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Germany Launches Probe Into Blackwater/CIA Assassination Plot

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laststeamtrain Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jan-07-10 02:01 PM
Original message
Germany Launches Probe Into Blackwater/CIA Assassination Plot
Germany Launches Probe Into Blackwater/CIA Assassination Plot

“Imagine if were to carry out a hit job via a front company, say in New Orleans,” says a German lawmaker. “It would be a shocking occurrence”

By Jeremy Scahill

German prosecutors have launched a preliminary investigation into allegations that a Blackwater-led CIA team conducted a clandestine operation in Hamburg, Germany after 9/11 ultimately aimed at assassinating a German citizen with suspected ties to al Qaeda. The alleged assassination operation was revealed last month in a Vanity Fair profile of Blackwater’s owner Erik Prince.

The magazine reported that after 9/11, the CIA used one of Prince’s homes in Virginia as a covert training facility for hit teams that would hunt al Qaeda suspects globally. Their job was find, fix, and finish: “Find the designated target, fix the person’s routine, and, if necessary, finish him off.”

According to Vanity Fair, one of the team’s targets was Mamoun Darkazanli, a naturalized German citizen originally from Syria. Darkazanli has been accused by Spain of being an al Qaeda supporter with close ties to the alleged 9/11 plotters who lived in Hamburg. The Blackwater/C.I.A. team “supposedly went in ‘dark,’ meaning they did not notify their own station—much less the German government—of their presence,” according to Vanity Fair. “hey then followed Darkazanli for weeks and worked through the logistics of how and where they would take him down.” Authorities in Washington, however, “chose not to pull the trigger.”

Dieter Wiefelspütz, the domestic policy spokesperson for the parliamentary group of Germany’s center-left Social Democrats, told Der Spiegel it is irrelevant that Darkazanli’s targeted assassination was never carried out. “If it can be confirmed, then this was a murder plot,” he said. The conservative Christian Democratic Union joined the Social Democrats in calling for an official inquiry.

<more>

http://rebelreports.com/post/321663112/germany-launches-probe-into-blackwater-ci
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waiting Donating Member (208 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jan-07-10 02:03 PM
Response to Original message
1. Good
They deserve to be put under the microscope for this and all of their other crimes.
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Jamastiene Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jan-07-10 02:14 PM
Response to Original message
2. It's about time someone probed Blackwater back.
Edited on Thu Jan-07-10 02:24 PM by Jamastiene
Here is why this is important:

The US uses private contractors like Blackwater to get around the Geneva Conventions.

The US military, itself, cannot go around assassinating, maiming, robbing, pillaging, murdering, evicting, and terrorizing people left and right without violating the Geneva Conventions.

But, if the US government hires contractors, or in this case mercenaries, to go do it instead, "no international treaties or laws have been violated" will be their talking point later when they get caught.

Technically, they are right. The US military didn't do it. A private contractor did, a private contractor that will be uber protected and if prosecuted gotten off on a technicality and disbanded into a new contractor name to use again later. See the history of L-3 for just how incendiary this practice is. YOU AND I are PAYING for this shit too.

On the one hand, it's genius. It is a dastardly evil genius, but still genius. On the other hand, it's causing more and more people around the world to hate our guts even more than they already do. All they know is that Americans are torturing, assassinating, randomly imprisoning (even after they helped us) and otherwise raping, robbing, and pillaging them.

The American people sit in ignorance and assume our government is protecting us.

The reality is, our government is taking money we generate through our labor and using it to pay mercenary groups like Blackwater/Xe 10x more than they would pay our own soldiers to do illegal shit in our names on a daily fucking basis. Guess what our soldiers are being forced to do? Guard the ever precious fucking contractors and clean up the mess left behind. Google is your friend.

It does not have a damn thing to do with protecting us. They haven't bothered to protect Americans on our own home soil in ages now. It's all about picking on poor citizens in the middle east who dare get in the way of US resource gathering.

And then when they attack the fuck out of us, we ask, "Why do they hate us?"

This post explains EXACTLY why they hate us. I wish I had time to link to all the articles that I have read about this shit. The stuff being done in our names is atrocious and does nothing to protect us. If anything, we are being terrorized too by all the terror alerts and made up bullshit psychological warfare the MSM is inflicting on us. It's enough to make you want to vomit.
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EFerrari Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jan-07-10 02:18 PM
Response to Reply #2
3. It may be even simpler than that. Blackwater is CIA.
They break laws for a living.

