"A Time to Break Silence"

"Some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak. And we must rejoice as well, for surely this is the first time in our nation's history that a significant number of its religious leaders have chosen to move beyond the prophesying of smooth patriotism to the high grounds of a firm dissent based upon the mandates of conscience and the reading of history. Perhaps a new spirit is rising among us. If it is, let us trace its movement well and pray that our own inner being may be sensitive to its guidance, for we are deeply in need of a new way beyond the darkness that seems so close around us.

...Now, it should be incandescently clear that no one who has any concern for the integrity and life of America today can ignore the present war. If America's soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read Vietnam. It can never be saved so long as it destroys the deepest hopes of men the world over. So it is that those of us who are yet determined that America will be are led down the path of protest and dissent, working for the health of our land.

...Now there is little left to build on -- save bitterness. Soon the only solid physical foundations remaining will be found at our military bases and in the concrete of the concentration camps we call fortified hamlets. The peasants may well wonder if we plan to build our new Vietnam on such grounds as these? Could we blame them for such thoughts? We must speak for them and raise the questions they cannot raise. These too are our brothers.

...I am as deeply concerned about our troops there as anything else. For it occurs to me that what we are submitting them to in Vietnam is not simply the brutalizing process that goes on in any war where armies face each other and seek to destroy. We are adding cynicism to the process of death, for they must know after a short period there that none of the things we claim to be fighting for are really involved. Before long they must know that their government has sent them into a struggle among Vietnamese, and the more sophisticated surely realize that we are on the side of the wealthy and the secure while we create hell for the poor.

...Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak for the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home and death and corruption in Vietnam. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as an American to the leaders of my own nation. The great initiative in this war is ours. The initiative to stop it must be ours.

This is the message of the great Buddhist leaders of Vietnam. Recently one of them wrote these words:

"Each day the war goes on the hatred increases in the heart of the Vietnamese and in the hearts of those of humanitarian instinct. The Americans are forcing even their friends into becoming their enemies. It is curious that the Americans, who calculate so carefully on the possibilities of military victory, do not realize that in the process they are incurring deep psychological and political defeat. The image of America will never again be the image of revolution, freedom and democracy, but the image of violence and militarism."

If we continue, there will be no doubt in my mind and in the mind of the world that we have no honorable intentions in Vietnam. It will become clear that our minimal expectation is to occupy it as an American colony and men will not refrain from thinking that our maximum hope is to goad China into a war so that we may bomb her nuclear installations. If we do not stop our war against the people of Vietnam immediately the world will be left with no other alternative than to see this as some horribly clumsy and deadly game we have decided to play.

The world now demands a maturity of America that we may not be able to achieve. It demands that we admit that we have been wrong from the beginning of our adventure in Vietnam, that we have been detrimental to the life of the Vietnamese people. The situation is one in which we must be ready to turn sharply from our present ways. In order to atone for our sins and errors in Vietnam, we should take the initiative in bringing a halt to this tragic war. "

-MLK JR, April 4, 1967. He was murdered 1 year later.

Blackwater Sniper Fells Three Iraqi Security Guards

So today we find this delicious little scandal concerning our favorite mercenaries:

BAGHDAD -- Last Feb. 7, a sniper employed by Blackwater USA, the private security company, opened fire from the roof of the Iraqi Justice Ministry. The bullet tore through the head of a 23-year-old guard for the state-funded Iraqi Media Network, who was standing on a balcony across an open traffic circle. Another guard rushed to his colleague's side and was fatally shot in the neck. A third guard was found dead more than an hour later on the same balcony.

Eight people who responded to the shootings -- including media network and Justice Ministry guards and an Iraqi army commander -- and five network officials in the compound said none of the slain guards had fired on the Justice Ministry, where a U.S. diplomat was in a meeting. An Iraqi police report described the shootings as "an act of terrorism" and said Blackwater "caused the incident." The media network concluded that the guards were killed "without any provocation."

