Blackwater License Being Pulled in Iraq
BAGHDAD - The Iraqi government said Monday that it was pulling the license of an American security firm allegedly involved in the fatal shooting of civilians during an attack on a U.S. State Department motorcade in Baghdad.
The Interior Ministry said it would prosecute any foreign contractors found to have used excessive force in the Sunday shooting. It was latest accusation against the U.S.-contracted firms that operate with little or no supervision and are widely disliked by Iraqis who resent their speeding motorcades and forceful behavior.
Interior Ministry spokesman Abdul-Karim Khalaf said eight civilians were killed and 13 were wounded when security contractors believed to be working for Blackwater USA opened fire in a predominantly Sunni neighborhood of western Baghdad.
“We have canceled the license of Blackwater and prevented them from working all over Iraqi territory. We will also refer those involved to Iraqi judicial authorities,” Khalaf said.
The spokesman said witness reports pointed to Blackwater involvement but said the shooting was still under investigation. It was not immediately clear if the measure against Blackwater was intended to be temporary or permanent.
Blackwater, based in Moyock, N.C., provides security for many U.S. civilian operations in the country.
Phone messages left early Monday at the company’s office in North Carolina and with a spokeswoman were not immediately returned.
The U.S. Embassy said a State Department motorcade came under small-arms fire that disabled one of the vehicles, which had to be towed from the scene near Nisoor Square in the Mansour district.
An embassy official provided no information about Iraqi casualties but said no State Department personnel were wounded or killed. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to media.
He said the shooting was being investigated by the State Department’s diplomatic security service and law enforcement officials working with the Iraqi government and the U.S. military.
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki late Sunday condemned the shooting by a “foreign security company” and called it a “crime.”
The decision to pull the license was likely to face a challenge as it would be a major blow to a company that was at the forefront of one of the main turning points in the war.
The 2004 battle of Fallujah - an unsuccessful military assault in which an estimated 27 U.S. Marines were killed, along with an unknown number of civilians - was retaliation for the killing, maiming and burning of four Blackwater guards in that city by a mob of insurgents.
Tens of thousands of foreign private security contractors work in Iraq - some with automatic weapons, body armor, helicopters and bulletproof vehicles - to provide protection for Westerners and dignitaries in Iraq as the country has plummeted toward anarchy and civil war.
Monday’s action against Blackwater was likely to give the unpopular government a boost, given the contractors’ widespread unpopularity.
Many of the contractors have been accused of indiscriminately firing at American and Iraqi troops, and of shooting to death an unknown number of Iraqi citizens who got too close to their heavily armed convoys, but none has faced charges or prosecution.
The question of whether they could face prosecution is a gray legal area. Unlike soldiers, they are not bound by the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Under a special provision secured by American-occupying forces, they are exempt from prosecution by Iraqis for crimes committed there.
Khalaf, however, denied that the exemption applied to private security companies.
Iraqi police said the contractors were in a convoy of six sport utility vehicles and left after the shooting. A witness said the gunfire broke out following an explosion.
“We saw a convoy of SUVs passing in the street nearby. One minute later, we heard the sound of a bomb explosion followed by gunfire that lasted for 20 minutes between gunmen and the convoy people who were foreigners and dressed in civilian clothes. Everybody in the street started to flee immediately,” said Hussein Abdul-Abbas, who owns a mobile phone store in the area.
The wartime numbers of private guards are unprecedented - as are their duties, many of which have traditionally been done by soldiers. They protect U.S. military operations and diplomats and have guarded high-ranking officials including Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Baghdad.
They also protect journalists, visiting foreign officials and thousands of construction projects.
Blackwater has an estimated 1,000 employees in Iraq, and at least $800 million in government contracts. It is one of the most high-profile security firms in Iraq, with its fleet of “Little Bird” helicopters and armed door gunners swarming Baghdad and beyond.
The secretive company, run by a former Navy SEAL, is based at a massive, swampland complex. Until the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks, it had few security contracts.
Since then, Blackwater profits have soared. And it has become the focus of numerous controversies in Iraq, including the May 30 shooting death of an Iraqi deemed to be driving too close to a Blackwater security detail.
In violence Monday, a suicide bomber detonated his explosives-laden car near a busy market in Baghdad, killing three people and wounding 10 in an attack that apparently targeted a police patrol, said a police officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity as he was not authorized to release the information.
Hamid Ghassan, a 20-year-old juice vendor, who described hearing the blast, said he was dismayed that al-Maliki’s government is “sitting safe, making agreements and lying to people while masses … are being killed.”
Associated Press writer Qassim Abdul-Zahra contributed to this report.
© 2007 The Associated Press
When will the presidential candidates from either party acknowledge the existence and extent of private contractors in Iraq?
Peace,
st john
Oh, great!
Now they will be transferred back to the US just in time for extra-legal outsourcing of police functions. Have you noticed the sudden uptick in stories about ‘understaffed’ police departments around the country?
Just imagine what the Blackwater version of crowd control will be if we protest.
New Orleans was just the beginning.
Remember, employees of this firm are NOT subject to any laws - anywhere.
Great news. It will be interesting to see Blackwater try to squirm out of this one.
———————-
http://antiwar.com
http://hungersite.com
———————-
“The time for war has past.”
The World Teacher
——————————
This could get interesting. I notice that all the comments about pulling the license and prosecuting those involved come from officials in the Maliki government. How much that is countered or supported by the US government will be interesting.
Usually an AP article is just full of comments from unnamed US Gov officials. This one has no comments except some vague comments acknowledging there was an attack.
And of course the interesting sidebar is that no one is safe in Iraq. Not even State Dept officials with the most outlandish private security money can by. Just another day in an Indiana market.
Can the Iraqi government do that, revoke their ability to operate in Iraq? I thought the US is the occupying force and can do whatever it wants.
Please dear God let it be true that the Iraqis have the power to stop Blackwater.
Bet the commander in chief and his generals never saw that one coming - better get those draft papers dusted off!
How can a company be immune from responsibility?
Someone is pulling the wool over our eyes!
How can a company be immune from responsibility?
Easy - company law, incorporate your company somewhere with lax laws, make sure that place has no law regarding corporate manslaughter, etc, etc.
I just heard this news story on the radio. Wouldn’t it be ironic if the al-Maliki government arrested the Blackwater mercenaries directly involved and turned them over to the Iraq Justice Ministry for a “fair” trial?
Condi is already on the case. Just heard she’ll be calling al-Maliki tout suite. Love to be a fly on the wall for that convo….The CNN talking heads are in a lather with such questions as “What will the American contractors that Blackwater protects do?” “This is very serious”, “Blackwater performs vital security functions” The spin is already spinning…
Ha. Just went to the Blackwater site (http://www.blackwaterusa.com/) and clicked on ‘Contact Us’. Got ‘Service Unavaiable’. Wonder why?
I think that every cent of profit they’ve realized should be re-distributed to the families of the innocents they’ve killed.
Blackwater are running black operations in Iraq. Their job is to make sure that chaos continues in Iraq so that 1: it can continue milking the US taxpayers for the exorbitant fees they charge, and 2) give the Bush admin all the reason to maintain forces in Iraq because they can’t secure themselves.
Sometimes you have to sit and wonder why these two factions, sunnis and shias in Iraq, are fighting each other when they were living peacefully with each other for so long. There were a lot of inter-sect marriage during Saddam’s time. What changed now. This smells like the same tactics being used by the Isrealis in dividing the Palestinians into two factions too. Hmmmm….a classic case of Imperial tactics.
The quote below is not entirely correct. The US military went in to Falluja, a town that suffered terribly in 1991. One incident alone, people were queuing up at a gas station to buy parafin for lamps, US planes flew very low and bombed the gas station. They knew exactly what they were doing. In the ensuing inferno, people rushed to help, including those from the local hospital. The planes again flew low, and bombed again - the helpers.
US troops were never going to be welcomes in Falluja. But they took over a school. A high building. Schooling is all, in Iraq. After all, it is ‘the cradle of civilisation.’ Not only did they take over and defile the school, paint crosses, pee and worse (news, websites) but took up on top of the building,where they could look down into people’s yards, where the women, uncovered heads etc,flimsy clothes, in the heat and privacy of their home, sat, talked, washed, cooked.What a shoddy, shameful violation of privacy by the soldiers.
The incensed residents held a wholly unarmed demonstration outside the school protesting. Nineteen I think, were shot by the ‘liberators’. At the same time, either that day or just after (doung this in haste, on top of head) General Abizaid was to visit. For what ever reason, he didn’t, but Blackwater’s mercenaries did. And they paid the price for the occupation of the school, the shooting of the demonstrators - and indeed for the fact that they were allies in an entirely illegal war and answerable to no authority.
Their killing and hannging over the bridge was appalling. But so are the occupation’s brutalities without end. They, since they are in Iraq illegally, anyway, can avoid being brutalised, they can go. Iraqis have to live with what the invasion has unleashed, after they have lived together for a thousand years.
