War profiteers like Eric Prince
would never allow a good crisis
to go to waste.
As Afghans desperately tried to
leave Afghanistan following the
Taliban taking hold of the country,
Prince actually sees a decent
opportunity for profit making.
For pretending as if he's going to
try to help people, when in reality
he's looking to fatten his pockets
and make a little bit of a profit.
So Eric Prince,
the American defense contractor,
said he's offering people seats on
a chartered plane out of Kabul for
the low,
low price of $6,500 per person.
He is such a good guy everybody.
He's just looking out for
the Afghans are trying to get out
of the country.
Again, low, low price of $6,500.
Now Prince, whose Blackwater guards
were convicted of killing civilians
in 2014 while providing security
for Americans during the Iraq War,
said he was charging each passenger
60 $500 to get them safely into
the airport and on a plane.
And it would cost extra to get
people who have been trapped in
their homes to the airport.
But here's
the problem with Eric Prince.
He does have a great track record,
especially when it comes to
protecting people, offering support
to civilians on the ground.
I mean, this is a man who has been
the head of a private mercenary
group that has caused untold damage
in both Afghanistan and Iraq.
He certainly didn't want to pull
out of Afghanistan.
In fact, back in 2019, during
an interview with Mehdi Hassan,
he was openly disagreeing with
Donald Trump's decision to begin
pulling troops out of Afghanistan.
Let me remind you a little about
of that.
>> Whether it's a drawing
down from Syria or drawing down
from Afghanistan, the president's
going to make it happen.
Do you support that?
>> I don't.
Here's the thing, if the United
States leaves Afghanistan,
withdraws in either Troop Support
or monetary support, you will have
a moment like Saigon in 1975 where
the helicopters had to lift people
off the roof of the US Embassy.
So it will be that bad.
>> So you're not really trying to
end the war in Afghanistan,
then you just want to replace
it with your own kind of war?
>> No, I do want to end the war by
giving the Afghan forces
the means to survive and
to be much more offense.
Again, if you provide mentors and
you provide air support and
logistics support to those units,
they can actually get out and
get after, or begin a.
>> But Eric Prince has never
actually followed through on what
he claims to want to accomplish.
He says the objective is one thing.
But when you see how he and his,
essentially his employees are on
the ground,
whether it be Afghanistan or Iraq,
their brutality towards civilians
was so bad that some of them were
convicted for that brutality.
Now, this is a story that TYT has
been covering for many, many years,
and I'm going to take you
to a few older videos,
both featuring Cenk Uygur.
So the first one is Cenk reporting
on the Blackwater crimes in Iraq.
This is a video from 2012.
Cenk gives you updates on some of
what they engaged in.
>> They have such an enormous
disregard for
the civilians that we were there to
quote unquote liberate.
The whole idea is,
we're the big bad Americans,
the laws don't apply to us,
get out of our way.
And then Gee,
I wonder why the Iraqis hated us?
You're not convinced yet?
Wait until you see the second video
right in the beginning.
One of these guys is going to run
over a civilian.
And then everybody's just going to
roll on by like nothing happens.
>> My God.
My God.
[MUSIC]
>> And they just keep on rolling.
Gee, I wonder why the Iraqis didn't
us, I can't quite figure it out.
Maybe it was our enormous disregard
for their lives.
They killed so
many innocent civilians of so
many different areas with such
little regard for civilian life,
that they became an embarrassment.
So what was their answer that?
I'm just okay, we're just going to
change our name.
They changed it from Blackwater
to Xe.
And then that didn't work, so
then they change it to Academi.
Wow, that sounds so smart.
And then they sold to another
contractor Triple Canopy.
And now they have changed the name
of the entire company to
Constellis Holdings.
You see, if you change the name
four or five times, then
the company becomes much better.
>> And of course, the company did
not become much better.
In fact, when Blackwater,
when Eric Prince's group was being
investigated, they decided we're
going to go ahead and
threaten the lives of US officials
who are doing the investigation.
Watch.
>> State Department
puts Jeanne Richter on the case and
says, hey, look, we got all these
reports about Blackwater ripping us
off, unsafe conditions, let alone
what they're doing to the Iraqis.
But we're worried about what
they're doing to us,
to our troops, to our reputation,
to our relationship with Iraq, and
our money, right?
So Jean Richter goes and
starts to interview for example,
Dean Carroll,
who is the project manager for
Blackwater.
He runs Blackwater Interact at that
time, in 2007.
And here's what Daniel Carroll
apparently told him.
That he could kill me at that very
moment and no one could or
would do anything about it as we
were in Iraq.
>> Yeah,
threatening US investigators as
they were looking into the behavior
of the very people on the ground
who Eric Prince claims just want to
help out.
Just want to offer security to US
troops.
In this case, with the latest
story, just want to help evacuate
Afghans from Afghanistan.
Again for the low,
low price of $6,500.
Extra fees of course,
if they need to get Afghans safely
from their home to the airport.
But he doesn't actually care about
helping anyone other than himself.
I mean, this is what war profiteers
actually want.
They just want to find ways to make
money off of these conflicts.
Which is why he wasn't actually
in favor of taking troops out of
Afghanistan.
He's not in favor of ending any
kind of war because war is what his
business revolves around.
But it's not just about
Eric Prince.
It's about all the private defense
contractors who have perpetuated
endless wars.
They're the ones who have convinced
law makers to keep increasing
the defense budget because that is
the easiest way to redistribute
wealth from US taxpayers
to wealthy defense contractors.
To people who are already
billionaires.
Who have made their wealth off of
the deaths of civilians in these
countries, in the Middle East and
who of course have no interest in
ending any of this, right?
They don't want it.
Which is why we're on to the next.
I mean, look, the rhetoric that
we're hearing in regard to China is
something that we should be paying
very close attention to.
Number one ,we need to collaborate
with and
work with countries like China in
order to combat climate change.
So diplomatic efforts should always
take priority over the Cold War
rhetoric that we're hearing
right now.
But what we're doing in response to
China is arming countries that
don't have such a great
relationship with the country,
with China.
So we're doing record weapon sales
in Japan, in India.
And what does that do?
I mean, we already know what
increasing weapons in various
countries has done in the past.
It's only destabilize regions
of the world.
It's usually come back to haunt us.
The very people that we end
up arming turned around and become
threats to US national security.
But this is all very intentional.
Weapons manufacturers make money.
Later, defense contractors make
money with government grants and
government deals
to fight these wars.
It's all so incredibly disgusting.
And to see someone like
Eric Prince, who does not value
human lives at all, claim that
he wants to help Afghans evacuate?
I mean, all you can really do is
roll your eyes at that.
These people are goons, and
they never put themselves on
the front lines or risk their own
lives in the name of any national
security or freeing people
of a country that needs democracy.
They don't care about any of that,
it's all about the money.