Blackwater: A Smell by Any Other Name?

Some of your employees are facing manslaughter charges. Your biggest customers just yanked your contracts.

How do you repair your image and your reputation?

Simple: Change your name.

The Outfit Formerly Known as Blackwater, the huge military contracting and consulting firm, made its bones and its less than salubrious name in Iraq. And now it wants to unmake its notoriety. It is changing its name to Xe.

Pronounced Z. Or maybe "zed," depending on what part of the world you're in.

Blackwater: from the unspeakable to the unpronounceable.

In a memo to employees, Blackwater/Xe president Gary Jackson says the switch "reflects the change in company focus away from the business of providing private security." To providing what now, exactly? Frosted cupcakes?

Xe is on the periodic charts at atomic number 54; it stands for xenon, a "noble gas" like fellow elements krypton and neon.

The Outfit Formerly Known as Blackwater now joins the ranks of the rebranded, along with Altria, a bland, content-free name meant to make people forget that its original name and mission was Philip Morris, cigarette maker.

Whatever they choose to call it, for an awful lot of people, here and in Iraq, Blackwater's name will always be mud.

Comments

[rf dude]

" Kala pani " - literally "blackwater" in Hindi -

also old term for long prison sentance.

Another of life's

llittle ironies...
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[EgyptianMysterySchool]

I have trained with some of the contractors who contracted w/ Blackwater in Iraq. They are not the monsters that everyone tries to make them out to be. They're not a private army, they are a highly trained security force. In essence they are bodyguards who work in the most dangerous of situations in order to protect diplomats, engineers, building contractors, etc. from kidnapping, murder, beheading and bombs.

They do a job, the army can't do because there aren't enough enlisted soldiers. I don't defend the bad actions of a few operatives, but those bad apples are in no way indicative of the tens of thousands of protective details they've done in Iraq, Afghanistan, Kosovo, Yugoslavia, etc. - the places where diplomats need to be and no one wants to be.

The security contractors I trained under were exmilitary and some were SWAT team members from various sheriff's depts.. The were highly trained, humble and very serious about the fact that there job was to be bullet shields for important diplomats. It's easy to pass judgment from your couch and keyboard, but when the sheep needed protecting from wolves they need sheepdogs who can be meaner than and threaten or kill the sheep.

Again, I don't condone the abuse of power from the few of their ranks that do abuse it (anymore than I do from the military or police here in the states), but I say again - it's easy to pass judgment from your couch and your keyboard.

[ExxonMcBushCo]

The problem is that the mercenaries (PMCs) in Iraq outnumber US military troops. Our tax money goes to corporations like Halliburton to pay the salaries of these modern-day Hessians who are accountable to no one, operate with no oversight, and don't pay for any crimes that they commit. These corporate troops are paid as much as $5000 per day and never less than $1500. Our troops make considerably less than that.

The argument that our troops can't do the job is BS.

Mercenaries are loyal to nothing but money. The corporations that run them are making billions and have no incentive in seeing the conflicts stop. What happens when another corporation can pay them more? Will they conduct their business inside America? Will our military be able to stop them?

[EgyptianMysterySchool]

The army is stretched too thin - that is a fact. Soldiers do 4/5 tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan. That's why they can't do it - not because the armed forces don't have the skill.

You couldn't be further from the facts, no on-the-ground PMC is making $5000/ day. They average around $500/ day and in the most extreme environments they can make up to a G/day - you need to check your sensationalized sources.

You don't have to like them, but they provide a quality service, their job is as dangerous as ANY in the world and they get paid fairly to put their lives on the line. Designating them as "mercenaries" is insultingly false. These professionals aren't hired to do assassinations and strong arm people for corporate interests. You watch too many movies. They provide escort services and security. When candidate Obama wanted to travel in Iraq, he couldn't call the army, he called Blackwater. They then provide armored cars ($400,000 each), meticulously plan routes around dangerous areas and did whatever it takes to make sure terrorist didn't kidnap him and cut his head off on TV. They have a 100% success rate on the delivery of all of their clients, yet many of them have died on the job.

Unless you're interested in re-instituting the draft, then there will be need for their services.

http://www.usnews.com/blogs/washington-whispers/2008/7/25/blackwater-got-the-gig-securing-obama-in-afghanistan.html

[EgyptianMysterySchool]

typo meant to write...

but when the sheep needed protecting from wolves they need sheepdogs who can be meaner than and threaten or kill the wolves.