‘The 2004 battle of Fallujah - an unsuccessful military assault in which an estimated 27 U.S. Marines were killed, along with an unknown number of civilians - was retaliation for the killing, maiming and burning of four Blackwater guards in that city by a mob of insurgents.’
If this results in the criminal prosecution of Blackwater thugs it will be quite a precedent. Perhaps Bush will be next, followed by Cheney, then other members of the White House cabal, then assorted neocons behind the scenes, then much of Congress, and of course the Pentagon, ETC.
Justice will then be carried out in accordance with Islamic law.
There can be no place in a Liberal democracy for private armies. Blackwater/ Black & Tans and gangs like them must be stamped out - they’ve no right to exist, anywhere.
Does Cheney want Blackwater in Iraq? Yes. Thats all you need to know.
I do have a good way of giving them their come-uppance. Send the whole Blackwater force deep into Iran, tell them to start shooting things up. Whoo boy, would’nt that be interesting to watch. Hmm..there could be a down side to that. They might qualify for workmans comp.
Blackwater, Dyncorp, Triple Canopy - I believe all these murderous mercenaries are banned by the Geneva Convention. These hired hit men don’t work for free but are paid for by our congress. Perhaps, when it is time to rid the world of evildoers, We-The-People should start there.
This is the best news in a long time…and unexpected too. Gives me much hope that “unseen forces” are definitely involved.
Another bit of good news: OJ in jail without bail..and maybe imprisoned for 30 years.
YEAH!!
I’m wondering why some nation doesn’t bring war crimes charges against the owner(?) and why not certain U S administration indiviuals. That would at least put some pressure on our government to change tactics.
Whatfools: Congress does not pay for these mercenaries. Taxpayers pay for them, as well as for Congress. They are indebted to us, the taxpayers for every cent they can burn. With no oversight to control the spending on privatized war machines the taxpayers will be paying for lord-only-knows what for the rest of their lives as well as their children and their children’s children.
You can bet al-Maliki is being threatened with dethroning if he doesn’t shape up and allow Blackwater to continue laundering those billions for the Bushgang…
This has been the best news i’ve read in awhile.
Hopefully the Bush administration will oppose this move by the “democratic” Iraqi government, and do everything in their power to try to stop it. That will just make the Bush admin look so bad.
and can we stop using the doublespeak and euphemisms.
These people are government hired and taxpayer funded mercenaries. That is the reality of what they do. Not a “security firm,” or “private contractor.” A private contractor is a (re)contruction company. And a security firm would, in a democratic society, be the police. Blackwater is neither.
Government hired and taxpayer funded mercenaries. And notice how nearly all Washington politicians, included Bush himself, and all his neo-con supporters have been absolutely silent and mum on this issue. They know it’s wrong, and they know they’re wrong.
Give me a break… the Iraqis are powerless against a powerful Bush contributor. Who do they think they are? A truly independent government not controlled by Bush? Blackwater will get a slap on the wrist and continue to operate there with impunity.
I’m sorry, did somebody say “Blackshirts”?
We have become what we despised most: FASCISTS!!!
And here are three people who LOVE GWBush and Crime Family:
1. The brainwashed by propaganda sheeple who still support Bush Co. Pity them.
2. Huge corporations, the actual force behind US policy. Fear them.
3. Hitler “Mein Gott they exposed the concentration camps on TV and the Americans still let it continue?” Watch him, else it’s what we will become…..
will be interesting to see how long until they get re-instated.
Just why is a private security company guarding State Department officials?
The Iraq Blackwater Test
Written by Larry C. Johnson
Monday, 17 September 2007
by Larry C. Johnson
Depending on whether the Blackwater security firm stays in Iraq will inform us whether Prime Minister Maliki has any power or is just a U.S. puppet. My money is on the puppet. Over the weekend Blackwater contractors escorting a State Department/US Embassy Baghdad convoy got into a shoot out. Spencer Ackerman at TPM reports that:
Yesterday’s incident involved an insurgent attack on a State Department convoy in the Sunni neighborhood of Mansour in western Baghdad. Blackwater personnel guarding the motorcade returned fire — “to defend themselves,” according to a State Department official quoted by The Washington Post. A Post reporter on the scene in Mansour witnessed Blackwater’s Little Bird helicopters “firing into the streets.” Almost immediately, an Interior Ministry spokesman said the company’s license to operate in Iraq would be revoked.
First problem. Blackwater does not have a license to operate in Iraq and does not need one. They have a U.S. State Department contract through Diplomatic Security. Instead of using Diplomatic Security officers or hiring new Security officers or relying on U.S. military personnel, the Bush Administration has contracted with firms like Blackwater, Triple Canopy, and others for people capable of conducting personnel security details. State Department is not about to curtail the contract with Blackwater, who is tightly wired into Washington. Plus, State Department simply does not have the bodies available to carry out the security mission.Second problem. The Iraqi government has zero power to enforce a decision to oust a firm like Blackwater. For starters, Blackwater has a bigger air force and more armored vehicles then the Iraqi Army and police put together. As Spencer Ackerman reported, Blackwater’s little bird helicopter (an aircraft normally used by U.S. special operations forces) that was firing mini guns at Iraqi targets on the ground this past weekend. I can only imagine how Americans would react if there were Russian, Chinese, Mexican, or French security firms running around the United States and getting into firefights in tough neighborhoods, such as South Central Los Angeles. We would just shrug our shoulders and say nothing. Right?
Yeah, that’s what I thought. This incident will enrage Iraqis and their subsequent realization that they are impotent to do anything about it will do little to support the fantasy that the surge is working. There are some Iraqis who genuinely want to run their own country. But we are not about to give them the keys to the car. Blackwater is staying.
Pollinate
Just ask the Romans how well it worked out for them once their Mercenaries had to be “retired” and called off of duty?
Eh?
Be nice to BlackWater American’s - they know where you live.
How in the hell did we end up with these guys? Send them back home to earn a real living like everyone else.
I think what also is worth noting is a recent article discussing how the DOD failed its accounting audit. Yet again, “$295 million appeared in the books, but nobody could account for where the money went.” In fact, the accounting was so shoddy, that the audit could not be completed, and each department had to be given a “disclaimer” noting delinquency. The Dept. of Homeland Security also miserably failed its audit and too had to be issued “disclaimer” notices. And yet, the Bush Administration has to contract with mercenary businesses like Blackwater. The corruption is just sickening!!
BLIGH, we better listen to what MASTERSHAKE and JJPETER just wrote.
Wanted:
Big, brute, racist, ‘merica lovin’, pick-em up drivin’, shot gun totin’ white men with an ignorant mean streak running right down to their balls - for fun assignment overseas where you get to kill “ragheads” and ‘ferinors’ who speak jibberish, bow and scape to some evil god, and eat wierdo food.
Pay is commencerate with the above mentioned mean streak.
Send your resume to:
BlackWater Human Resources
1 BlackWater Way
Murdering Bay, NC 23443
To me this is not good news.
This is a setup. Soon we’ll have 25,000 mercenary thugs here to control the protesting when we attack Iran.
Connect the dots. Do you really think al-Maliki ordered them out? He hasn’t done a damn thing since he was ‘elected’! The man is politically impotent.
We’re pulling Blackwater out to work for Homeland Security. Things are about to get bad.
Can we kick them out of the US now too??
Contractor Shooting Incidents on Iraqis
Monday September 17, 2007 7:46 PM
By The Associated Press
A look at some of the incidents involving private contractors firing on Iraqi civilians:
- September 2007: Contractors believed to be working for North Carolina-based security firm Blackwater USA kill eight Iraqi civilians and wound 13 in a firefight after a bombing near a State Department motorcade in Baghdad. The Iraqi government says it is revoking the firm’s license.
- May 2007: A Blackwater employee fatally shoots an Iraqi civilian deemed to be driving too close to a company security detail. A company spokeswoman says that based on incident reports and witness accounts, the employee acted lawfully and appropriately.
- December 2006: A drunken Blackwater employee fatally shoots a bodyguard for Shiite Vice President Adel Abdul-Mahdi, Iraqi and U.S. officials say. The incident is under investigation.
- 2006-2007: Two employees of Virginia-based Triple Canopy accuse their supervisor of shooting at Iraqi civilians for amusement after saying he was “going to kill somebody today.” The company fires all three employees for failing to immediately report incidents involving gunfire.
- 2005-2006: Former employees of Custer Battles, a Rhode Island-based firm, accuse co-workers of firing indiscriminately at civilians and crushing a car filled with Iraqi children and adults while trying to make their way through a traffic jam. The company denies the accusations.
- December 2005: Employees of London-based Aegis Defense Services post videos on the Internet showing company guards firing at Iraqi civilians from a moving vehicle. Aegis says the shootings were within profter they allegedly fired on U.S. forces and Iraqi civilians. The guards are released after three days and sent back to the U.S. None are charged.