The U.S. government reached a different conclusion. Based on information from the Blackwater guards, who said they were fired upon, the State Department determined that the security team's actions "fell within approved rules governing the use of force," according to an official from the department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security. Neither U.S. Embassy officials nor Blackwater representatives interviewed witnesses or returned to the network, less than a quarter-mile from Baghdad's Green Zone, to investigate.

The incident shows how American officials responsible for overseeing the security company conducted only a cursory investigation when Blackwater guards opened fire. The shooting occurred more than seven months before the Sept. 16 incident in which Blackwater guards killed 17 civilians at another Baghdad traffic circle.

The Feb. 7 shootings convulsed the Iraqi Media Network, one of the prominent symbols of the new Iraq, in anger and recrimination.

U.S. officials and the security company, now known as Blackwater Worldwide, offered no compensation or apology to the victims' families, according to relatives of the guards and officials of the network, whose programming reaches 22 million Iraqis.

"It's really surprising that Blackwater is still out there killing people," Mohammed Jasim, the Iraqi Media Network's deputy director, said in an interview. "This company came to Iraq and was supposed to provide security. They didn't learn from their mistakes. They continued and continued. They continued killing."

Basically, State's justification was that Blackwater said they were fired upon, so that was the truth, and no investigation or evidence was required at all. Blackwater ducked charges in the Iraqi court because of Bremer's 2004 law granting them blanket immunity. And this wasn't just Blackwater shooting at civilian vehicles. The snipers fired from one government compound into another government compound, and they knew it too. The guards were guarding the state-owned and US-funded television station al-Iraqiya. Blackwater was told this by the Justice Department. And then, as the Iraqi guards, clearly in military camoflague and standing on guard towers with the Iraqi flag, in broad daylight no less, directed people away from parking at the TV station because they were worried about car bombs, Blackwater's mercenaries gunned them down in cold blood. And got away with murder.

Blackwater Just Wants to Spread the Love...

So today Wired brings to light the story that Blackwater stole two airplanes from the Iraqi Air Force in 2005, according to the military who let that one slip to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. Of course, which one of the C-130 air transports, SAMA-2000 light reconnaissance aircraft, Huey-2 helicopters and Mi-17 helicopters, is for now a secret, but Blackwater has until November 2nd to confess. Things look bleak for Blackwater, with the resignation of their paid lackey at State and the Iraqi government revoking Order 17. A lot to fit in with revamping its website, and the startling news that Blackwater USA will alter its name to Blackwater Worldwide. Guess patriotic jingoism is fading in fashion even for Republicans these days?



Blackwater found protesters recreating their Nisour Square Massacre outside their front door recently, complete with dead bodies for the police to cart away. Guess they must have been freaked out. So they vamped up their "love us like we love to pump innocent civies with lead" campaign, and sent out an email encouraging supporters to contact Congress. Yeah, oh I have a letter for Congress... and I'm going to sign it with a bloody hand print too.

"Cost efficiency of Blackwater — saving the US taxpayer millions of dollars so that the US Government doesn’t have to take troops from their missions or send more into harm's way."

Of course, it's a lie that mercenaries are cheaper than soldiers. The average Blackwater merc takes home $600 a day in Iraq. If you are a US soldier you get a lousy $83-$85, and if you're married you get $170. Just because Republicans love him the most of all our soldiers, General Petraeus gets $493 dollars a day. Feel the support for our troops?

Oh look, just as Blackwater rolls out it's new PR campaign, we have another "we don't work for Blackwater, we just want to have their babies" blog at BlackwaterBirds. Who is this? Oh, it's Standish, of course!! His sock puppet blog "Blackwater Facts" just happens to be linked to by... Blackwater USA!!. Their list of blogs includes also includes another "New" blog called Blackwaterreporting. Groomed over, of course, as Blackwaterreporting now conceals that it was registered to GoDaddy by an Internet brand advertising company. As far as results go, they suck. You, dear readers, can do better by helping Blackwater pick a new logo!!

