.

Blackwater is aggressively attacking Marshall Adame, Democratic challenger to “Mr. Freedom Fries,” seven-term Republican incumbent Walter B. Jones. Blackwater Worldwide’s 7,000-acre corporate headquarters and training facility sits in North Carolina’s 3rd District, which Adame is trying to win.

Adame, a former State Department official in Iraq, was protected by Blackwater thugs. He has publicly stated his experience with many unprovoked attacked by the steroid boys, which has drawn attention and attacks from Blackwater. Blackwater has zero interest in having an out spoken democrat with first hand experience of their death squad win a seat in Congress.

As a State Department official in Iraq, he was protected by Blackwater, which, he says, used excessive force on at least two occasions while he was in their care. “I saw them shoot people,” he says. “I saw them crash into cars while I was their passenger…. There was absolutely no reason, no provocation whatsoever.” Once, while en route to the Iraqi Ministry of Interior, Adame says he heard gunfire coming from the turret gunner in his own vehicle. He looked out the window of the humvee and “saw people ducking and falling…. The vehicle in front of us rammed into a car that was trying to get out of the way, and they just spun that guy around. He was out cold in that car, maybe even dead. I don’t know, but we just kept on going.”

His criticism of Blackwater in Iraq has put him in the cross hairs of Blackwater’s aggressive attacks. Adame’s has been receiving hate mail from Blackwater employees headed by executive vice president Bill Mathews.

In an internal corporate email, Mathews encouraged his colleagues to barrage Adame with mail (”he was too cowardly to put a phone number on the web,” Mathews noted in the message). “[H]e wants this company and all of us to cease to exist,” Mathews wrote in the email, which was obtained by the Raleigh News & Observer and posted to the newspaper’s web site. “Do you like your jobs? Are you sick and tired of the slanderous bullshit going on in DC? If so, would you all mind joining me in reminding Mr. Adame that he is running for office in our backyard…. Let’s run this goof out of Dodge…!”

Since then, Adame has been on the receiving end of “some pretty rough stuff,” he says. “I received all kinds of hate mail from Blackwater people. They use a lot of vulgarity. They tell me how Blackwater is defending America’s rights, and that we’re free because Blackwater is fighting for us. Give me a break! That is so erroneous and misleading. It’s just totally dishonest, but those people really believe it. Blackwater is a large organization, and they have a great way of propagandizing their product.”

Adame, who plans to hold a campaign event near Blackwater’s Moyock headquarters next month, is quick to point out that he has received no threats of physical harm from Blackwater, and despite some obscene emails, has engaged in constructive conversations with some of its employees. “These people don’t want to lose their jobs, and I understand that,” he says.

I feel very strongly about how extensively organized Blackwater has become,” he explains. “And I will do everything I can as a congressman to look into that, to find out whether or not the things they’re doing are even legal.”

Adame’s ActBlue page needs a serious injection for him to successfully beat Republican incumbent Walter B. Jones and Blackwater. We need to help Marshall Adame win North Carolina’s 3rd District and rid the U.S. of Blackwater.

Digby writes one of her brilliant posts, pointing to the latest Attorney General waffle on the subject of torture. Personally, I feel if anyone can qualify torture for any reason, then they, themselves, should be tortured. My ethical reasons are as sound as Mukasey’s: if civilized nations don’t torture, the world grows more civilized. And you can’t use logic with people convinced that their bad ethical judgment is actually good, so maybe experiencing torture will make them understand and less people will be tortured.

Which also means, since I qualified torture, I should be tortured, too.

I should. But it’s a small price to pay if civilization advances. Just make sure Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Gonzalez, Mukasey, Addington, Yoo, and all the other torture defenders get their fingernails ripped out when I do.

He’s a dangerous, hateful g