And so it goes. . . there are a lot of American made antichild landmines that need attending to. . . perhaps a redeploynent of thugs is in order.
Congress does pay for this atrocity with the borrowed tax money of our grandchildren. And all this time we thought that slavery was prohibited by our constitution. Ha.
Isn’t the latest 50 billion beggery from bush for the ‘TROOPs’ really for these murdering scum like BlackWater et all?
Not another thin, f’in dime!
Do you hear DEMOCRATS????
This is a goodnews to the people of Iraq and the peace and justice-loving poeple around the world. Unless this “contract killing machine” called Blackwater is banned from the land of Iraq and other countries such as Somalia, the merciless killings of innocent people will continue. Blackwater is a microcosm of the US in the world. The employess of the Blackwater are not accountable under Iraqi or the US law, like the US government for its genocidal crimes.
The following is an interview of Jeremy Scahill by democracynow.com on February 8 2007. This is about the Blackwater contractor killing an Iraqi guard eleven times.
“JEREMY SCAHILL: Well, we don’t know. I mean, it’s very shady right now. What we understand from a mixture of the news reports, the US embassy, and now Andrew Howell, is that this individual, this Blackwater contractor, was allegedly off-duty. We understand there may have been some alcohol involved with it. And as Katy says, the reports indicate that he may have shot this Iraqi guard as many as eleven times.
But what’s important for people to understand is that there’s no statute of limitations on murder in the United States. And what the US has done is totally gutted Iraqi law. So the Iraqi government, we understand, wanted to go after this guy and prosecute him. He killed a security guard for — a senior Iraqi official, allegedly. And so when the Iraqi government started making rumblings that they potentially would prosecute him, well, he gets whisked out of the country by Blackwater. And, you know, Kucinich asks, is he going to be extradited to Iraq for murder? Andy Howell fumbles through — “I am not law enforcement” — mentions something about the FBI.
See, this is the very heart of what’s wrong with the privatization of this war right now. There is a culture of impunity in Iraq. These guys are killed, and their numbers don’t get counted. And they kill people, and they don’t get prosecuted.”
Jeremy Scahill in his new book, “Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army” writes, “Blackwater is the elite Praetorian Guard for the ‘global war on terror,’ with its own military base, a fleet of twenty aircraft, and 20,000 private contractors at the ready. Run by a multimillionaire Christian conservative who bankrolls President Bush and his allies, its forces are capable of overthrowing governments.” From Iraq to New Orleans, Blackwater has continued to pull in multi-million-dollar government contracts, mostly without accountability and in near-secrecy.
This reflects what the world mafia-don, the US, is involved in Iraq (and the rest of the world).
this is an interest stand taken by government of iraq. must be a surprise to bushco - i don’t think this is the kind of “standing up” they were hoping to see.
blackwater, a company which is a disgrace for any country to allow to operate on its soil, was involved, if you recall, with a lawsuit launched in the us by the families of four blackwater employees who were killed by ied and then dragged through the streets of baghdad and then hung in the street, as they say, for the sport of the crows.
the families argued in court that the company did not provide enough workplace safety, an interesting argument given the locale, and as such they were entitled to compensation.
blackwater hired the famed ken starr - the blowjob prosecutor of the clinton era - and in his address to the court mr star tried to make the point that giving any compensation whatsoever to these families for their loss would “send a chill through the war profiteering community”.
and i am not making this up.
in his book, the assassins gate
http://www.amazon.com/Assassins-Gate-America-Iraq/dp/0374299633
by george packer:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Packer
he clearly covered the legal status of the private contractors who felt they were subject to no law, anywhere.
wonder how this is gonna wash now.
i can hardly wait to see the delegation from blackwater go into cheney’s bunker to say that, “wah, we are being treated unfairly.”
i also wonder if maliki can make this stick
The following interview with Jeremy Scahill highlights the link between the American rightwing evangelical christians and the US “contract killing machine”, the Blackwater.
“Erik Prince (the founder of the Blackwater) comes from a very wealthy rightwing Christian dynasty in the town of Holland, Michigan. His father was a man named Edgar Prince, who was a sort of pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps capitalist. He built up an empire called the Prince Manufacturing Corp., and they manufactured auto parts, serviced the auto industry. And, in fact, what the company is perhaps best known for was for creating the now-ubiquitous lighted sun visor. So when you pull down the visor in your car and it lights up, that’s the Prince family’s invention. And it was a very profitable business.
And so, young Erik Prince grew up in this very heady atmosphere that mixed the sort of free-market gospel with the literal Christian gospel. His family, they were strict Calvinists. And Erik Prince was political at a very early age and watched as his father used his company as a cash-generating engine to fuel the rise of what we now know as the religious right in this country, as well as the Republican Revolution of 1994. His father gave the seed money to Gary Bauer to found the Family Research Council. Young Erik Prince was in the first crop of interns to serve at the Family Research Council. They gave significant funding to James Dobson and his group Focus on the Family, which is now sort of the premier evangelical organizing network in this country, the “prayer warriors.”
And what’s interesting is that Erik Prince’s sister Betsy married into another powerhouse Michigan family, perhaps the single greatest bankroller of the Republican Revolution: Dick DeVos’s Amway Corporation. Erik Prince’s sister married Dick DeVos, the heir to the Amway fortune. And Amway was a company that sold home services products and sort of was accused of running the operation like a cult and using their marketers to not only sell their products, but to sell their political agenda, the rise of the sort of Christian right and Republican Revolution. And so, this marriage of these two families was sort of typical of the merging of the monarchist families in old Europe.”
www.democracynow.org, March 20 2007.
mairs writes: “Please dear God let it be true that the Iraqis have the power to stop Blackwater.”
Not only does the Iraqi government (such as it is) have the power to stop Blackwater; they also have the power to kick the Americans out. The war would end virtually overnight if Maliki took this action. But he’s scared for his own security and needs the Americans there for his own protection.
But his action against Blackwater could win him some points with Iraqis. If it does, he might just have the nerve to tell the Americans hasta la vista, baby.
Did Malaki also not once say that Iraq can survive without the American presence? In fact, did he not once say that Iraq would be better off without the American presence?
Please consider contacting and encouraging all the Senators who are supporting legislation to investigate and oversee wartime contracts and their private contractors. Details and the latest list of supporters are at Senator Webb’s website (scroll down to it) @ http://webb.senate.gov/
THANKS.
That’s the best news I’ve heard come out of Iraq since the fighting started.
Finally, the so-called “private” security company paid with our tax dollars, appears about to be taken to a court of law and held accountable for their lawless behavior. I wonder if Bush will be able to keep this from happening.
These are the people who should be held in the prison at Quantanamo. Most, if not all of these people are the true terrorists. I hope Iraq puts a stop to this gang of mercenaies before we have them walking around our own country.
“Let’s fight them over there before we have to fight them over here.”
With the erosion of US power, you’ll find brutal manifestations of organized crime mixed with deeply religious narcissism. Dangerous, dangerous developments like Blackwater, need exposure to the light of day and the intervention of justice before they further ferment and inflict more damage on all of us. Erik Prince is that guy you knew in high school, lucky like the Beatles, and very useful for his dangerously short sited convictions. A lot of kids were wearing combat fatigues and going to see Rambo II back in the 80s, and quoting those passages in the Bible about “laying waste” and all those other excuses for violence. It’s time we outlaw Blackwater here, pull their “license”, demolish the compound, dedicate the areas as wildlife sanctuaries free of militants.
Blackwater Ban “Inevitable”
By Noah Shachtman September 17, 2007 | 2:16:29 PMCategories: Mercs
“It was inevitable,” That’s P.W. Singer’s reaction to the Iraqi government ” banning” military contractor Blackwater from the country. For years, no one has followed the rise of these privatized soldiers more closely than Singer, a Brookings Institution Senior Fellow and author of the ground-breaking Corporate Warriors. Companies like Blackwater have been roaming Iraq without oversight or management for years. Of course the Iraqi government was going to lose patience. Here is Singer’s take:
Details are still fuzzy on the incident that lead the Iraqi government to act against Blackwater. But it may be almost irrelevant to the results. Initial reports from the U.S. embassy are that a Blackwater USA convoy that was guarding State Department employees came under fire in the Mansour district in Baghdad. A vehicle was disabled and a lengthy gun battle broke out. Witnesses are reporting that it lasted at least 20 minutes. The Iraqi Interior Ministry is reporting that 8 Iraqi civilians were killed and 13 wounded in the crossfire. There will likely be lots of claims back and forth about whether the shootings were justified or not, whether who was killed were primarily insurgents or civilians, etc. and likely everyone will have their own spin. It will be interesting to see whether any video finds its way out.
The only thing we do know is that the Iraqi Government is not happy it all, with the Iraqi Prime Minister (who is Shia, so no pre-disposed to covering up for a Sunni attack) blaming the killings on the company’s employees and describing it as a “crime.” The Iraqi Interior Ministry says it is pulling the license of the company to operate in Iraq and will try to prosecute any foreign contractors found to have used excessive force in the Sunday shooting.