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Blackwater, Blackwater Facts, war contractors, Iraq, politics, current events

Bush Holds Cocktail Hour to Raise War Funds

So today we can only wish that were the truth as Bush demands we shell out $46 Billion More in War Funds. And he's demanding it by the end of the year. The rate Bush is going of course, his little foreign adventures are going to cost a total of $1 trillion dollars by the time his term is up. Yeah, that's more than the total of Vietnam and Korea. The total for this year alone in appropriations will be the highest year since the "War on Terror" began in 2001: $196.4 billion. As Pelosi points out, for the cost of 40 days in Iraq, we could provide health care to 10 million children for a year. Even though Bush insists the war contractors need the money to buy nonexistent troops Christmas trees and pudding, we know the Pentagon doesn't need a penny more until after February and the primary elections. Bush made his announcement at the White House while surrounded by the family of a dead Marine, and exorting Democrats to prove they support the troops. Political theater much? Does this family have granite countertops?

Meanwhile, with the border between Iraq and Turkey heating up, we are faced with yet another Bush lie: that by staying in Iraq we reduce the chances for regional war. Undoubtedly, the presence of US troops gives courage to Kurdish insurgents, who dart into Turkey and back out to Iraqi strongholds which are technically within US borders. The surge of refugees out of Iraq continues to destabalize the societies and governments of countries that surround it, placing an enormous economic and social strain on allies in the region. Relief from them is likely never to come, as Iraqis displaced by ethnic fighting become the new international Palestinians, forever holding an identity with a country to which they can never go home. And after all of the reconstruction efforts in Iraq, the aggregate of the lives of Iraqis is worse than before the invasion of 2003. Far from reducing terrorism, the one last goal clung to by the Bush administration, Iraq has become a proving ground for terrorism tactics, and the successes are exported to Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan.

What does Bush plan to do with this windfall if we give it to him? Get it stolen. Let's take a little peak into the $44.5 billion Iraqi reconstruction effort, and the auditing of just one $1.2 billion contract:

In a January audit of DynCorp's work under the INL contract, [auditors] found that the State Department paid $43.8 million for manufacturing and temporary storage of a residential camp that had never been used. The audit also questioned the State Department's payment of $36.4 million for weapons and equipment, including body armor, armored vehicles and communications equipment that couldn't be accounted for because "invoices were vague and there was no backup documentation." [Auditors] raised questions about INL's payment of business-class travel expenses for DynCorp officials. After INL questioned the charges, it said DynCorp re-paid $108,000. INL officials, according to Bowen's report, "have no confidence that the government has paid for only valid expenses under the contract."

Meanwhile, we find out that Blackwater ducks payroll taxes by calling it's employees "private contractors." Which might go a long way to explain why Blackwater takes no interest in their conduct. Who thinks Bush should get money to pay for this $H!T??!!

Twelve Angry Soldiers and the Iraq We All Know

12 Army Captains spoke out in public today on the 5 year anniversary of the authorization of force in Iraq and the fiasco that has been Operation Iraqi Freedom, and the thousand "Operations this or that" which have followed. Bush's administration and the vaunted neo-conservative movement which brought him to power failed to rebuild a capitalist, foreign-owned, democratic and pro-West puppet. While the military found Saddam in a hole in the desert, and the Iraqi judicial court found him guilty of crimes against humanity and sentenced him to death, we stayed in Iraq for the dreams of Wall Street.

Within months, our own brutal military tactics and the irresponsible outsourcing that allowed in mercenaries sparked the rise of a bloody insurgency. Bush winked and nodded while American contractors sailed off to the Caribbean with $9 billion in stolen Iraqi oil money we had been entrusted with by the U.N. And three thousand soldiers died, more than half from weapons constructed out of munitions the Bush administration failed to secure during the invasion, so sure the only dangerous thing to be found would be the still invisible WMD. (We'll find it on Nov. 1, 2008, wait and see!!)

U.S. forces, responsible for too many objectives and too much "battle space," are vulnerable targets. The sad inevitability of a protracted draw-down is further escalation of attacks -- on U.S. troops, civilian leaders and advisory teams. They would also no doubt get caught in the crossfire of the imminent Iraqi civil war.

