WASHINGTON — The international security company formerly called
Blackwater Worldwide is facing large government fines for unlicensed arms shipments to Iraq, as a key Congressional committee is asking for a separate investigation into whether the company bribed Iraqi officials.
In talks likely to result in millions of dollars in penalties, executives from the company, no
On Wednesday, a federal judge rejected
a series of arguments by lawyers for the mercenary firm formerly known
as Blackwater seeking to dismiss five high-stakes war crimes cases
brought by Iraqi victims against both the company and its owner, Erik
Prince.
The American public and—to some extent—lawmakers snapped to belated attention in September of 2007 when a small force of private military contractors opened fire on a busy Baghdad traffic square, killing at least 14 civilians and wounding 20 more.
Republican Congressional leaders are continuing their witch-hunt
against ACORN, the grassroots community group dedicated to helping poor
and working class people. This campaign now unfortunately has gained
bi-partisan legislative support in the form of the Defund ACORN Act of 2009 which has now passed the House and Senate.
Two years ago on September 16, 2007, on a steamy hot Baghdad day with
temperatures reaching 100 degrees, a heavily armed Blackwater convoy
entered a congested intersection at Nisour Square in the Mansour
district of the Iraqi capital. The once-upscale section of Baghdad was
still lined with boutiques, cafes and art galleries dating back to
better days. The ominous caravan consisted of four large armored
vehicles with machine guns mounted on top.
Yet another civil lawsuit accuses Blackwater guards of driving through the streets of Baghdad randomly shooting innocent Iraqis.
The latest case accuses Blackwater founder Erik Prince of personally directing murders from a 24-hour remote monitoring "war room" at the private military company's Moyock, N.C., headquarters.
Prince "personally directed and permitted a heavily-armed private army... to roam the streets of Baghdad killing innocent civilians," alleges the suit, filed by four Iraqi citizens.
WASHINGTON — Private security guards who worked for Blackwater repeatedly shot wildly into the streets of Baghdad without regard for civilians long before they were involved in a 2007 shooting episode that left at least 14 Iraqis dead, federal prosecutors charge in a new court document.
As a candidate for president, Hillary Clinton pledged to ban
Blackwater. In February 2008, she announced that she would sign on as
the co-sponsor of a little-known bill put forward in the House by
Representative Jan Schakowsky and in the Senate by Bernie Sanders.
Confronted with images of corpses floating in the blackened floodwaters or baking in the sun on abandoned highways, there aren't too many people left who see what happened following Hurricane Katrina as a purely "natural" disaster.
Blackwater, the private mercenary company owned by Erik Prince, has been
thrust back into the spotlight by a series of stunning revelations about
its role in covert US programs. Since at least 2002, Blackwater has
worked for the CIA in Afghanistan and Pakistan on "black" contracts. On
August 19, the
New York Times revealed that the company was, in
fact, a central part of a secret CIA assassination program that Dick
Cheney allegedly ordered concealed from Congress.