Still, even before all the details come to light, a few things are clear:
1) It was inevitable. Private military contractors have been involve din all sorts of questionable incidents, since the very start of the Iraq enterprise. U.S. military officers frequently expressed their frustrations with sharing the battlefield with such private forces operating under their own rules and agendas, and worry about the consequences for their own operations. For example, Brigadier General Karl Horst, deputy commander of the US 3rd Infantry Division (responsible for Baghdad area) put it tellingly two years back, “These guys run loose in this country and do stupid stuff. There’s no authority over them, so you can’t come down on them hard when they escalate force. They shoot people, and someone else has to deal with the aftermath.”
No one has kept an exact count of the incidents, but some notable examples include:
The Aegis “trophy video,” in which contractors set video of them shooting at civilians to Elvis’ “Runaway Train,” and put it on the Internet.
The alleged joyride shootings of Iraqi civilians by a Triple Canopy supervisor (which became the subject of a lawsuit after the two employees, who claim to have witnessed the shootings, lost their jobs).
Armed contractors from the Zapata firm detained by U.S. forces, who claimed they saw the private soldiers indiscriminately firing not only at Iraqi civilians, but also U.S. Marines. Again, they were not charged, as the legal issues could not be squared. Private military firms may be part of the military operation, but they and their employees are not part of the military — nor its chain of command or code of justice.
Abu Ghraib, where reported 100% of the translators and up to 50% of the interrogators at the prison were private contractors from the Titan and CACI firms respectively. The U.S. Army found that contractors were involved in 36% of the proven abuse incidents and identified 6 particular employees as being culpable in the abuses. However, while the enlisted U.S. Army soldiers involved in the Abu Ghraib abuse were properly court martialed for their crimes, not one of the private contractors named in the U.S. Army investigation report have yet been charged, prosecuted, or punished, with the U.S. Army feeling that it did not even have jurisdiction to do so if it wanted.
The inevitable part was not just the shootings, but the government’s reaction, which has been on the horizon for a while. The Iraqi government is supposedly a sovereign state, so it is not surprising that at some point it would start to act like one, trying to enforce its monopoly over violence against other armed organizations on the ground.
2) Pay attention to the politics. The underlying politics to this are important to understand. Private contractors are a visible and especially disliked part of the US presence in Iraq. So a good way for Iraqi government officials, who are often depicted as stooges of the US, to try to burnish their nationalist credentials is to go after the contractors. They can look like it is standing up to the big bad outsiders, but not do so against US troops. As AFP noted, “Monday’s action against Blackwater was likely to give the unpopular government a boost, given the contractors’ widespread unpopularity.”
3) That it was Blackwater is unsurprising. As illustrated by the examples listed above, Blackwater is not the only company working in Iraq. Indeed, the L.A. Times recently reported that there may be over 160,000 private contractors working in Iraq, as many as the overall number of US forces even after the “surge.” However, Blackwater has been one of the most visible, for an industry that typically tries to avoid the limelight. So, if an example was going to be made, it was a likelier target than say, for example, an unknown British or Bulgarian company.
More importantly, there is perhaps greater tension between Blackwater and the Iraqi government than others. This is not just because armed Blackwater guards are the contractors that most often senior Iraqi government officials would run into in their daily dealings with their U.S. counterparts, but because a more recent incident. On Christmas Eve 2006, a Blackwater employee allegedly got drunk while inside the Green Zone in Baghdad and got in an argument with a guard of the Iraqi Vice President. He then shot the Iraqi dead. The employee was quickly flown out of the country and, 9 months later, has not been charged with any crime. Imagine the same thing happening in the US, an Iraqi embassy guard, drunk at a a Christmas party, shooting a Secret Service agent guarding Vice President Cheney, and you can see some potential for underlying tension there.
4) This is what happens when government fails to act. The problems with the absence of oversight, management, doctrine, and even law and order when it comes to private military contractors have been known for a while. Heck, I wrote a book about it back in 2003, before the Iraq invasion. While the industry has boomed, vacuum of policy and strategy has continued for years. In June 2006, fore example, the Government Accountability Office reported that “private security providers continue to enter the battle space without coordinating with the U.S. military, putting both the military and security providers at a greater risk for injury.”
Complaints are also coming from U.S. officers in the field about the underlying harm that the lack of policy is having. For example, U.S. Army Colonel Peter Mansoor is one of the most influential military thinkers on counterinsurgency. In 2007, he told Jane’s Defense Weekly that the US military needs to take “a real hard look at security contractors on future battlefields and figure out a way to get a handle on them so that they can be better integrated - if we’re going to allow them to be used in the first place…if they push traffic off the roads or if they shoot up a car that looks suspicious, whatever it may be, they may be operating within their contract –to the detriment of the mission, which is to bring the people over to your side. I would much rather see basically all armed entities in a counter-insurgency operation fall under a military chain of command.”
Yet, nothing much has happened. Indeed, the only real action was limited efforts in the Congress. In Fall 2006, Senator Lindsay Graham slipped into the 2007 Defense Bill a clause that could potentially place contractors and others who accompany the U.S. military in the field under the U.S. military’s Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ). That is, he changed the law defining UCMJ to cover civilians not just in times of declared war but also contingency operations. Almost 10 months later, however, no Pentagon guidance has been issued on how this clause might be used by JAGs in the field. So, its impact so far has been like a tree falling in the forest when it comes to incidents like this.
More broadly, there have been several recent efforts at bringing some transparency and oversight to the U.S. side of the industry. Key players have been Representatives Jan Schakowsky and David Price, and Senator Barack Obama (Obama’s bill, the “Transparency and Accountability in Military and Security Contracting Act of 2007,” essentially brings together the reforms sought by Schakowsky and Price on the House side). These have not yet passed into law, but may in the upcoming debates. Whether the executive branch will use them though returns us back to the problem of inaction on Graham’s bill.
The point is that the U.S. government has paid for the industry for years, but try to ignore the accompanying responsibility for the consequences. In lieu of our own inaction, the Iraqi government has stepped in, perhaps in a way that we may not be happy with.
Of course, there is an underlying irony. There are reports that the “license,” that the Iraqi government is supposedly revoking, doesn’t exist. The Iraqi Interior Ministry is the entity that every contractor is supposed to register with, but it is also the organization that the recent panel led by retired General James Jones described as “dysfunctional” and “a ministry in name only.”So many companies have been unable to register and many contractors have even had to resort to using their business cards as if they were official IDs. It will be interesting to see if this included the very company hired to guard senior US leaders in Iraq.
5) Over outsource and you paint yourself into a corner. This is what happens when you hollow out your operations. Blackwater has a contract to guard State Department employees. Now, the question must be asked, if the company cannot do so, what happens next?
Tongue in cheek, one could say that we all learned last week that: (a) the U.S. has enough extra military forces in Iraq and (b) the security situation is getting better. So, if this is true, then what’s all the fuss?
Of course, we all know that the whole Kabuki play last week in Congress was false and that the security situation is atrocious and State personnel still need to be guarded. Back in the day, all of these roles would have been filled either by military forces or State Department diplomatic security. But our military forces are stretched thin, and the government’s diplomatic security force has been hollowed out at the same time that the need for it has expanded (please note: a consortium of companies led by Blackwater got a $1 billion contract to do the global State Department diplomatic security job last year, so it was never a lack of money that was the cause of the hollowing).
So, in the short term following such a market failure, we will likely have to either 1) ignore the Iraqis’ wishes and just keep on using Blackwater contractors as before, 2) find another company to step in and quick-fill take on these roles in lieu of the firm, or 3) negotiate with the Iraqis to find terms under which the firm might continue to carry out the operation (such as promising a joint investigation, payments to civilians etc.). Obviously, none of these is a great solution in the short term and none solve the long-term problems. But those are the terrible cards we have in our hands right now. But again, we can’t blame anyone else for having such bad cards when it comes to military outsourcing. We dealt these cards to ourselves.
As we now see in Iraq and elsewhere, the privatized military industry is a reality of the 21st century. This entrance of the profit motive onto the battlefield opens up vast, new possibilities, but also a series of troubling questions – for democracy, for ethics, for management, for law, for human rights, and for national and international security. At what point do we begin answering them?
– P.W. Singer is Senior Fellow and Director of the 21st Century Defense Initiative at The Brookings Institution. He is the author of Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry. His writings are available at pwsinger.com.
blackwater starting wage 150k up to 250k. no tax.
Where is the World court when you need it?
” The interior ministry’s director of operations, Maj Gen Abdul Karim Khalaf, said authorities would prosecute any foreign contractors found to have used excessive force.”
Well it’s about f**cking time! Why the Iraqis were abiding by any “law” we demanded, especially the immunity granted mercenaries, was insane.
“The BBC’s Hugh Sykes in Baghdad says it is generally assumed that Iraqi courts have no authority over foreign private security contractors.”