Iraqi security forces would not be able to salvage the situation. Even if all the Iraqi military and police were properly trained, equipped and truly committed, their 346,000 personnel would be too few. As it is, Iraqi soldiers quit at will. The police are effectively controlled by militias. And, again, corruption is debilitating. U.S. tax dollars enrich self-serving generals and support the very elements that will battle each other after we're gone.

This is Operation Iraqi Freedom and the reality we experienced. This is what we tried to communicate up the chain of command. This is either what did not get passed on to our civilian leadership or what our civilian leaders chose to ignore. While our generals pursue a strategy dependent on peace breaking out, the Iraqis prepare for their war -- and our servicemen and women, and their families, continue to suffer.

There is one way we might be able to succeed in Iraq. To continue an operation of this intensity and duration, we would have to abandon our volunteer military for compulsory service. Short of that, our best option is to leave Iraq immediately. A scaled withdrawal will not prevent a civil war, and it will spend more blood and treasure on a losing proposition.

America, it has been five years. It's time to make a choice.

The Jawa Report claims the 12 Captains are actually anonymous WaPost staffers who paid the soldiers for the use of their names. Blackfive spins the usual "your opinion doesn't matter unless you served in the military" to "veterans are idiots." Interesting that Uncle Jimbo dodges the draft (lol) proposition by the Captains, with the emotional plea of "victory **(see conditions, updated and revised, subject to further pie-in-the-sky reevaluation)." The Captains also get smeared as dirt by FloppingAces, who are betraying better soldiers who had the guts to stay. One commenter on Confederate Yankee said that the only reason they were no longer on active duty was because they were losers. Looks like the Republican congressional leaders need to burn some midnight oil about not saying meanie things about our soldiers.

In the October 22 edition of Time Magazine, Samantha Powers notes the erosion of America as the world's superpower in an article noting Bush's complete inability to lead the world towards ending human rights violations and creating true democracy in Sudan and Burma, just as he claims he has been trying to do in Iraq.

"The U.S. has raised its voice on Darfur and Burma louder than any other country. George W. Bush has regularly denounced the Sudanese campaign of destruction as "genocide," Washington has spent $2.5 billion on humanitarian aid to keep Darfur's refugees alive, and the Administration has spearheaded creation of a 26,000-person, U.N.-led peacekeeping force. When the Burmese regime cracked down on protesters, it was Bush who used his appearance before the U.N. General Assembly to announce that the U.S. would freeze the assets of Burma's repressive leaders and deny them visas.

Yet when he urged "every civilized nation" to use its diplomatic and economic leverage to "stand up" to the regime, his appeal was largely ignored. Many countries acted as if they agreed with Burma's self-serving claim that the crackdown was simply an "internal matter." Not withstanding the U.S.'s $500 billion military budget and $13 trillion GDP, its summoning power has dwindled.

The inaction is partly backlash against the discredited American messenger. Torture, "black sites," extraordinary rendition and the bungled, bloody invasion and occupation of Iraq have all made U.S. human-rights appeals ring hollow."

America's time as the world's only super power began with one President Bush and ended tragically with the presidency of his son. Castro may even live see Bush pack it up and move out. What sort of world will we face in 2009, when the idea of a world safe for democracy has become a punchline, and communism finally eclipses us on the international scene? When the U.S. finally faces our $9 trillion debt, what sort of military will we be able to afford? And how many more genocides will we have to categorize and memorialize?

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bush, iraq war, darfur, genocide, politics

Blackwater Faces a Cold, Cruel World Alone

So today the military started dropping "I survived Blackwater" stories of there own. Utterly beyond belief that "former soldiers" could harbor such disrespect for their uniformed comrades in the age where looking at a soldier funny in the States is an act of treason. Of course, why shouldn't Blackwater be the lords and ordinary marines and army privates be the serfs? After all, Blackwater allows it's members to reach the true mark of acheivement for men in the modern age: a six-figure yearly salary and no responsibility to the Constitution.

