Blondes for Blackwater

Blackwater heroes saved Brittanie and Aubrey Vander Mey and Jamie Cook (above) from mob terror in Kenya last week as the US government stood by fecklessly.

CEO Erik Prince ordered the rescue operation at the request of Brittanie and Aubrey's dad. The girls were doing Christian missionary work with AIDS orphans.

A Blackwater operative flew from Afghanistan to Kenya to run the operation.

Another of many unheralded Blackwater rescues. A couple, such as the evacuation of the Polish ambassador to Iraq after an assassination attempt, have received some coverage, but most have not.

The blog commentary is pretty funny, ranging from very informative to tasteless. Click here for reader remarks on Sharon Weinberger's Wired.com blog.

Blackwater credited with saving 180 American lives

Readers of this blog know about how Blackwater Worldwide recently rescued three young American women from deadly mob violence in Kenya. The three are only a fraction of Americans whose lives Blackwater is credited with saving.

Over the past six years, Blackwater personnel have saved the lives of more than 180 Americans around the world.

In Iraq from 2004-2007, Blackwater rescued or medically treated and evacuated more than 40 U.S. soldiers, Marines and U.S. Government officials. Virtually all instances were humanitarian responses to calls for volunteers. The incidents involved fires, post-missile and mortar attack response, suicide bombing involving mass casualties, and day and night rescues of stranded or trapped Americans.

On the U.S. Gulf Coast in the immediate aftermath of hurricane Katrina, Blackwater volunteers rescued over 50 Americans trapped on rooftops. Blackwater also conducted emergency medical evacuations for 175 Americans in the first week of the 2005 disaster.

In Africa in 2006, Blackwater medical personnel saved an American in Chad by administering emergency life saving surgery and medical evacuation Burkina Faso. They also conducted a rescue of three American missionaries and seven aid workers in Kenya in January 2008.

In Afghanistan 2007 Blackwater personnel rescued three Americans from a bombed and burning hotel. In January 2008 Blackwater again rescued one American from a hotel bombed by the Taliban.

In over 90 percent of these cases, Blackwater was not paid a dime to act. The company and its people did so out of a professional drive to help Americans in danger whenever possible.

'Blackwater's coming to rescue us' - Video from Kenya

A Michingan TV station aired exclusive video of the three Christian missionaries being evacuated from mob violence in Kenya. Here's the clip from the January 2008 operation. A Blackwater operative based in Kabul, Afghanistan, flew to the African country to lead the evacuation. Click here for more coverage.

Blackwater rescues Michigan orphanage workers from Kenya terror

How did three American charity workers escape spiraling violence in Africa when their government couldn't help them?

Blackwater Worldwide.

Michigan orphanage volunteers Brittanie and Aubrey Vander Mey and their friend Jamie Cook were in Kenya readying to care for HIV and AIDS orphans in Kimilili, a town 180 miles from Nairobi.

But post-election violence was spreading, with militants 45 miles away torching a church filled with women and children.

Yesterday the women were scheduled to return to their Michigan hometown where their local paper, the Grand Rapids Press, has the story.

"Dean Vander Mey, of Byron Township, Brittanie and Aubrey's father, said he credits their return to God's intervention and the private security firm," the paper reports.

"'My daughter (Brittanie) told me today, "Every town around us has been ripped apart,"' he said. 'Their little town was the only safe town. ... I have to attribute (their safety) to the Lord.'"

When his frightened daughters alerted him by phone of the spreading violence, he realized the women could not escape by car and renting a helicopter was impossible. He asked U.S. officials, congressmen and others for help.

"Vander Mey said he recalled relatives were friends with the family of Blackwater founder and Holland [Michigan] native Erik Prince and decided to give the company a call.

"'They had internal contacts and everything,' Vander Mey said. 'They had people who could help.'"

And help they did. Blackwater, according to Vander Mey, sent in a plane and rescued the three women and other international workers, bringing them safely to Nairobi.

"It's been a nightmare and a miracle," Vander Mey said.

Blackwater praised for Africa rescue

Congressional weenies might want to beat up on Blackwater, but the company is winning praise from Real America for its daring operation to rescue three young Michigan women from near-certain horrors in strife-torn Kenya.

"Unable to locate a helicopter or airplane to pick them up," the father of two of the girls, Dean VanderMey, "called his mother, who reached Blackwater founder Erik Prince [pictured] through a mutual friend, U.S. Rep. Vernon Ehlers, R-Grand Rapids," Bill Sizemore reports in the Virginian-Pilot.

"Soon, VanderMey said, he got a phone call from Prince, who told him, 'We're going to do everything we can do to get your girls out.'

"A Blackwater employee flew from Afghanistan to Kenya to run the operation, VanderMey said. The company located a 10-passenger single-engine plane, which picked up the women at an airstrip near the orphanage in the village of Kimilili and flew them 185 miles to Nairobi, the Kenyan capital, where they got a commercial flight home.

"paid the charter fee for the plane, but Blackwater charged him nothing for its services.
'Erik wouldn't hear of it,' VanderMey said. 'He said, "This has nothing to do with money. This is about getting Americans out of harm's way."'

"'They got it done. I was pretty impressed.'"

Video of rescued girls arriving home

They're teenage girls, all right, judging by their happy squeals as they run toward family and friends at a Michigan airport. Blackwater Worldwide rescued the three - sisters Brittanie and Aubrey Vander Mey and friend Jamie Cook - from mob violence in Kenya, where the girls were doing Christian missionary work.

For more news about the rescue - which Blackwater staged from Afghanistan - see the posts below.

Founded to Save Lives

Touring Blackwater's sprawling headquarters in North Carolina, Washington Times columnist John McCaslin captures the paradox between the company's image and the reality of its existence. He quotes from a Blackwater official:

"'Blackwater is defined in the press, and by extension the public, by two events that resulted in the loss of human life. The first, Fallujah, resulted in the loss of four Blackwater lives. The second, on 16 September 2007, resulted in the loss of 17 Iraqi lives.

"'The irony here is that it is a company that was founded and exists to save lives. Everything done is in the interest of safety: training troops to defend themselves; building armored personnel carriers to keep troops alive in battle; building airships for surveillance to detect the bad guys; teaching cops how to effectively and safely rescue a hostage; helping people in executive-protection roles avoid an ambush in a vehicle; building an aviation division capable of performing rescue missions in war zones and natural disasters. The list goes on.

"'My point is that the press quantifies the loss of life, but fails to account for the sparing of life because of Blackwater. In Katrina alone, 128 people were pulled to safety before a contract was ever awarded. In more than 20,000 diplomatic missions, no one protected by Blackwater has ever even been seriously injured.'"

(Pictured: Three American missionaries joyfully celebrate their Blackwater rescue from Islamist extremists in Kenya.)