But OF COURSE a story like this must run on a Saturday

Still, we are the Internets, and we obey no Beltway calendar or clock. So read this story and pass it on to your friends, please.

Blackwater Won Contracts Through a Web of Companies

WASHINGTON — Blackwater Worldwide created a web of more than 30 shell companies or subsidiaries in part to obtain millions of dollars in American government contracts after the security company came under intense criticism for reckless conduct in Iraq, according to Congressional investigators and former Blackwater officials.

While it is not clear how many of those businesses won contracts, at least three had deals with the United States military or the Central Intelligence Agency, according to former government and company officials. Since 2001, the intelligence agency has awarded up to $600 million in classified contracts to Blackwater and its affiliates, according to a United States government official.

The Senate Armed Services Committee this week released a chart that identified 31 affiliates of Blackwater, now known as Xe Services. The network was disclosed as part of a committee’s investigation into government contracting. The investigation revealed the lengths to which Blackwater went to continue winning contracts after Blackwater guards killed 17 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad in September 2007. That episode and other reports of abuses led to criminal and Congressional investigations, and cost the company its lucrative security contract with the State Department in Iraq.

The network of companies — which includes several businesses located in offshore tax havens — allowed Blackwater to obscure its involvement in government work from contracting officials or the public, and to assure a low profile for any of its classified activities, said former Blackwater officials, who, like the government officials, spoke only on condition of anonymity.

Senator Carl Levin, the Michigan Democrat who is chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said in a statement that it was worth “looking into why Blackwater would need to create the dozens of other names” and said he had requested that the Justice Department investigate whether Blackwater officers misled the government when using subsidiaries to solicit contracts.

Read the rest.

Also, for the truly hardcore, like emptywheel and Maha, the article's sidebar contains a link to this giant PDF: "Contracting In A Counterinsurgency: An Examination Of The Blackwater-Paravant Contract And The Need For Oversight: Hearing Before The Committee On Armed Services United States Senate."

Reminder, if you need one: image-Google results for Blackwater. Here's an icky one from an earlier post to get you started.

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[Added] Thanks for noticing, Blackwater Watch.

Onward Christian Soldiers!

The rest of you are confined to barracks.

For the past several years, two U.S. Army posts in Virginia, Fort Eustis and Fort Lee, have been putting on a series of what are called Commanding General's Spiritual Fitness Concerts. As I've written in a number of other posts, "spiritual fitness" is just the military's new term for promoting religion, particularly evangelical Christianity. And this concert series is no different.

On May 13, 2010, about eighty soldiers, stationed at Fort Eustis while attending a training course, were punished for opting out of attending one of these Christian concerts. The headliner at this concert was a Christian rock band called BarlowGirl, a band that describes itself as taking "an aggressive, almost warrior-like stance when it comes to spreading the gospel and serving God."

Any doubt that this was an evangelical Christian event was cleared up by the Army post's newspaper, the Fort Eustis Wheel, which ran an article after the concert that began:

Following the Apostle Paul's message to the Ephesians in the Bible, Christian rock music's edgy, all-girl band BarlowGirl brought the armor of God to the warriors and families of Fort Eustis during another installment of the Commanding General's Spiritual Fitness Concert Series May 13 at Jacobs Theater.

[...]

A few days later, some of the soldiers punished for choosing not to attend this concert contacted the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF). The following is from the account sent by one of those soldiers to MRFF, detailing what transpired that night.

The rest. More here and here.

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BTW: the headline in that military base paper?

Jacobs Theater echoes with love, war during spiritual fitness concert.

Also from that article:

In her opening statement, Alyssa thanked the crowd not only for attending the concert but also for their service to the country.

[...]

“We’ve travelled the world and we’ve seen Soldiers in every airport, and we cry because every day we hear about people who have given their life for love. [...]"

And right near the end:

BarlowGirl has been nominated 10 times for Christian music’s Dove Award.

Will they also start calling the Jesus rifles "peace pipes?"

(h/t: TBogg)

Your Attention Please

"Jesus rifles" are henceforth to be referred to as "Muslin-Exterminating Freedom Guns." This is what Steve Doocy wants, apparently, and he works for Fox News, so get with the program.

(previously)

Looks Like New Zealand Is The Next Muslin Country That We Will Have To Bomb The Snots Out Of

Remember the Jesus rifles?

The blowback has begun. Way to go, Trijicon.

How much you wanna bet they get a plus-up on their contract with the US government, to remove those Christianist inscriptions?

[Added] Robert Farley's post title is much better than mine, damn him.

[Update] New Farley link.

Hitchens on "Atheists in Foxholes"

Or, more precisely, the problem of Christianists in the US armed forces. A good read, especially if you have not been made aware of this worrisome trend.

(previously)

Hmmm ...

Via Jim Newell of Wonkette, I see there's a story published by James A. Haught, in Free inquiry and the Charleson Gazette, that's getting a little bit of Web attention. According to Haught, former French president Jacques Chirac has said repeatedly that George W. Bush told him "in early 2003 that Iraq must be invaded to thwart Gog and Magog, the Bible’s satanic agents of the Apocalypse." Chirac is reported to have said this in at least two separate interviews.

More from Haught:

The president of the United States, in a top-secret phone call to a major European ally, asked for French troops to join American soldiers in attacking Iraq as a mission from God.

Now out of office, Chirac recounts that the American leader appealed to their “common faith” (Christianity) and told him: “Gog and Magog are at work in the Middle East…. The biblical prophecies are being fulfilled…. This confrontation is willed by God, who wants to use this conflict to erase his people’s enemies before a New Age begins.”