Oct. 15, 2007 issue - The colonel was furious. "Can you believe it? They actually drew their weapons on U.S. soldiers." He was describing a 2006 car accident, in which an SUV full of Blackwater operatives had crashed into a U.S. Army Humvee on a street in Baghdad's Green Zone. The colonel, who was involved in a follow-up investigation and spoke on the condition he not be named, said the Blackwater guards disarmed the U.S. Army soldiers and made them lie on the ground at gunpoint until they could disentangle the SUV. His account was confirmed by the head of another private security company. Asked to address this and other allegations in this story, Blackwater spokesperson Anne Tyrrell said, "This type of gossip has led to many soap operas in the press."

...Unlike nearly everyone else who enters the Green Zone, said an American soldier who guards a gate, Blackwater gunmen refuse to stop and clear their weapons of live ammunition once inside. One military contractor, who spoke anonymously for fear of retribution in his industry, recounted the story of a Blackwater operative who answered a Marine officer's order to put his pistol on safety when entering a base post office by saying, "This is my safety," and wiggling his trigger finger in the air. "Their attitude was, 'We're f---ing security; we don't have to answer to anybody'."

Meanwhile, the "we swear we aren't Blackwater, we just want to have their babies" blog "Blackwater Facts" has chosen the tactic of defending Blackwater in it's legal troubles by labeling sueing Blackwater as a terrorist attack, and part of a vast conspiracy by the Al-Qaeda planners of 9-11. Hence, in it's attempts to smear the lawyers involved in the lawsuit, it posts a nice big picture of one of the hijacked jets flying into the World Trade Towers on 9-11. Blackwater Facts hasn't bothered to comment a word of course on what the military has to say about Nisour Square, despite claiming to have been formed to correct "misinformation in the media." What does Blackwater Facts therefor leave as established facts?

In the hours and days after the Nisoor Square shootings, the U.S. military sought to distance itself from Blackwater. Dozens of soldiers went door-to-door to seek out victims, offer condolence payments and stress that the military was not involved in the shootings, Tarsa and his soldiers said. Their actions underscore the long-standing tensions between the U.S. military and private security companies -- and the military's concerns that such shootings, and the lack of accountability for the private security industry, could undermine U.S. efforts to stabilize Iraq.

"It was absolutely tragic," said Maj. Gen. Joseph Fil, commander of the 1st Cavalry Division and the Army's top commander for Baghdad. "In the aftermath of these, everybody looks and says, 'It's the Americans.' And that's us. It's horrible timing. It's yet another challenge, another setback," he said.

The Washington Post on Thursday examined a storyboard of the soldiers' assessment that has been forwarded to senior U.S. military commanders, photos taken by aerial drones shortly after the shooting and sworn statements by two U.S. soldiers at the scene that day. The Post also reviewed photos taken by U.S. soldiers of the shootings' aftermath. These, along with interviews with four of Tarsa's soldiers who inspected the scene, revealed previously undisclosed details:

At least two cars, a black four-door taxi and a blue Volkswagen sedan, had their back windshields shot out, but their front windshields were intact, indicating they were shot while driving away from the square, according to the photos and soldiers. The Volkswagen, which crashed into a bus stand, had blood splattered on the inside of its front windshield and windows. One person was killed, soldiers said.

U.S. soldiers did not find any bullets that came from AK-47 assault rifles or BKC machine guns used by Iraqi policemen and soldiers. They found evidence of ammunition used in American-made weapons, including M4 rifle 5.56mm brass casings, M240B machine gun 7.62mm casings, M203 40mm grenade launcher casings, and stun-grenade dunnage, or packing.

A white sedan, carrying a doctor and her son, had not entered the Nisoor Square traffic circle, where the Blackwater vehicles had stopped, when it was fired upon, according to the aerial photos. News reports have said the guards shot at the car because they believed it approached them in a threatening manner.

"I was surprised at the caliber of weapon being used," said Capt. Don Cherry, 32. "My guys have 203s with nonlethal rounds we use as warning shots. It's a rubber ball that bounces off the windshield."

"I was upset this happened," Cherry said. "This was uncalled for."