Or:
“Personnel have no combat immunity under international law if they engage in hostilities.”
Here’s what’ll happen: anti-American Blackwater will throw a few scapegoats out, all non-Americans. “Bad apple” South Africans, or El Salvadorians will fry, the Iraq “law” will be rewritten to re-grant immunity (and retroactively declare Blackwater all good and wonderful,) and the game will continue.
This is just one example of how “privatization” of the public sector just - doesn’t - work.
zoya wrote:
“Not only does the Iraqi government (such as it is) have the power to stop Blackwater; they also have the power to kick the Americans out. The war would end virtually overnight if Maliki took this action. But he’s scared for his own security and needs the Americans there for his own protection.”
Remind anyone of ol’ Diem?
Oh, sorry, that’s right, only the historical revisionists from the right can dare to compare Iraq to Vietnam…..
Cheneybush - always with the irony:
Pincus, WPost, today: “But 10 days ago, his (Petreaus) commanders in Baghdad began advertising for private contractors to work in combat-supply warehouses on U.S. bases throughout Iraq because half the soldiers who had been working in the warehouses were needed for patrols, combat and protection of U.S. forces.”
Bet contractors are lining up in a hurry now, eh? And why the hell is Petreaus giving us a “report” if he’s got commanders? Shouldn’t we be hearing from his bosses first, then the minion?
The growth of rogue mercenary companies is based on the right-wing conviction and propaganda that “there is no alternative” to the use of force combined with the profit motive.
The right-wing’s stated goal is peace. The right-wing’s true goal is peace through force and unjust wealth transfer from poor to rich.
Best news out of Iraq in quite some time. And we don’t need to see them anywhere in the U.S. either. They’re nothing but Cheney’s attack dogs.
milesofmusic - the Blackwater four were sent into a war zone without a map. Their dead bodies were hanged from a bridge in Fallujah. I think that thousands of massacred civilians are still there.
Blackwater AKA Regan’s “invisible hand of the marketplace”
AKA mercenaries AKA murderers
In a better world, or under a different kind of adminstration and Congress, Blackwater would be kicked out of the U. S. as well as Iraq.
This mercenary firm is an extension of a hatred, greed, and violence that has been part of this country since the founding of its first colonies, beginning with the extermination of Native Americans and continuing today with the wholesale destruction of countries like Iraq and cities like New Orleans. The worst of the American character has never before been so revealed before the world.
Bush and Cheney’s crusade on behalf of the ultra-rich will only lead to our demise as a nation–the signs are already there, for example in recent stock-market fluctuations. We can only waste so much money on wars of choice before a dramatic downturn. We’re going bankrupt while the rich get richer.
Bush and Cheney, and others like them, don’t care–they can move to Dubai or wherever they wish for safe haven, using the money they’ve stolen from our pockets and from the pockets of those living, dying, or in exile from the Cradle of Western Civilization.
What can we do, what will we do, short of violent rebellion, to bring this war in Iraq, this occupation, to a halt?
What can we do to stop Bush and Cheney from bombing Iran, or having Israel do the dirty deed for us?
What can we do besides wait for November 2008–when such waiting may give us only a new president, named Clinton or Obama, say, who like Bush have said we need to keep nuclear war on the table?
I think it’s time to shut the government down, but I don’t know that we’re collectively up to it.
I take heart from the tens of thousands who took part in the protests in Washington, DC, and especially in the 200 or so who risked arrest there on behalf of peace.
Were those actions to be duplicated on a regular basis in cities nationwide, I believe that neither the corporate media nor the White House could ignore us.
If the jails, courts, and halls of government were regularly filled with people demanding that our troops and mercenaries be brought back now, I think we would be heard, and heeded.
Anything short of that I think Bush and Congress can safely ignore, and will ignore.
Read Naomi Klein’s article in the Nation concerning the privatization of war. Also, new book coming out: Shock Doctrine. On youtube there are videos of her speech in BC earlier this year.//
Sorry, but the author needs to speak for himself.
I certainly didn’t deal the Blackhawk card to America. I don’t recall being given a choice about that. Nor Bush et al — I voted both times against them. And now we’re learning that in all probability both elections were fraudulent, putting Bush in the WH.
I have a real problem with writers and speakers who “blame” the current devastations America is facing on all Americans. It makes it pretty clear that they don’t know what they’re talking about.
But it’s obvious that if anything is going to be done about the devastations, it is now up to American citizens themselves — the Democratic win in 2006 was worse than useless. That election was our last chance to bring about an orderly and lawful resolution of the problems Bush has caused — a legislative solution. Now it’s time for citizen action, preferably nonviolent but not necessarily “lawful”, given the Patriot Act and other measures designed to keep us in our place.
I trust the Mara Salvatruchas a hell of lot more than these Black Water goons anyday!
Yes! Well done Iraq. Expel these bastards and let Bush unleash them on the American public.
License? What license? This GOP Death Squad ain’t got no stinking license! They prowl the world like ZARDOZ - murdering and maiming for fun and profit.
“The Iraqi government said Monday….” What? since when is there an Iraqi government?
Great posts.
Freedom and justice may take time.
I hope Iraqis are keeping good records as it took decades after WWII to track down Nazi war criminals.
And SPEAKING OF WAR CRIMES, DOES ANYONE KNOW, IF DUPLETED URANIUM WEAPONS WERE USED ON FALLUJAH ?
Have Iraqis checked out Fallujah with radiation detection devices for DU ?
The sad fact is DU dust is impossible to clean up and remains deadly for billions of years, but that also means it remains as evidence more or less until the end of time as we know it !
One positive note is the very existence of 160,000 private contractors means the U.S. Military cannot sustain the empire. Even with mercenaries the situation is out of control as long as Iraqi resistance continues.
BRAINSTORM: The “contractors” will do all they can to keep picking the taxpayers pockets by lobbying Congress and giving campaign donation BRIBES. This must be investigated and then we must publicize who in Congress is supporting mercenaries and then go public to their voters with that information.
THUS, a very positive direction for the anti-war movement is to begin the political process of making American government funded mercenary armies controversial and then illegal. They are banned in many nations.
Also, speaking of liberation movements, the French had over a million troops(I think)in ALGERIA and the resistance movement eventually TURNED THE TIDE WITH a combination of GUERILLA RESISTANCE AND INTERNATIONAL POLITICAL ACTIVISM.
abstract from “France and the Algerian War” :
France’s war in Algeria from 1954-62 has prompted new historical research and political polemics since 1992. Especially controversial has been an acknowledgement that torture was practiced systematically, and the fact that French governments refused until 1999 to admit that Algeria was a real war, not just ‘a law and order problem’. Access to French archives, along with publication of memoirs and collections of letters by conscript troops, has permitted fresh social, cultural and literary perspectives, and new insights about the memory of this war in France and Algeria. The war’s strategies and military operations, however, have been neglected. Yet these aspects illuminate the nature of the armed challenges by nationalist insurgents in the era of Cold War and European decolonizations. The war’s international diplomacy suggests that another ‘operational theatre’ - that of the United Nations and world opinion - was where the Algerian National Liberation Front really outmaneuvered France. This ensured that French Algeria’s days were numbered by 1960, despite French success in defeating the armed insurrection within Algeria.
IRAQ MUST WIN THE WAR OF IDEAS !
One must wonder at the minds that came up with the name Blackwater. Whitewater is potable, drinkable water. Greywater is domestic wastewater from laundry, dishes and showers but blackwater is that which contains human effluents.
benijaja writes:
To me this is not good news.
This is a setup. Soon we’ll have 25,000 mercenary thugs here to control the protesting when we attack Iran.
Connect the dots. Do you really think al-Maliki ordered them out? He hasn’t done a damn thing since he was ‘elected’! The man is politically impotent.
We’re pulling Blackwater out to work for Homeland Security. Things are about to get bad.
—————-
i have got to admit this is a good point.
and it isn’t just the blackwater boys, there are the troops coming home as well with all those bad little movies running around their brains.
we see high suicide rates among them.
then the countless more men and women with broken bodies and missing limbs, it is an epic tragedy.
to say nothing of the iraqi losses.
i am sure these blackwater boys will be useful in rounding up the citizens of the united states wherever they may be for internment in the fema concentration camps.
read about them here:
http://www.apfn.org/apfn/camps1.htm
here is a sample of the legal options that are, as we speak,m available to the president:
Executive Orders associated with FEMA that would suspend the Constitution
and the Bill of Rights. These Executive Orders have been on record for
nearly 30 years and could be enacted by the stroke of a Presidential
pen:…
EXECUTIVE ORDER 10990
allows the government to take over all modes of transportation and control
of highways and seaports.
EXECUTIVE ORDER 10995
allows the government to seize and control the communication media.
EXECUTIVE ORDER 10997
allows the government to take over all electrical power, gas, petroleum,
fuels and minerals.
