Blackwater Ex-CEO’s Multimillion Security Contract in Iraq Ended in Disaster – Now He Blames Obama for ISIS ‘Mess’

In 2003, Erik Prince used his wealthy parents’ connections in right-wing politics to land over $1 billion in security contracts for Blackwater, his private security company. During the Bush administration’s war in Iraq, Blackwater was one of dozens of contractors deployed into the war zone at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars — a deployment with disastrous consequences, especially in Blackwater’s case.

In the spring of 2004, U.S. Marines had to be sent into Fallujah twice after local fighters released video they’d taken while they killed Blackwater contractors and mutilated their bodies. The result was some of the bloodiest fighting of the occupation. On Dec. 24, 2006, an allegedly drunk Blackwater contractor shot and killed a bodyguard for Iraq’s vice president. Nine months later a squad of Blackwater mercenaries rolling through Baghdad opened fire at a crowded intersection killing 17 civilians. That incident was the beginning of the end for Blackwater. Its security contract in Iraq was cancelled after Bush left office.

Over the weekend, in a session at Maverick PAC, a right-wing political group with ties to the Bush family, Prince seemed to suggest that if only the Obama administration hadn’t cut off flow of millions in taxpayer dollars to Blackwater, his mercenaries could have stopped the rise of ISIS:

“It’s a shame the [Obama] administration crushed my old business,” Prince told the Bush crowd, “because as a private organization, we could’ve solved the boots-on-the-ground issue, we could have had contracts from people that want to go there as contractors; you don’t have the argument of U.S. active duty going back in there. [They could have] gone in there and done it, and be done, and not have a long, protracted political mess that I predict will ensue.”

Surely the sting of the Obama administration “crushing” his business must have been softened somewhat by the $70 million contract Blackwater received from the Administration in 2009.

And did he say “mess?” The collapse of Blackwater happened on his watch as CEO in what can only be described as a “mess”:

By early 2009, Blackwater faced a blizzard of lawsuits, criminal charges, and investigations from federal agencies ranging from the Internal Revenue Service to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. In an attempt at damage control, the name of the company was changed to Xe, the abbreviation for xenon, an inert gas. In August 2010 the company agreed to a $42 million settlement with the State Department for hundreds of export-control violations. The offenses ranged from the seemingly trivial, such as training Canadians without filing proper paperwork, to the more substantial—losing 113 weapons in Iraq.

Topping it all off is a more recent revelation that the government kept the flow of millions in taxpayer dollars going to Blackwater after then-Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice’s chief investigator reported having received a threat on his life from a Blackwater executive.

American taxpayers hired Blackwater to the tune of $600 per day per contractor. The services these mercenaries provided in Iraq and elsewhere were the same duties performed by U.S. military volunteers for as little as $49 per day. Worse, Blackwater’s deal with the Bush administration was under a no-bid contract. It was classic political pork — a wealthy Republican donor rewarded with a contract worth hundreds of millions in taxpayer dollars without even having to compete for it.

Hiring Blackwater proved to be a classic private-industry boondoggle. His only saving grace was that the invasion and occupation of Iraq was such a colossal waste of blood and treasure that Blackwater’s multiple, expensive screw-ups were barely noticed.

Prince is also aptly named. He was raised in an atmosphere of wealth and privilege in Michigan, where his father, Edgar, had made millions in the automotive industry. Later Edgar and Erik’s mother Elsa used their fortune to stand up right-wing Christian operations like the American Decency Association and to fund hate groups like the so-called Family Research Center and Focus on the Family.

Right wingers like Erik Prince, the Bush holdovers at Maverick PAC and their enablers in the media — the same folks who alternately cheered and sat on their hands during the run-up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003 — are determined to lay blame for the rise of ISIS on the Obama administration. They hope voters will forget that it was they, the GOP and its allies, like Erik Prince, who marched the country to war on false pretenses, who botched the occupation and ultimately failed to win the war they started.