[waynesmyer]

But! But! any fool can tell, EgyptMist , has his his thumb up his behind and his head in Egypt! Could it be that he is one of the drop-outs that is paid $140,000 per year by Blackwater to shoot un-armed civilians??

[EgyptianMysterySchool]

That's just stupid.

Blackwater was paid by Obama when he went to Iraq during the campaign and he said they were getting a bad rap. So take your head out of your behind...

http://www.usnews.com/blogs/washington-whispers/2008/7/25/blackwater-got-the-gig-securing-obama-in-afghanistan.html

[RealityBaseCamp]

I just realized . . . What if they had chosen a "blank" name like XE before all this happened? They unwittingly named themselves with a term that was easy to link to dirty dealings in people's minds. Now, at least, it'll be easier to explain who & what they are. "Xe?" "Blackwater." "Oh."

[Gerald Shields]

Oh yeah, the Iraqis weren't fooled by the name change:

"Xe, which had been operating in Iraq without an Iraqi government license, applied for one for the first time, but the request was denied by Iraqi officials in January 2009. The Iraqi government announced that Xe must leave Iraq as soon as a joint Iraqi-US committee finishes drafting the new guidelines on private contractors under the current Iraqi-US security agreement. Umm Tahsin, widow of one of the men killed by Xe employees in the Nisoor Square shooting, said of the denial, "Those people are a group of criminals. What they did was a massacre. Pushing them out is the best solution. They destroyed our family."On January 31, 2009 the US State Department notified Blackwater that the agency would not renew its security contract with the company."

[Gerald Shields]

Heck, I'll always call them the "Dismal Swamp Rats" Why? The Company's Headquarters in near the Dismal Swamp that takes up part of Virginia and North Carolina.

[vietveter]

In San Pedro Sula, Honduras they know the real meaning of

black water - and this company is named correctly for it

[bulfinch]

After the negligent crash in the Everglades, Value Jet changed its name to AirTran by buying a small airline for its name. It, like Blackwater, still stinks.

[exoevolution]

They can change the name, but the STINK is still Xe-same!!!

[oakley9]

Read in Media Section. Disney is now starting a cable channel and website for boys called XD. Sounds a little too similar?

[raptor]

Was "Whitewater" already taken?

[RumiSouth]

"Whitewash" was too obvious.

[JBS]

The artist formerly known as Prince should sue for trademark infringement.

[Paulo1]

What a dirty rotten shame !

Blackwater had a nice sinister ring to it which just begged to be thrown around in action thrillers and suspense novels. A boy could definitely see himself fighting the evil forces of Blackwater or perhaps living out a counter-hero fantasy as a no holds barred mercenary.

Xe ? Whats that? way too much like Zinia or Xena or some girly superhero wanna be. Xe is for five year olds and would just never make a good movie.

Can we please bring back Blackwater, perhaps they could settle for some flashy black jackboots and trenchcoats or a nice new twisted emblem to inspire fear but not this lame name change.

[Gidster]

This now frees up "Blackwater" to be used as the evil mercenary enemy in films and video games!

[rabiddog6708]

Actually in the 1980s, horror novelist Michael McDowell wrote a six part serial novel called Blackwater. Each volume was published on a monthly basis. There had been talk of the Sci-Fi Channel doing a mini-series of it some years ago but nothing ever came of it. Mr. McDowell, who dies from AIDS in 1999, was called by Stephen King "The Finest Writer of Paperback Originals in the US."

[rr52]

Blackwater should never be off the hook for all that funneled money. That was the smoothest way of getting tax payers dollars to help the Repug party down the line--through the state dept. and pentagon in the form of huge contracts to companies like Blackwater in return for NOTHING. Now that the top echelon of Blackwater employees are returning to the U.S., they need a new nondescript moniker for future donations to the RNC and Repug candidates. It's time for paybacks.

[WmC]

Interesting coincidence: Gary Bauer and his gang of extremists no longer want to be called the "religious right" because the term has taken on a connotation (unfairly, he thinks) of extremism.

http://thinkprogress.org/2009/02/13/religious-right-rebrand/

[rf dude]

From a Doobey Brothers song title,

to a gender-neutral

pronoun...

How more harmless can a name

be?
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