<story><title>Founder of Blackwater&apos;s Drive to Build a Private Air Force</title><url>https://theintercept.com/2016/04/11/blackwater-founder-erik-prince-drive-to-build-private-air-force/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>numair</author><text>This story is written with such an incredibly obnoxious and sensationalist slant, like most things written about Erik Prince and Blackwater. You&amp;#x27;d think they had uncovered evidence he was working on contract for ISIS or something.&lt;p&gt;America&amp;#x27;s use of PMCs is as old, actually older, than the country itself. Many of the issues that led to Blackwater&amp;#x27;s infamy from their time in Iraq were directly caused by State Department incompetence (I doubt anyone would want to argue that the US State Department is an efficient, well-run, non-politicized entity). Erik Prince is not some crazy Christian zealot out to wage a holy war; if anything, he provided the US government with unique capability that they desperately needed, and things would have probably been far messier if he hadn&amp;#x27;t been involved in Iraq.&lt;p&gt;I see nothing evil or nefarious about a defense contractor commissioning efficient tactical aircraft for anti-terrorism and civil defense operations. The fact that it&amp;#x27;s Erik Prince, and the mass media has painted him as the evil overlord that caused all of our problems in Iraq, doesn&amp;#x27;t make it any different. It would be strange if someone who was highly competent and specialized in defense operations, who had enough money, WASN&amp;#x27;T building these sorts of things.&lt;p&gt;Look, I&amp;#x27;m mad about what the US government did in Iraq. Everyone should be. We shouldn&amp;#x27;t have even gone there. But none of this is Erik Prince&amp;#x27;s fault.&lt;p&gt;Venture capital firms have &amp;quot;scouts,&amp;quot; giving them access to deals they&amp;#x27;d otherwise overlook or couldn&amp;#x27;t access. The US defense and intelligence communities have people like Erik Prince.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ddellacosta</author><text>I suppose your perception that the piece was slanted means you didn&amp;#x27;t read it, but it outlines very clearly a number of illegal or unethical actions Mr. Prince and others took including&lt;p&gt;- hiding his agenda from FSG which included violating U.S. defense export regulations, culminating in being stripped of control over operations at FSG&lt;p&gt;- failing to disclose to FSG that he had an ownership stake in Airborne while negotiating contracts with them as a representative of FSG&lt;p&gt;- as a part-owner of Airborne, actively encouraging the company to violate Austrian statutes on production and export of military-grade aircraft&lt;p&gt;...and more I&amp;#x27;m probably missing, and that doesn&amp;#x27;t even take into account his failure to actually deliver to his &amp;quot;clients&amp;quot; as outlined in the piece.&lt;p&gt;Now if you have legitimate counterpoints in response to the items raised in the article, I&amp;#x27;d love to hear them, but your comment is the textbook definition of a strawman.  As far as I can tell this piece is just exposing the truth about who Erik Prince is, and you&amp;#x27;re right that he&amp;#x27;s not a Christian zealot out to wage a holy war: he is actually an opportunistic parasite who takes advantage of power imbalances in areas in crisis, manipulates organizations to further his own personal profit without any sense of right or wrong informing his decisions, and actively skirts legal restrictions around the world as he sees fit.  He certainly doesn&amp;#x27;t come off as competent in any way.&lt;p&gt;If anything, the right-wing should be &lt;i&gt;more&lt;/i&gt; concerned than the left that someone as ethically challenged as Prince is engaging in the activities he&amp;#x27;s engaging in--it makes them look even worse.  Why are you being an apologist for this kind of scumbag?</text></comment>
<story><title>Founder of Blackwater&apos;s Drive to Build a Private Air Force</title><url>https://theintercept.com/2016/04/11/blackwater-founder-erik-prince-drive-to-build-private-air-force/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>numair</author><text>This story is written with such an incredibly obnoxious and sensationalist slant, like most things written about Erik Prince and Blackwater. You&amp;#x27;d think they had uncovered evidence he was working on contract for ISIS or something.&lt;p&gt;America&amp;#x27;s use of PMCs is as old, actually older, than the country itself. Many of the issues that led to Blackwater&amp;#x27;s infamy from their time in Iraq were directly caused by State Department incompetence (I doubt anyone would want to argue that the US State Department is an efficient, well-run, non-politicized entity). Erik Prince is not some crazy Christian zealot out to wage a holy war; if anything, he provided the US government with unique capability that they desperately needed, and things would have probably been far messier if he hadn&amp;#x27;t been involved in Iraq.&lt;p&gt;I see nothing evil or nefarious about a defense contractor commissioning efficient tactical aircraft for anti-terrorism and civil defense operations. The fact that it&amp;#x27;s Erik Prince, and the mass media has painted him as the evil overlord that caused all of our problems in Iraq, doesn&amp;#x27;t make it any different. It would be strange if someone who was highly competent and specialized in defense operations, who had enough money, WASN&amp;#x27;T building these sorts of things.&lt;p&gt;Look, I&amp;#x27;m mad about what the US government did in Iraq. Everyone should be. We shouldn&amp;#x27;t have even gone there. But none of this is Erik Prince&amp;#x27;s fault.&lt;p&gt;Venture capital firms have &amp;quot;scouts,&amp;quot; giving them access to deals they&amp;#x27;d otherwise overlook or couldn&amp;#x27;t access. The US defense and intelligence communities have people like Erik Prince.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>yardie</author><text> &amp;gt; he provided the US government with unique capability that they desperately needed, and things would have probably been far messier if he hadn&amp;#x27;t been involved in Iraq.&lt;p&gt;I have many friends and family that have participated in Iraq II and Afghanistan. They see PMCs as morale destroyers. While they are getting paid E-4 rates, or higher, the PMCs are getting paid 4-5x that for doing the same damn job!&lt;p&gt;They&amp;#x27;ve had to learn to do more with less while the PMCs show up with shiny new toys all the time. And if that wasn&amp;#x27;t enough they were getting calls or letters from home saying their benefits had been cut, allowances were down, etc. Then the DoD was &amp;quot;winding down&amp;quot; it&amp;#x27;s campaigns by replacing enlistees with even more PMCs. Suddenly, guys that wanted to make a career in the armed forces, and had planned to stay 10-20 years, couldn&amp;#x27;t re-up. In the end few of them felt they had no choice but to join Academy or Blackwater since job prospects back home were so meager.&lt;p&gt;They were making things so much better in Iraq the PM wanted them out of his country because of the unaccountability and civilian deaths directly attributable to them. Shooting civilians in the street is the first thing I think of when the word Blackwater comes up.</text></comment>