I was remembering yesterday that a friend of mine from El Salvador, who is a gentle person, someone who never has a bad word to say about anyone and someone who was held captive for a year during the war by the guerillas, described CIA in El Salvador to me with about as much disgust as possible, with a kind of abhorrence I've never seen expressed by a human being. :shrug:
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Jamastiene Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jan-07-10 02:35 PM
Response to Reply #3
4. The CIA is evil personified.
The CIA has been around a long time. As more and more world treaties banning assassination and torture were signed, the CIA got antsy about that. You might remember in the 90s, several Republicans were talking about wishing America could assassinate foreign leaders. Jessie Helms was one. I think Trent Lott was another. I can't remember all the ones who said it openly, but lots of them did.

Well, between then and now, they have come up with this idea of using private contractors to do their dirty work. The Wiki page for Blackwater and all the links at the bottom should be required reading for all Americans. Many of those involved in Blackwater are the same people who are involved in all these hate groups. Using private contractors like Blackwater has been successful for the CIA in getting their nasty underhanded violence done, without the US "technically" breaking international laws, but in the process it has made most of the world hate America.

You can bet they are involved in any atrocities that happen anywhere in the world. They are either doing the actual atrocities, paying locals to do the atrocities, or using sabotage to local people against each other, anything to destabilize a region so they can strip it of its resources.

I feel for your friend if they came into contact with the CIA.
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EFerrari Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jan-07-10 02:38 PM
Response to Reply #4
5. Jeff Haas, who outed the FBI for murdering Fred Hampton
reminded me that two of the biggest obstructors of the Church committee were -- Donald Rumsfeld and his aide, Dick Cheney. :shrug:
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glitch Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jan-07-10 03:00 PM
Response to Reply #5
6. I hope those assholes live long enough to see true justice, prison and their "legacy" destroyed. nt
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Jamastiene Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jan-07-10 03:11 PM
Response to Reply #5
7. Of course.
You can bet Rumsfeld and Cheney have their hands all over it.
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malaise Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jan-07-10 03:19 PM
Response to Original message
8. Dr. David Kelly anyone?
Who killed him? Robin Cook also had a sudden heart attack while out walking after he had resigned from Blair's government.
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global1 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jan-07-10 05:13 PM
Response to Original message
9. I'm Sorry - If The U.S. Government Is Hiring These Contractors And Paying For It With Our Tax $'s...
then they are responsible and the Geneva Convention parameters should apply.

If a person went out and hired a hit man to off a significant other - the person doing the hiring would be culpable.

So using private contractors should be no way around the rules.
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Jamastiene Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jan-07-10 08:49 PM
Response to Reply #9
10. Nope. "Unlike soldiers, private contractors are not required to uphold the Geneva Conventions."
By claiming that Blackwater was there to provide security and police training, they went around the Geneva Conventions.

The Academy of Political Science
(Page 18, close to the bottom of the page)
http://psqonline.org/cgi-bin/...&bmonth=fall&a=01free&format=view

This explains it better than I can.
http://articles.latimes.com/2007/oct/15/nation/na-blackwater15

Also,
This goes into detail as to why American casualties are really 4 times higher than MSM reports:
http://www.carlisle.army.mil/usawc/Parameters/08autumn/schooner.htm

Citation #35 at the bottom lists this quote:
35. War on Want, Corporate Mercenaries: The Threat of Private Military and Security Companies (London: War on Want, November 2006), http://www.waronwant.org/download.php?id=488, 11, also citing, at 10, Daniel Nelson, former professor of civil-military relations at the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies, for the proposition that: “Private military corporations become a way to distance themselves and create what we used to call ‘plausible deniability’ . . . It’s disastrous for democracy.”

Bold emphasis is mine.

So, basically, when they cross the line from "defending" themselves to combat, they can fall back on the excuse that they were merely defending themselves from hostility.
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global1 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Jan-08-10 12:17 AM
Response to Reply #10
11. Sorry - Didn't Read Your Links - But I Can't Buy It......
Edited on Fri Jan-08-10 12:18 AM by global1
if our U.S. Government hires them - they are not private any more - they are arms of our government. Our government takes on the responsibility - and they need to abide by government treaties, agreements, etc.

Blackwater does more than provide security and police. The other day when those CIA guys died in that suicide bomb attack in Afghanistan - some Blackwater people were among them. They are under investigation in Germany for a black ops - assassination assignment.

It's sad if our government is using a loophole to circumvent the Geneva Convention. I would expect that from the BushCo regime but Obama continuing this really upsets me.
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