Startling to learn that the US military uses rubber bullets to fire warning shots, but the conservative commentators among us will battle to the last breath to defend Blackwater's right to arbitrarily kill Iraqi civilians because they have a gut feeling that they are suicide bombers. The gut feeling supplied merely by the desire to be going faster through rush hour traffic in the capital city. So far, when you google "blackwater" in the blog links, the right is being silent on the fact that Blackwater and their CEO Prince have lied about coming under fire from the Iraqi police or insurgents, given that the only bullets fired were American. Tomorrow of course, they will claim that Blackwater got confused, and really it was the American military who was trying to kill Blackwater!

An Iraqi colonel walked up to Lt. Col. Mike Tarsa and described the Blackwater shooters as men in "tan uniforms, black helmets, and that flag," pointing at the U.S. flag on Tarsa's sleeve. The colonel added that he knew the U.S. military wasn't involved. Still, Tarsa dispatched his soldiers across their sector over the next few days.

"I wanted our guys to be on the ground, to look people in the eye, to listen to their anguish, listen to their outrage, to let them know we're going to help those people personally affected," Tarsa said.

"I was concerned about acts of vengeance and misinformation somehow indicating we were part of this event," he said. Tarsa spoke with community and tribal leaders.

"It was a very tense 24 hours," said Maj. David Shoupe, the battalion spokesman. "We didn't know which way it was going to go."

Blackwater quit the International Peace Operations Association, a lobbying and public-relations firm for private military companies, effective Oct. 10th. Blackwater stated that it intended to pursue other "other aspects and methods of industry outreach and
governance." The bite in Blackwater's tone got explained today in IPOA's official statement:

In recent weeks, IPOA was actively engaged with senior management at Blackwater USA, both through our Standards Committee and our Executive Committee, to ensure that they were fully compliant with the IPOA Code of Conduct. On October 8, 2007 the IPOA Executive Committee authorized the Standards Committee to initiate an independent review process of Blackwater USA to ascertain whether Blackwater USA's processes and procedures were fully sufficient to ensure compliance with the IPOA Code of Conduct.

All IPOA member companies are required to follow the IPOA Code of Conduct. The Code of Conduct is a set of ethical and professional guidelines for companies in the peace and stability operations industry. The Code stresses human rights, corporate ethics, International Humanitarian Law, transparency, accountability, and responsibility and professionalism in relationships with employees, clients, and partner companies.

Blackwater has scattered the Nisour murderers to the winds inside the US, while CBS reports that the FBI may be neglecting to investigate several of the vehicles targeted in the shootings. The bus which Blackwater shot up is still making it's regular rounds, bullet holes and shattered glass and all, while the white family car of the Iraqi woman doctor and her son still remains on the road to Nisour Square in a grisly monument.

Military analyst Col. (ret.) Steve Lyons told CBS .... there is little chance the US government will meet Iraqi demands either by severing all ties with Blackwater, which is by far the largest and most competent of the many security contractors in Iraq, or by turning over the gunmen responsible for the shooting. Even the Iraqi demand of $8 million in compensation for each of the victims is uncertain.

"These contractors are long gone," Lyons stated. "They're back in the United States. They've scattered, really, to the four winds. ... They're not going to get any money from those individuals."

Condi Rice floated the idea that the State Department's diplomatic security force assign observers to ride along with Blackwater. Presumably, they are supposed to be competent enough to judge Blackwater's conduct and having them join Blackwater will save us money, by allowing Blackwater to continue to replace them. Love the illogic here. State can't seem to end the torrid romance, and plans to hide Blackwater employees on the government payroll:

Under terms of the department’s Worldwide Personal Protective Security contract, which covers privately contracted guards for diplomats in Iraq, Blackwater, Dyncorp and Triple Canopy are the only three companies eligible to bid on specific task orders there.

If Blackwater goes, the slack almost certainly would have to be picked up by one or more other companies, which may require certifying other firms to bid, including non-U.S. ones, the officials said.

Of interest to the department is the possibility of standing up Iraqi companies with Iraqi employees to protect U.S. diplomats as local guards do for embassy staff in other countries, they said. That would bring the guards fully under the jurisdiction of Iraqi law but is not a short-term option given inadequate training facilities.

