Blackwater wins 22 million no bid contract

http://www.nationalreview.com/the-feed/ ... ial-forces


"

U.S. Special Operations Forces have a brand new home in Afghanistan. It’s owned and operated by the security company formerly known as Blackwater, thanks to a no-bid deal worth $22 million.

You might think that Blackwater, now called Academi, was banished into some bureaucratic exile after its operatives in Afghanistan stole guns from U.S. weapons depots and killed Afghan civilians. Wrong. Academi’s private 10-acre compound outside Kabul, called Camp Integrity, is the new headquarters for perhaps the most important special operations unit in Afghanistan."..........................

That damn Bush is at it again!!!

Cronyism capitalism. The defense is always that the Corp. That gets the bid is the only one in the world who can do the job. More likely? Blackwater knows how to lobby the Obama administration as well as they did W's.

So sad. I was on a project that took over from another defense contractor that originally had the contract with a best efforts clause. Their "best efforts" was to leave my company with a program that didn't work. We had to fix it, then we instructors went out and had to train gov workers. It was pretty cobbled together to keep it working on our part.

Oh, our part was maintenance, improvement and training of the project/program. I guess maintenance included getting it to work in the first place. So, the first defense contractor didn't do diddly and got paid millions for their "best efforts." I bet there are plenty of contracts like that.

2wlady wrote: So sad. I was on a project that took over from another defense contractor that originally had the contract with a best efforts clause. Their "best efforts" was to leave my company with a program that didn't work. We had to fix it, then we instructors went out and had to train gov workers. It was pretty cobbled together to keep it working on our part.

Oh, our part was maintenance, improvement and training of the project/program. I guess maintenance included getting it to work in the first place. So, the first defense contractor didn't do diddly and got paid millions for their "best efforts." I bet there are plenty of contracts like that.

Bigger government makes it easier for stuff like this to be business as usual.

Heisenberg wrote: That damn Bush is at it again!!!

Well, he DID set the system in place...

(a 2007 article)

Former Bush administration officials are peppered throughout Blackwater's highest executive positions. Erik Prince, the former Navy SEAL who founded the company, was a White House intern under President George H. W. Bush and has been a Republican financier since, with more than $225,000 in political contributions.

Prince's sister, Betsy DeVos, is a former chairwoman of the Michigan Republican Party and a "pioneer" who raised $100,000 for the Bush-Cheney ticket in 2004. Her husband, the former Amway chief executive Richard DeVos Jr., was the Republican nominee for governor of Michigan in 2006.

Prince denied Tuesday that his connections had anything to do with it, but he certainly has done well under the Bush administration. Federal contracts account for about 90 percent of the revenue of Prince Group holdings, of which Blackwater is a subsidiary. Since 2001, when it made less than $1 million in federal contracts, Blackwater has received more than $1 billion in such contracts - including at least one with the State Department for hundreds of millions of dollars that was awarded without open, competitive bidding.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/03/opini ... 33227.html

True Bipartisanship. The elite in the Beltway whether they be Dem or Republican still get the big bucks and don't have to compete for them.