[lizard queen] private army at her disposal

Whilst plans are afoot in Britain to evict an 83 year old woman with Alzheimers disease over a money wrangle between the company, Southern Cross Health Care Ltd and her family, Jeremy Scahill reports, in the Asia Times of a different type of financial wrangle:

The Democratic leadership is arguing over the US$124 billion Iraq supplemental spending bill they still plan to keep funding the war [and thus] the estimated 126,000 private military "contractors" who currently come from such companies as Blackwater USA and the former Halliburton subsidiary KBR will stay put.

While many of them perform logistical support activities for US troops, tens of thousands of them are directly engaged in military and combat activities. According to the Government Accountability Office, there are now some 48,000 employees of private military companies in Iraq.

House Oversight and Government Reform Committee chairman Henry Waxman estimates that $4 billion has so far been spent in Iraq on armed "security" companies such as Blackwater.

In January, David Petraeus, the general running Bush's "surge" plan in Baghdad, cited private forces as essential to winning the war. Petraeus admitted that he has at times not been guarded in Iraq by the US military, but "secured by contract security".

Contractors have allowed for a back-door near-doubling of US forces in Iraq through the private sector, while masking the full extent of the human costs of the occupation.

Although at least 770 contractors have been killed in Iraq, these have not been published and Paul Bremer, Bush's viceroy in Baghdad, issued an edict known as Order 17 in 2004, immunizing contractors from prosecution.

Then there is the issue of continued funding for the privatized shadow forces in Iraq. The Democrats' Iraq plan would have cut about 15% or $815 million off the supplemental spending [but then they dropped the plan].

A decade ago, Blackwater USA barely existed; yet its "diplomatic security" contracts since mid-2004, with the State Department alone, total more than $750 million.

Blackwater protects the US ambassador and other senior officials in Iraq as well as visiting congressional delegations; it trains Afghan security forces and was deployed in the Caspian Sea region, setting up a "command and control" center kilometers from the Iranian border.

The company was also hired to protect Federal Emergency Management Agency operations and facilities after Hurricane Katrina, where it [earned] $240,000 a day from the American taxpayer, billing $950 a day per Blackwater contractor.

Since September 11, 2001, the company has invested in building a private army - forces are deployed in nine countries, with a database of 21,000 additional troops at the ready, a fleet of more than 20 aircraft, including helicopter gunships and the world's largest private military facility - a 2,800-hectare compound near the Great Dismal Swamp of North Carolina.

It recently opened a new facility in Illinois ("Blackwater North") and is fighting local opposition to a third planned domestic facility near San Diego ("Blackwater West") by the Mexican border. It is also manufacturing an armored vehicle (nicknamed the "Grizzly") and surveillance blimps.

Erik Prince, ex-navy special-force multimillionaire heads the group. Senior executives include Cofer Black, former head of counter-terrorism at the Central Intelligence Agency; Robert Richer, former deputy director of operations at the CIA; Joseph Schmitz, former Pentagon inspector general and other retired military and intelligence officials.

Company executives recently announced the creation of a new private intelligence company, "Total Intelligence", to be headed by Black and Richer.

Now, put that together with the plans for the SPPNA and the deployment of FEMA, not as a different issue to the illumined objective, as one commenter claimed but very much an integral arm of the North American security plans.

What that gives us is a very worrying scenario:

1] Iraq as a mere training ground;

2] A private contract army not subject to federal regulation or to the constitution of the United States;

3] Private command of forces, under the consultative eye of the NAAC, comprising the CFR.

I think you're getting the drift. All of this facilitated by the next president. The Illumined,phoenix wearing Lizard Queen perchance? This could be "Living History" we're seeing.

Still, the 83 year old lady, YL, won't have to worry about that soon, will she?