The Pentagon has been reluctant to provide security for diplomats but another alternative might be joint State-Defense department patrols. Yet another would be hiring Blackwater and other private guards as temporary U.S. government employees, the officials said.

A passenger walked by me at the airport with one of the Blackwater books, which suddenly renewed my faith in democracy. So I brought the subject of Blackwater up at work, us being federal employees engaged in protecting the nation from terrorists and all. One of my coworkers is an Iraqi veteran, who in his tour of duty crossed paths with Blackwater's mercenaries several times. "First off, they're not the shit," commented the reservist Srgt. "Everybody has a 'how Blackwater got ambushed' story, and they're a national shame. Blackwater makes the insurgency look like they are tactically capable. And they are mercenaries. Who does Blackwater answer to but Blackwater?"

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Blackwater, iraq war, 2008, war contractors, moonbat

Iraqi Victims Sue Blackwater for their Blood Money

So today, that good old American urge to sue bastards has inspired the victims and families of victims of the Blackwater massacre in Nisour Square to file in federal court against the mercenary company and it's financiers. Seeing the delaying tactics used by Blackwater for all the other lawsuits against it, they are in for one hell of a ride. Blackwater's announced that it has no interest in paying even a single penny, because hey, depriving them of their blood money will harm Bush' ability to effectively fight terrorism around the world!!

The Nisoor Square lawsuit focuses on the alleged "recklessness" of the Blackwater security contractors and seeks to punish the company for its "mercenary" tactics in the war zone that have led to "repeated callous killings of innocents," according to a complaint.

"Blackwater created and fostered a culture of lawlessness amongst its employees, encouraging them to act in the company's financial interests at the expense of innocent human life," the 16-page complaint says. "This action seeks compensatory damages to compensate the injured and the families of those gunned down and killed."

Also today, the U.N. Assistance Mission to Iraq released it's biannual report. The pressure the Bush administration will use to conceal sectarian violence is quite obvious in the Iraqi government's reluctance to release statistics gathered by it's IPA constructed Health Ministry on civilian deaths. The report notes that between the period of April 1 to June 30, the UN could confirm through other sources that 88 Iraqi civilians had been killed by US air strikes as part of the US "troop surge" effort to increase security. One incident involved the deaths of seven elementary-aged students who died when helicopters bombed their school near the Iranian border. The report goes on to note several records of "killings carried out by privately hired contractors with security-related functions in support of U.S. government authorities." The UN urged the US to find ways to increase oversight and accountability of it's mercenary forces.

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Blackwater, iraq war, human rights, injustice, war contractors, moonbat

Blackwater Drunken War Games in Bahdad Hotel

So today here's a story about Blackwater from a journalist who worked in Baghdad in the summer of 2003, staying at a hotel where Blackwater also housed some of it's mercenaries:

Over time, however, our Blackwater pals wore out their welcome. I can’t pinpoint when it happened. Was it one too many beer-drenched party that upset the Iraqi families who lived in neighboring homes? Was it the parade of young Iraqi prostitutes that crept out of their rooms when the sun rose? Was it when their speeding SUV convoys began cutting down any Iraqi with the misfortune to block their path?

Our own security adviser, an older Brit who sneered at what he considered Blackwater’s unprofessional behavior, was conducting his rounds late one night when he noticed shadowy figures lurking about the hotel. From his balcony, he later told me, he observed the fully armed, camouflaged men creeping around corners as if ready to attack. Alarmed, our guard took the safety lock off his weapon and prepared to fire.

Then he realized it was the Blackwater boys, apparently drunk and playing war games after dark. Our security adviser was livid and lodged complaints with the hotel. I don’t remember whether he also contacted Blackwater. In any case, this wasn’t the first time managers had received such gripes and the Blackwater team was kicked out.