EXECUTIVE ORDER 10998
allows the government to seize all means of transportation, including
personal cars, trucks or vehicles of any kind and total control over all
highways, seaports, and waterways.
ow!
sorry; benihaha writes
“Erik Prince, Blackwater’s founder, is a former SEAL who is deeply involved in Republican Party politics. Since 1998, he has funneled roughly $200,000 to GOP committees and candidates, including President Bush. In 2004, Blackwater retained the Alexander Strategy Group, the PR and lobbying firm that closed down earlier this year due to its embarrassing ties to Jack Abramoff and Tom DeLay. (Paul Behrends, a former national security adviser to Congressman Dana Rohrabacher, handled the account for Alexander. After the firm shut down, Behrends moved on to a firm called C&M Capitolink, and took the Blackwater account with him.)”
Another deal of cronyism gone bad. Besides having their liscence revoked these guys should be brought up on charges for the murder of innocent civilians, and their own employees that were killed in Fallujah
In February of this year, relatives of the four slain Blackwater USA contractors testified, at a House of Representatives hearing in Washington held by California Democrat Rep. Henry Waxman, on the company’s operations. The families of the slain men, still unclear about what happened when their loved ones were killed, sued Blackwater USA for wrongful death and “in the hope that their questions will be answered,” the Associated Press reported in mid-June.
The lawsuit alleges that Blackwater sent the men on a job with inadequate equipment and protection.
According to the suit, AP pointed out, “the men should have been traveling in fully armoured vehicles and should have had a guard in each vehicle acting as a rear gunner to protect them from attack.”
The legal battle could have much broader implications. It “could prompt more government oversight of security contracting companies and determine the extent of their legal liability in the war zone,” AP noted.
Blackwater has assembled a high-profile well-connected legal team to combat the suit. They also filed a 10-million-dollar counterclaim. Blackwater’s legal dream team — which once included Fred Fielding, now White House counsel — includes Kenneth Starr, the special prosecutor who investigated the Monica Lewinsky and Whitewater scandals during the Bill Clinton administration.
Blackwater maintains that since it was working for the government, it was “subject to the same protections against lawsuits as the military, which cannot be sued for the deaths or injuries of its troops,” AP reported. The company “argues that the four families’ lawsuit ‘unconstitutionally intrudes on the exclusive authority of the military of the federal government to conduct military operations abroad.’”
When you try to fight a war on the cheap with highered guns and no true oversight this is what you get. If the government wants to go off and fight private wars with private mercenaries than they should not do it with public funds. These people do not represent us. When are we going to realize that they are our true enemies.
so, blackwater maintains that they are the government.
see ya’ll at the camps folks.
Here’s the low-down on Blackwater as of about a year ago, fraud, lawsuits, the dirty laundry list, headed, of course, by a “born-again Christian”:
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060508/scahill
Hell Blackwater, just kill the rest of us while you are at it. I don’t want to live in the world after you get through with it anyway.
As I understand Paul, joined at the hip with Sharon, Bremer’s order 17 Blackwater like all our other mercenaries are completely immune from Iraqi or anybodies laws. So when they run out of clay pigeons they can toss Baghdad babies into the air with complete impunity. Christian values I suppose.
mercenaries infiltrate the companies of the regular soldiers in iraq and afganistan..too many soldiers,who have spoken out against the bushwar,have died,too many to be just coincidence.yes,bush already has the plans on our table..to control us domestically with mercenaries.the mercenaries are busy practising in iraq and afganistan on insurgents,civilians(women and children)and even our own soldiers.
STARTING NOW
THERE IS IN EFFECT
THE WORLD-WIDE
*** BOYCOTT-TO-BANKRUPTCY ***
OF
EXXON/MOBILE CORPORATION
THE BOYCOTT WILL END WHEN THE U.N. CERTIFIES THAT IRAQ IS A SOVEREIGN NATION AND THAT HOSTILITIES HAVE CEASED.
WHY EXXON? BECAUSE AT THE CORE OF THIS MESS ARE THE CORPORATION AND OIL. THERE ARE OTHERS AS WELL, BUT WE MUST FOCUS ON JUST ONE. BECAUSE IT IS SOMETHING WE CAN DO. BECAUSE IT IS LEGAL, NON-VIOLENT AND WILL SEND A MESSAGE FROM THE PEOPLE OF THE WORLD THAT WE WILL HAVE OUR PLANET BACK!!
BUY NO PRODUCT.
SELL THE STOCK IF YOU HAVE IT.
DEAL WITH COMPANIES WHICH DO NOT USE THEIR PRODUCTS.
PETITION YOUR LOCAL GOVERNMENT TO USE OTHER BRANDS.
BE COURTEOUS TO THE EMPLOYEES AND HELP DISPLACED WORKERS FIND EMPLOYMENT ELSEWHERE.
NOW AND FOR AS LONG AS IT TAKES.
THE PEOPLE OF THIS WORLD ARE ONE!
IF WE ACT AS ONE—WE ARE AS ONE!!
TELL 11 TO TELL 11 TO TELL 11.
PEACE
Can’t wait till they come home.
ummmmmm
begining to believe that
money
maybe
has no usefull
purpose
ken
You surly don’t want the Blackwater to come home!? We will have enough trouble with the real soldiers and their mental illnesses! It will only get worse here if they do come home! Watch you daughters and your kids!
The good news is this will have an immediate and direct effect on our having to leave Iraq sooner then later. There are nearly as many private security contractors in Iraq as military.
The bad news is this will free them up for Iran and here.
Either way the Warrior Nation that was once the former United States has created a monster and this monster that is a nation of professional killers needs to be feed. And once they have feasted on all that their masters tell them to they’ll turn on each other until nothing is left.
What on earth makes anyone think Blackwater is leaving? Who, precisely, is going to make them? The MSM is already equivocating and calling it “justified” and “appropriate” use of force. This will be papered over. It will blow over in a few days (hours?) in the US news. Americans are unconcerned. The Iraqis, however, and those so-called islamo-fascists will never forget. And this will be piled on an ever-growing mountain of wrongs and grievances for which vengeance will some day be extracted. Woe is us. A curse upon Bush and all who supported his irresponsible folly of a war.
When I started this post there were 82 comments in this thread. Some are more interesting than others. hobbs September 17th, 2007 3:46 pm suggested some more futile letter writing to one of our oh so effective “representatives.”
anney September 17th, 2007 6:20 pm calls for “citizen action.” Whatever that means, it will be met with violent suppression.
snydly September 17th, 2007 11:43 pm calls for a boycott of EXXON. Are you going to organize and initiate this snydly? As for myself, I rarely drive at all anymore so I’ve been boycotting for a long time.
I don’t think anyone really had any serious suggestions for a solution to our dilemma.
Everyone is bitching, moaning, and screaming bloody murder. Everyone wants this nightmare to end. Yet when one humble soul makes a small desperate effort to do SOMETHING, however futile it may ultimately be, the response is either crickets chirping or ridicule.
How hard could it be for you ALL to take 30 seconds and sign this meaningless petition? If it accomplishes nothing then, when we meet in labor camp, you can say, “I told you so.” If, by some miracle, it starts a snowball rolling down the hill you can all say that you helped save the world?
30 seconds, a minute tops; then you can come right back to CommonDreams and forget it ever happened.
PLEASE. http://www.petitionspot.com/petitions/unsanam2
Someone wondered if Depleted Uranium munitions were used in Faluja.
Yes.
Hundreds of thousands of rounds of DU .50 caliber and 25mm cannon ammunition were used by US M-1 Abrams tanks on CIVILIAN buildings. The civilian population of Faluja is almost non-existant. It is a virtual ghost town.
“We have canceled the license of Blackwater and prevented them from working all over Iraqi territory. We will also refer those involved to Iraqi judicial authorities,” Khalaf said.
The above bullshit was intended for internal Iraqi consumption.
The Americans are the de facto government in Iraq, and they would have the final say. The Blackwater mercenaries comprise over 50,000 and make up part of the U.S. occupation forces.
BENIHAHA
i don’t believe they would have to enact a scenario like this if all they wanted was to get them back to the u.s. they would just order them, or recruit more in the u.s.
ROUNDABOUT
read my post to you on the article about iran at the top of the page. (iaea chief warns about striking iran.)
KEM PATRICK
welcome back. you are very quiet?????????????
My guess is that Maliki will find that he does not have the power to kick the mercenaries out of Iraq. They will stay but the anger of Iraqis at the powerlessness of their puppet regime and at the US may finally blow beyond any ability of the neocons to delude themselves and the few remaining true believers that anything that can be painted as a victory or gained is possible.
Would be something to see if they get a fair trial like Saddam’s.
Civilian Contractors Were A U.S. Department of Defense Creation from the 70´s
During the Iran Contra Scandal. The United States Congress had discovered that the Department of Defense had set up Civilian Companies as “Off Book Operations”…..
Donald Rumsfeld, in 2002, admitted that the Department of Defense could not account for over 2.3 trillion dollars worth of expenses. Nobody, I mean nobody, investigated that.