Will this be looked into at all by the MSM? Doesn't look like it, as of this moment. (In fairness, Kevin Drum does note that the Toronto Star mentioned this a few months ago.)

I'm afraid I share the cynical outlook of OccamsRazor from The Young Turks …

One last interesting point to consider. Unless you lived in Europe, Canada or subscribed to the Charleston Gazette you probably never read about Chirac's account or heard it on any news broadcast. The story in the US has been largely an Internet item, not reported on any sites operated by the MSM. Based on Bush's well known evangelical zeal, that is surprising.

Yet the repeatedly debunked Obama "birther" story persists on Fox, and other supposedly legitimate news sources.

True, not true or somewhere in between, one would think that a liberal news media would be beside itself to publish what would be a highly embarrassing expose that would finally explain why Bush invaded Iraq: God told him to do it.

… and Andrew Sullivan:

If you think the networks or MSM will ask Bush or Cheney this question and ask them if Chirac made this up, you need to move to a country where mainstream journalists are unafraid of those in power and less eager to book them on their Sunday shows than ask them real questions that would tick them off. The Sunday shows are platforms for the power elites to convey their propaganda through vessels like Stephanopoulos or Gregory. They are not intended to grill or expose the lies of politicians. And God knows, David Gregory must never, ever take a position.

Remember the slide shows Rumsfeld put together for Bush? Oh, there's probably no connection. Now, about Obama's choice of beer …

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(NB: Minor typos fixed in latter two blockquotes.)

Preaching to a Choir of One

Catch this line in Frank Rich's column today?

But Draper’s biggest find is a collection of daily cover sheets that Rumsfeld approved for the Secretary of Defense Worldwide Intelligence Update, a highly classified digest prepared for a tiny audience, including the president, and often delivered by hand to the White House by the defense secretary himself. These cover sheets greeted Bush each day with triumphal color photos of the war headlined by biblical quotations. GQ is posting 11 of them, and they are seriously creepy.

Pretty creepy stuff, indeed. You should flip through this slide show just to remind yourself of the mindset that was in charge from January 2001 through January 2009. For full effect, stare at the pictures and read the Bible quotes aloud.

Here is one of them.

(enlarge image)

Here is another.

(enlarge image)

One more.

(enlarge image)

(The rest, plus the accompanying article.)

Maybe the worst part for me is the strong suggestion that Rumsfeld so obviously knew how to play his (nominal) boss. I've given no end of PowerPoint presentations in my day, almost always as the junior member in the room, and my considered reaction to these cover sheets is that if George W. Bush were any sort of a real leader, he would have fired Rumsfeld on the spot, for brown-nosing. That there is a whole series of these images says to me that for eight years, our ostensible Commander-in-Chief, the guy who loved to call himself "a wartime president" (e.g.), was nothing more than a GI Joe™ fetishist whose favorite version of the Bible was a comic book.

Not that I'm telling you anything you didn't already know.

(h/t: Wonderment)

Theocracy on the March

Via Instaputz and LGM, I came across an article in the NYT describing religious discrimination in the US armed forces. The piece starts by describing a particular incident:

When Specialist Jeremy Hall held a meeting last July for atheists and freethinkers at Camp Speicher in Iraq, he was excited, he said, to see an officer attending.

But minutes into the talk, the officer, Maj. Freddy J. Welborn, began to berate Specialist Hall and another soldier about atheism, Specialist Hall wrote in a sworn statement. “People like you are not holding up the Constitution and are going against what the founding fathers, who were Christians, wanted for America!” Major Welborn said, according to the statement.

Major Welborn told the soldiers he might bar them from re-enlistment and bring charges against them, according to the statement.

Last month, Specialist Hall and the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, an advocacy group, filed suit in federal court in Kansas, alleging that Specialist Hall’s right to be free from state endorsement of religion under the First Amendment had been violated and that he had faced retaliation for his views. In November, he was sent home early from Iraq because of threats from fellow soldiers.

[...]

... Timothy Feary, the other soldier at the meeting, said in an e-mail message: “Jeremy is telling the truth. I was there and witnessed everything.”

The article tries to get at the larger problem. The official word offers statistics to imply the problem is not widespread:

There are 1.36 million active duty service members, according to the Pentagon, and since 2005, it has received 50 formal complaints of religious discrimination, [Defense Department spokeswoman Eileen] Lainez said.

On the other hand:

... Mikey Weinstein, a retired Air Force judge advocate general and founder of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, said the official statistics masked the great number of those who do not report violations for fear of retribution. Since the Air Force Academy scandal began in 2004, Mr. Weinstein said, he has been contacted by more than 5,500 service members and, occasionally, military families about incidents of religious discrimination. He said 96 percent of the complainants were Christians, and the majority of those were Protestants.

Complaints include prayers “in Jesus’ name” at mandatory functions, which violates military regulations, and officers proselytizing subordinates to be “born again.” After getting the complainants’ unit and command information, Mr. Weinstein said, he calls his contacts in the military to try to correct the situation.

“Religion is inextricably intertwined with their jobs,” Mr. Weinstein said. “You’re promoted by who you pray with.”

Two things to note about Weinstein's report: First, it's hardly surprising that most soldiers are reluctant to make complaints through official channels, especially in a combat zone, especially if they perceive most of their superior officers to be part of the problem.

Second, it's amazing how many of the complaints were sent in by soldiers self-identifying as Christians. This suggests the messages provoking the complaints must be particularly noxious.

Oh, and by the way? Maj. Welborn, the officer accused at the start of the article with threatening persecution, refused to be interviewed for the article, beyond saying:

I’d love to tell my side of the story because it’s such a false story.

I'm pretty sure how my fellow godless heathens will interpret that line. Probably just as well for him that he stopped there.