Blackwater Hired by Canadian Government

Jeffrey Scahill continues to expose the inner-workings of a company known as Blackwater, the mercenary-for-hire American company that had some minor issues with killing 17 Iraqis in a public plaza three years ago today.

In his piece in The Nation, Jeffrey Scahill identifies that Disney and Monsanto are among many of those in corporate America who are turning to mercenaries to protect their assets and activities across the planet.

The company – through one of its subsidiaries – also provided services to the Canadian RCMP:

Some of the training Blackwater provided to Canadian military forces was in Blackwater/TRC’s “Mirror Image” course, where trainees live as a mock Al Qaeda cell in an effort to understand the mindset and culture of insurgents. Company literature describes it as “a classroom and field training program designed to simulate terrorist recruitment, training, techniques and operational tactics.” Documents show that in March 2009 Blackwater/TRC spent $6,500 purchasing local tribal clothing in Afghanistan as well as assorted “propaganda materials—posters, Pakistan Urdu maps, etc.” for Mirror Image, and another $9,500 on similar materials this past January in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

According to internal documents, in 2009 alone the Canadian military paid Blackwater more than $1.6 million through TRC. A Canadian military official praised the program in a letter to the center, saying it provided “unique and valid cultural awareness and mission specific deployment training for our soldiers in Afghanistan,” adding that it was “a very effective and operationally current training program that is beneficial to our mission.”

Apparently, the Democrats are the next group of people in the sites of Erik Prince (the leader of Xe Services, the new name for Blackwater) as he prepares to release a book in November during the midterm elections:

He’s now writing a book alleging that officials in the Clinton and Obama administrations “approved of his most sensitive and controversial operations,” according to a report by veteran intel reporter Jeff Stein published in The Washington Post earlier this month.

The Post‘s Jeff Stein cited two unnamed sources who say Erik Prince, the founder of Blackwater, is hurrying to sell his company before he can go public with a book that takes aim at the Democratic Party. One of the sources told Stein that Prince and his friends “think this will destroy the Democratic Party in the elections.”

The source, who is described as having a “business relationship with Xe,” said Prince had “given his people three weeks to complete the sale of the company and the book will be released then,” in time for the November elections.

Be careful who you do business with.  Some of them will sting you.