The GAO, in 2003, found that the Department of Defense could not account for another 1 trillion dollars of expenses. Again, nobody imvestiigated that.
Accenture, formerly known as Anderson Consulting Company (Remeber that name from the Enron Scandal days?) has been given hefty U.S. Government contracts and they are well versed in “Off Book Operations”.
Blackwater, I believe, is nothing more than an “Off Book Operation”. Cofer Black, former Director of the CIA´s Counter Terrorism Department, is now Vice President of Blackwater.
That, America, is how it works. You let Civilian Companies like: Blackwater, Dyncorp, Triple Canopy, Titan, and CACI do the dirty work and they are all beyond Congressional Review.
What happened to that B52 that was loaded with nuclear weapons and sent to Barksdale AFB, the staging area for the Middle East?
Their license has been pulled. Oh dear. BAD, BAD, BLACKWATER! BAD, BAD!
Oh, but wait a minute! How many corporations have been publically called BAD BAD? Let me see … ExxonMobile, Union Carbide, Coca-Cola, Nike, Wal-Mart - the list is endless.
Just how many of these corporations have changed their practices just because they have been called BAD, BAD in public? Just how many of these BAD BAD corporations are booking the highest profits in their histories?
Same old. Same old. Nothing will change. Our biggest problem is seeing a glimmer of hope where there is none.
Hi COCO, I’m not back home yet, working from a laptop thru my home computer and having a hard time with connecting and with sending E-mail. If this comment goes through? Someone metioned DU use at Faluja, indeed the city is a dangerous area. DU has been used everyplace else in Iraq also, radiation readings of over 2,000 times normal have been recorded in Baghdad. It is safe to go there if you don’t inhale.
We have not yet begun to see how horrible the use of that poison will be. The medical symptoms of inhaling DU particles may not surface for three or more years. It often causes serious mental problems before diseses such as brain cancer appear. As of 2006, the VA was treating more than 600,000 vets for mental health problems and many of the VA hospitals are not equipped to treat mental health problems, so walk-ins are given ‘aspirin’ and sent out the door for self help. I’ve heard some decide to run for higher public office and are often elected.
Ive reached a point where, when approaching an issue like this is to recognize what the common sense solution to this problem would be. IN this case, it would be for the US to revoke the Blackwater license, and ask them to leave Iraq.
But as history proves, every single time, Bush does the opposite of what is blatent common sense to the rest of us. And yet, like an alzheimers patient, I will still be shocked when the Blackwater mercenaries DO NOT leave Iraq, and to put icing on the cake probably get another new no-bid government contract (handout).
It never fails, you’re very safe if you just assume Bush is going to do the opposite of common sense and human decency. He works for Lucifer.
I was watching CNN last night, a brief skit where some Blackwater “troops” were being interviewed in Iraq. Now there are some fellas I’d want on my side in a fire fight. It looked like a get together of Hells Angels and Huns at a Laughlin, Nevada casino. Saw about six Ramob look alikes with their black or green sleevless T shirts and each packing three different types of auto firing weapons. In one scene they were blowing the lock off of a house door with a twelve gage shotgun, now that’s what I call doing the job right. KA-BOOM!! “Hiii, we’re here ___Anybody home”?
What a friggin mess!!__Praise the lord and pass the DU ammo, Bush is here to show you what Democracy is all about.
“Blackwater, Dyncorp, Triple Canopy - I believe all these murderous mercenaries are banned by the Geneva Convention. ”
“Just ask the Romans how well it worked out for them once their Mercenaries had to be “retired” and called off of duty?”
It actually worked out for them pretty well for hundreds of years and would have continued except for falling birth rates for Romans and their unwillingness to serve in the Legions. At the same time the Barbarians were being pushed into Roman provinces by even more fierce peoples migrating towards Europe behind them like the Slavs and Huns. The British in the Revolution used mercenaries quite commonly. Napoleon use Mercenaries. The Russians under Peter and later Catherine used mercenaries (part of my family roots). The Vatican uses Swiss Guards which may technically be mercenaries to this day. Alexander the Great did pretty well for himself and his army was mostly mercenary as was the Persian army he defeated.
Not all mercenaries are bad all the time and they are NOT banned by the GC as someone else posted, they are though, not subject to being treated as enemy soldiers so they can be treated differently if captured. They don’t have the same protections under treaty law as a lawful combatant, like some of the detainees in Guantanimo.
That being said, Blackwater is the worst of the worst that I can determine. If Iraq does successfully remove them, then that would be a VERY big step in their path to sovreignty and would be a blow for the administration which I think they well deserve.
“Someone wondered if Depleted Uranium munitions were used in Faluja.
Yes.
Hundreds of thousands of rounds of DU .50 caliber and 25mm cannon ammunition were used by US M-1 Abrams tanks on CIVILIAN buildings.”
Incorrect. There are no production .50 cal DU rounds purchased in quantity by the US government. There were experiments with 5.56mm, 7.62mm and .50 Cal (12.7mm) rounds for snipers, but all were ended at the experimental level so if they were used, they were excess developmental stocks and in VERY small numbers. The .50 cal round is lead for the most part and works very well as is. There is a new HE-Incendary round for the .50 cal that works much better than DU for combustion as well.
BTW, a regular .50 cal bullet made of lead with a copper jacket can penetrate any building of concrete or reinforced concrete that a civilian would be in. Only a building with several feet of concrete would withstand regular ammunition so no need for DU.
The M1 does not have a 25mm cannon. The Bradley AIFV does have one and you can expect that they were using DU ammunition, but at a much lower rate than .50 cal ammunition due to lower ammunition loads and lower rate of fire.
The 120mm cannon on the M1A1 has two sorts of ammunition, the M827 armor piercing, discarding sabot, depleted uranium round for anti-armor combat and the M830 High Explosive Anti Tank (HEAT) - Multi Purpose - Tracer round which does NOT contain Depleted Uranium and has the added benefit of actually exploding instead of simply penetrating and burning as the M827. While no one except the military would know how many of each round were used in Faluja, why would an army that has access to both types of ammunition in quantity use the one for anti-armor combat when the simple HEAT shell would be more useful and immediately lethal to the enemy in urban combat?
“The civilian population of Faluja is almost non-existant. It is a virtual ghost town.
True because most left or were killed in the fighting. Coming back to Faluja requires the resident to be background searched, biometrically recorded in a database, and they need to wear an ID tag at all times or be arrested. Most everyone is not willing to do that from the latest reports. Aside from that there are very few places to live there any longer so going back is not really an option.
DU is a threat. Its use needs to be stopped. (BTW, the latest version of the round for the M1 contains a Tungsten core in place of the DU core so the US Government is doing something for future conflicts.) People like KEM P. are doing a real service bringing up the issue even if they make it more of a catastrophe than it is. I might add that KEM went to that rally this weekend when the rest of us stayed away in droves. Thank you KEM.
“What happened to that B52 that was loaded with nuclear weapons and sent to Barksdale AFB, the staging area for the Middle East?”
The weapons were offloaded and transported back to their home base and the B-52 went on its mission. Remember that from the 50’s till the 90’s they were loaded with weapons all the time and flying across the country 24 hours a day (and across other countries). I don’t get why this was news at all.
Interesting reading on both the article and people’s comments. OK so they pull the contract and we have how many private mercenaries coming home? I think people should be more concerned about something else relating to this. Blackwater is just ONE of the private security companies, which to me also translates into a private army.
Now, they claim Blackwater has 1-3 thousand “contractors” in Iraq, not to mention in other parts of the world. Also if you read the background of Blackwater’s founder, he has some very “interesting” political views (nothing horrible, but definitely conservative). This man and others like him (haven’t found too many “liberal” sercurity firms, but maybe I’m not looking hard enough.
The perspective I’m trying to pass along is this: our brave citizens are scared to death over a group like al Qua’ida, who according to most organizations have a membership of several hundred to several thousand (I’m guessing 3-7 thousand?) WORLDWIDE. Though I can’t find the exact number, but as near as I can tell, their employees are at least over a thousand, with God knows how many being local folk.
You would think the average conservative AND liberal US citizen would be a bit more concerned about these private armies within our borders vs. some terrorist groups that can’t even get along amongst themselves. I’m not saying the terrorist groups aren’t a threat, but in the general scheme of things, I think our biggest threat to our freedom lies more with a private internal army that could be bought up by any number of private would be dictators. But most Americans love good, scary stories about commie, muslim, or even UN plots against their freedom, all being planned aboard black helicopters. I did notice one thing…Blackwater USES black helicopters. Do we have a new conspiracy going on here?
Soldiers that fight for money usually lose out to those that fight for a belief.
Next thing you know, Iraq will expell the USA ambassador to Iraq and announce that they intend to replace US troops with a coalition of Arab troops.
