Using mercenaries in ‘death squads’

“Who is allowed to kill in the name of America?” asked Rémy Ourdan in France’s Le Monde. Evidently not just U.S. soldiers. According to recently released U.S. government reports, under the Bush administration the CIA hired contractors from the private firm Blackwater to participate in “death squads” intended to hunt suspected al Qaida terrorists. Just as the U.S. outsourced torture to foreign governments, it apparently also outsourced assassinations to mercenaries. The business was lucrative. Blackwater’s owner, Eric Prince—a “Republican hawk and conservative Christian”—is now a billionaire thanks to the war on terror. We all know that America abandoned many of its core values after 9/11. Now we know that it granted to hit men “a license to kill—for a fistful of dollars.”

It may not be quite that bad, said Ewen MacAskill in Britain’s Guardian. It’s unclear whether the Blackwater mercenaries were empowered to kill al Qaida suspects themselves or just provide logistical support to the CIA for assassination missions. In any event, “no raid to capture or kill al Qaida leaders was ever carried out.” The Bush administration may have wanted to contract out targeted killings, but it ultimately did not do so.

Fine—but what about the Obama administration? asked Belgium’s De Morgen in an editorial. It has just renewed contracts with Blackwater (or Xe, as the company now calls itself) to provide security for U.S. facilities in Iraq and Afghanistan, even though the company’s head has been accused of murder. The contract extensions “came just days after” two former Blackwater employees testified that Eric Prince himself “killed people who participated in investigations against his company.” In fact, use of mercenaries in Afghanistan has increased 20 percent since Obama took office. Perhaps this is Obama’s way of cutting the costs of the war. After all, mercenaries are cheaper than soldiers: They’re not eligible for a veteran’s pension or health care, and if they die, their widows don’t get death benefits.

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Blackwater is, in fact, still involved in assassinations, said Iran’s Jaam-e Jam. U.S. news reports recently revealed that Blackwater mercenaries are working “secretly from army bases in Pakistan and Afghanistan,” readying Predator drones for assassination missions. Many of the drones “miss their targets” and kill Afghan civilians. Yet Blackwater mercenaries are never charged with murder in these deaths. It would seem, then, that they do have a “license to kill” after all.