How Blackwater Built Morale

Surely, the allegation from two former Blackwater employees that the company fraudulently billed the US government for travel expenses, prostitutes, and strippers elicits little more than a sigh. After all, we are aware of the company’s reputation, and we’ve seen the visuals—videos of Team Mercenary drinking alcohol from each other’s butt cracks.

Blackwater is now called Xe. One has to wonder if the shareholders believed a name change could produce a more attractive pig.

And, yes, US taxpayers are picking up the bill for all the extracurricular activities.

I am trying to put all this in perspective. Apparently, if the charges are true, this resides in the column “Morale Welfare Recreation.”

And we all know that warriors need morale boosters. Remember Bob Hope, Ambassador of Good Will, devoting time to entertain our troops? Seems this is passé in today’s New World Order.

But I’m concerned, sick, really, by Xe’s indiscriminate killing, without accountability, of those who live in the countries we’ve occupied. You know, the brutality under the category of “Murdering Muslims.”

Recruited by the company’s founder, Erik Prince, personnel, known as “shooters,” were employed to eliminate Muslims from the planet. Prince considers himself a Christian crusader. So, killing those who practice the Islamic faith, is called “sport” and, therefore, could be placed under either the “Morale Welfare Recreation” column or “Murdering Muslims.”

For this, we should all be morally outraged, ashamed.

MISSY BEATTIE lives in New York City. She’s written for National Public Radio and Nashville Life Magazine. An outspoken critic of the Bush Administration and the war in Iraq, she’s a member of Gold Star Families for Peace. She completed a novel last year, but since the death of her nephew, Marine Lance Cpl. Chase J. Comley, in Iraq on August 6,’05, she has been writing political articles. She can be reached at: Missybeat@aol.com

 

 

Missy Beattie has written for National Public Radio and Nashville Life Magazine. She was an instructor of memoirs writing at Johns Hopkins’ Osher Lifelong Learning Institute in BaltimoreEmail: missybeat@gmail.com