Hi Goose, on the B-52 carrying nukes? Several years ago, our country agreed in a treaty, to never carry nuclear weapons on our bombers again, except in time of war. Something went terribly wrong on that deal, or the DOD would not have had a fit over it when the news leaked out. There is no way those nuclear weapons could have been “accidently” loaded on that B-52H aircraft. IMPOSSIBLE. We likely will never know the truth of the story. It actually could have been a fairly routine transfer, but “we”, or the press weren’t supposed to know that either.
On DU, this is one good link of several thousand on the issue. Since inhaling just a microscopic speck of DU can cause severe internal medical problems, and thousands of tons have been fired off world wide so far, It should be a very serious issue. It’s in the air, everyplace on the planet.
http://www.gulfwarvets.com/du_howkilling.htm
There is another website link when that page opens that gives more infomation.
I understand that the greatest use of DU in most areas of Iraq and Afganistan is that from the A-10 and AC-130 aircraft Gatling guns and from bunker buster bombs in Iraq and Afganistan. Each 30mm shell is 3.5 pound of DU. Those are not just tipped with DU. Of course it’s not just us, 30 other countries now fire DU ammo daily on firing ranges.
You notice the 2,000 pound DU bunker buster bombs are much smaller in size than a 750 pounder WW2 bomb. It’s the DU that makes them heavy. When one of those goes off, the temperature of the fire reaches 6,000 degree-f, where normal explosives are in the 600 degree-f range. The result is, a smoke filled cloud of trillions of ionized nano-partilces of radio-active DU,___ blowing in the wind. Don’t inhale and no sweat.
This crap has been known and talked about for some time. Here’s an article I copied and pasted when I first read it:
http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2003/05/ma_365_01.html
3 paragraphs from it that present some rather important issues:
“Private military companies, for their part, are focusing much of their manpower on Capitol Hill. Many are staffed with retired military officers who are well connected at the Pentagon — putting them in a prime position to influence government policy and drive more business to their firms. In one instance, private contractors successfully pressured the government to lift a ban on American companies providing military assistance to Equatorial Guinea, a West African nation accused of brutal human-rights violations. Because they operate with little oversight, using contractors also enables the military to skirt troop limits imposed by Congress and to carry out clandestine operations without committing U.S. troops or attracting public attention. “Private military corporations become a way to distance themselves and create what we used to call ‘plausible deniability,’” says Daniel Nelson, a former professor of civil-military relations at the Defense Department’s Marshall European Center for Security Studies. “It’s disastrous for democracy.”
“…Because the Geneva Convention expressly bans the use of mercenaries — individual soldiers of fortune who fight solely for personal gain — private military companies are careful to distance themselves from any associations with such hired guns. To emphasize their experience and professionalism, many firms maintain websites brimming with colorful PR material; the industry even funds an advocacy group, the International Peace Operations Association, which portrays military firms as more capable and accountable than the Pentagon. “These companies want to run a professional operation,” says the group’s director, Doug Brooks. “Their incentive is to make money. How do you make money? You make sure you don’t screw up.”
“When the companies do screw up, however, their status as private entities often shields them — and the government — from public scrutiny. In 2001, an Alabama-based firm called Aviation Development Corp. that provided reconnaissance for the CIA in South America misidentified an errant plane as possibly belonging to cocaine traffickers. Based on the company’s information, the Peruvian air force shot down the aircraft, killing a U.S. missionary and her seven-month-old daughter. Afterward, when members of Congress tried to investigate, the State Department and the CIA refused to provide any information, citing privacy concerns. “We can’t talk about it,” administration officials told Congress, according to a source familiar with the incident. “It’s a private entity. Call the company.”"
“Hi Goose, on the B-52 carrying nukes? Several years ago, our country agreed in a treaty, to never carry nuclear weapons on our bombers again, except in time of war. ”
I checked all our treaties and their obligations do not mention anything of this sort. Do you have a reference? It is publically stated policy, but not a treaty responsibility. I also disagree that they could not have been loaded by accident. You were in the military, you know things like this happen. These missles were due to be de-commissioned and if they being moved, then anything might have happened. That this story came to light is good, but I think it points to bad handling and a need for more security and safeguards wihle they are being de-commissioned rather than some plot.
Plots and conspiracies are the refuge of too many here. Messy and sloppy government are far more likely to produce something than a plot.
“You notice the 2,000 pound DU bunker buster bombs are much smaller in size than a 750 pounder WW2 bomb. It’s the DU that makes them heavy. When one of those goes off, the temperature of the fire reaches 6,000 degree-f, where normal explosives are in the 600 degree-f range. The result is, a smoke filled cloud of trillions of ionized nano-partilces of radio-active DU,___ blowing in the wind. Don’t inhale and no sweat.”
You are not correct Kem, while there is a huge amount of particulate matter created, most by far remains on site. What does move down range falls out very quickly due to weight. It is there in the dust locally where it can be kicked up and inhaled, but really the effects are very localized except when, as you note, they are used in urban areas by AC130s and when vehicles carry dust to other locations. I agree this is an issue and not preventable while DU weapons are used (so they must be banned for normal use), but that does not mean that all Iraq or Kosovo or wherever are no longer habitable. It does mean though that DU weapons should be removed from active use and reserved only for armor on armor combat which has not occured in Iraq in years.
Remember that DU dust is MUCH less radioactive than normal Uranium Oxide which occurs all over the planet and has since forever. If Uranium dust alone were going to kill everything around, then there would be no Navajos or anyone else in the Southwest in the US or people all over the world where Uranium is produced.
“Because the Geneva Convention expressly bans the use of mercenaries — individual soldiers of fortune who fight solely for personal gain — private military companies are careful to distance themselves from any associations with such hired guns.”
The GC does NOT ban mercenaries. It only states that they cannot be considered regular combatants and as such are not to be accorded the rights of a combatant.
Article 47.-Mercenaries
1. A mercenary shall not have the right to be a combatant or a prisoner of war.
2. A mercenary is any person who:
(a) Is specially recruited locally or abroad in order to fight in an armed conflict;
(b) Does, in fact, take a direct part in the hostilities;
(c) Is motivated to take part in the hostilities essentially by the desire for private gain and, in fact, is promised, by or on behalf of a Party to the conflict, material compensation substantially in excess of that promised or paid to combatants of similar ranks and functions in the armed forces of that Party;
(d) Is neither a national of a Party to the conflict nor a resident of territory controlled by a Party to the conflict;
(e) Is not a member of the armed forces of a Party to the conflict; and
(f) Has not been sent by a State which is not a Party to the conflict on official duty as a member of its armed forces.
GOOSE!! Oh my gosh, you are badly mis-informed on the subject of ionized DU particles. Read what the British Radiation Biologist, Dr. Busby states about DU. A tiny bit of his findings are in that link I just posted. I have a bit of a problem with Moret, as her credibility is hurt by some of her other wierd beliefs, but on the issue of DU, she has her head screwed on right.
There are hundreds of scientists who state that DU is extrememly deadly and the dust may travel for thousands of miles once airborne. During the First Gulf War, the radiation readings in the UK rose dramatically.
In 1999, NATO warned all of its commanders, that if troops inhaled any DU they would suffer from radiation poisoning and it could cause many types of diseases, including cancer and could also alter their DNA and their children could be born with deformities. The warnings went unheeded and the results are heart breaking.
Comparing the trace ammounts of uranium in nature, which we all inject into our bodies every day, is not the same as inhlaing DU from expended munitions. There is absolutely no comparrison. Ionized DU in the body will emit over 10,000 times the radiation allowed by a chest x-ray and will bombard cells 24/7 until the cells become cancerous. You have a lot of good informatin on ammunition Goose, but your informatin on DU is twenty years behind the recent findings. Sadly, that is because the old info, is one of the first availble on the web, when asking for depleted uranium. There are thousands of pages to read on the subject and I agree with the more recent. Those doctors and scientists have no reason to cover up the error of its use.___ Governments do.
Well, well, well. Imagine that.
The American-installed ‘government’ of Iraq actually behaving like the duly-elected representatives of a sovereign nation! My lands! Will wonders never cease? ‘This may get interesting’ indeed! Here comes a showcase in which all the glaring hypocracy of the neocon colonialists may be on display for all the world to see. King George has been carrying on without end about ‘nation building’ being the point of all the savagery he has incited. Well, exercise of independent sovereignty is one of the critical hallmark of nation-status. If the Maliki government really IS THE government of Iraq, they have all the rights they need to pull Blackwater’s plug good and proper and PERMANENT. If they do so, one of the true darlings of the neocons will take it massively in the shorts, big-time connections to Christian zealots, campaign megacontributions and all! Thusly, a major channel for funneling $ from the U.S. Treasury into the outstretched hands of some of the horde of greedy FOB’s (Friends of Bush) will be closed. With this alterna-Army removed from play, the impossibility of the real Army’s mission will become manifest in the very near future.
Now let’s see how sovereign our own personal tyrant is willing for the Iraqi government to be.
(That swoosh you hear is the sound of the Spin Machine starting to pick up RPM’s.)
There is a false impression, which has been spun by the government, that DU d