince also described how his private air force (which he recently sold) bailed out a
US military unit in trouble in Afghanistan. According to Prince, the unit was fighting
the Taliban and was running out of ammo and needed an emergency re-supply.
"Because of, probably some procedure written by a lawyer back in Washington, the
Air Force was not permitted to drop in an uncertified drop zone... even to the unit
that was running out of ammo," Prince said. "So they called and asked if our guys
would do it and, of course, they said, 'Yes.' And the cool part of the story is the Army
guys put their DZ mark in the drop zone, a big orange panel, on the hood of their
hummer and our guys put the first bundle on the hood of that hummer. We don't
always get that close, but that time a little too close."

Blackwater: Teaching Afghans to Use Toilets

Prince said his forces train 1300 Afghans every six weeks and described his pride in
attending "graduations" of Blackwater-trained Afghans, saying that in six weeks they
radically transform the trainees. "You take these officers, these Afghans and it's the
first time in their life they've ever been part of something that's first class, that works.
The instructors know what they're talking about, they're fed, the water works, there's
ammunition for their guns. Everything works," Prince said. "The first few days of
training, we have to do 'Intro to Toilet Use' because a lot of these guys have never
even seen a flushed toilet before." Prince boasted: "We manage to take folks with a
tribal mentality and, just like the Marine Corps does more effectively than anyone
else, they take kids from disparate lifestyles across the United States and you throw
them into Paris Island and you make them Marines. We try that same mentality there
by pushing these guys very hard and, it's funny, I wish I had video to show you of
the hilarious jumping jacks. If you take someone that's 25 years old and they've
never done a jumping jack in their life--some of the convoluted motions they do it's
comical. But the transformation from day one to the end of that program, they're
very proud and they're very capable." Prince said that when he was in Afghanistan
late last year, "I met with a bunch of generals and they said the Afghans that we
train are the most effective fighting force in Afghanistan."

Prince also discussed the Afghan women he says work with Blackwater. "Some of the
women we've had, it's amazing," Prince said. "They come in in the morning and they
have the burqa on and they transition to their cammies (camouflage uniforms) and I
think they enjoy the baton work," he said, adding, "They've been hand-cuffing a little
too much on the men."

Hurricane Katrina and Humanitarian Mercenaries

Erik Prince spoke at length about Blackwater's deployment in 2005 in New Orleans
during Hurricane Katrina, bragging that his forces "rescued 128 people, sent
thousands of meals in there and it worked." Prince boasted of his company's rapid
response, saying, "We surged 145 guys in 36 hours from our facility five states away
and we beat the Louisiana National Guard to the scene." What Prince failed to
mention was that at the time of the disaster, at least 35% of the Louisiana National
Guard was deployed in Iraq. One National Guard soldier in New Orleans at the time
spoke to Reuters, saying, "They (the Bush administration) care more about Iraq and
Afghanistan than here... We are doing the best we can with the resources we have,
but almost all of our guys are in Iraq." Much of the National Guard's equipment was
in Iraq at the time, including high water vehicles, Humvees, refuelers and
generators.

Prince also said that he had a plan to create a massive humanitarian vessel that, with
the generous support of major corporations, could have responded to natural
disasters, such as earthquakes and tsunamis across the globe. "I thought, man, the
military has perfected how to move men and equipment into combat, why can't we
do that for the humanitarian side?" Prince said. The ship Prince wanted to use for
these missions was an 800 foot container vessel capable of shipping "1700 containers,
which would have lined up six and a half miles of humanitarian assistance with
another 250 vehicles" onboard. "We could have gotten almost all those boxes
donated. It would have been boxes that would have had generator sets from
Caterpillar, grain from ADM [Archer Daniels Midland], anti-biotics from
pharmaceutical companies, all the stuff you need to do massive humanitarian
assistance," Prince said, adding that it "would have had turnkey fuel support, food,
surgical, portable surgical hospitals, beds cots, blankets, all the above." Prince says
he was going to do the work for free, "on spec," but "instead we got attacked
politically and ended up paying tens of millions of dollars in lawyer bills the last few
years. It's an unfortunate misuse of resources because a boat like that sure would
have been handy for the Haitian people right now."

Outing Erik Prince

Prince also addressed what he described as his outing as a CIA asset working on
sensitive US government programs. He has previously blamed Congressional
Democrats and the news media for naming him as working on the US assassination
program. The US intelligence apparatus "depends heavily on Americans that are not
employed by the government to facilitate greater success and access for the
intelligence community," Prince said. "It's unprecedented to have people outed by
name, especially ones that were running highly classified programs. And as much as
the left got animated about Valerie Plame, outing people by name for other very very
sensitive programs was unprecedented and definitely threw me under the bus."