Hannah Allam goes on to tell of frequent encounters with Blackwater around Baghdad, where they hasseled local Iraqi civilians. One Blackwater mercenary told her that he was there for the six-figure-income, and a chance to guard Victoria Secret models at the the lingerie company’s annual fashion show. Hannah goes on to relate her own tail of running into a mercenary-escorted convoy on the streets. The mercenaries sped up behind them and forced them off the road with the threats of their guns, before speeding off. Although neither she or her Iraqi friends have a clear memory of having seen the company's logo, they always referred to it as "Blackwater." Hannah has one last encounter to share, and this time it involved Blackwater:

A few months later, I was dropped off at the gates of the Green Zone to meet a security contractor friend who worked for a Blackwater rival. I sat in the car with my Iraqi driver, waiting for my American friend to show up and escort me into the Green Zone, when a convoy of SUVs suddenly blazed onto the scene. Gunners hung out the windows, shouting for the Iraqi civilians to “move!” An Iraqi man failed to get out of the way in time. My driver and I watched as the security guards fired a single shot through his windshield.

The convoy was gone by the time the Iraqi man’s car door opened. He stumbled out, clutching his bleeding chest, and collapsed on the street. Other Iraqis loaded the shooting victim into a car and left for the hospital just as my American friend showed up. My friend shared my outrage and made it his personal mission to track down the convoy and force the contractors to file an incident report.

Although her American friend helped her track down Blackwater accross the Green Zone, neither could work up the courage to actually confront them. They trailed them inside, where instead of going to report having shot an Iraqi civilian to death, the Blackwater mercenaries went straight for the salad bar.

Blackwater may be able to get away with murder in Iraq, but it is facing money problems here at home. Turns out, one of Hillary Clinton's key pollsters runs the PR company providing guidance to Blackwater in the weeks leading up to last week's congressional hearings. The Spokesmans-Review in Spokane reports that the shootings in Nisour Square have held up Blackwater's purchase of an Idaho police training company. Not all everything is gloomy however, as the "we swear we don't work for Blackwater blog "Blackwater Facts has run with the story about Blackwater's purchase of a 183-ft ship called the McArthur.

There's a Blackwater employee running for Congress. Although these plans were announced some time ago, Blackwater is displaying photographs of it at the annual Association of the U.S. Army (AUSA) meeting going on today. What can be done about Blackwater? About the corrosion of the authority of government where the powers of war can be bought by campaign contributors? So far, the only statement on any of the Democratic candidates websites is one on John Edwards.

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Blackwater, iraq war, 2008, war contractors, moonbat, john edwards

Blackwater Pursues Plans for Darfur's Civilians

So today, Blackwater may not have been involved in killing innocent Iraqi civilians, but we find out that US taxpayers were still buying the bullets. While Blackwater kept itself busy scrapping off all of it's prominent company logos from it's convoy escort SUVs, Australian mercenaries gunned down two Christian women who were driving home from work. The mercenaries worked for Unity Resources Group, "a Dubai-based company founded by an Australian and registered in Singapore. The firm was employed by RTI International, a nonprofit organization that does governance work in Iraq on a contract for the U.S. Agency for International Development." Mercenaries in the last vehicle of the convoy opened fire on the white Oldsmobile and it's four passengers when the car pulled up in traffic behind them. Unity Resources claims that the shooters threw a signal flare at the Oldsmobile, and opened fire after the woman driver failed to increase distance with the convoy. The shootings was immediately reported to the Interior Ministry and Unity has expressed regret in public.

"A vehicle got close to them, and they opened fire on it randomly as if they were in the middle of a confrontation," said Ahmed Kadhim Hussein, a policeman at the scene. "You won't find a head. The brain is scattered on the ground."

He added: "I am shaking as I am trying to describe to you what happened. We are not able to eat. These were innocent people. Is it so natural for them to shoot innocent people?"

The Oldsmobile was shot first in the radiator as it passed a plumbing supply shop, employees said. The shooting continued and the car came to rest about 50 yards away, next to a yellow and white median curb marked by broken glass and blood.

"Probably they were not paying attention and they weren't able to stop right away," said one employee, who would not give his name.

The Oldsmobile, towed to a police station in Karrada, left little doubt how the women died. There were holes from at least 35 bullets that scarred the hood, punctured the windshield, popped tires and shattered three windows. Rivulets of blood ran down the driver's door.

The driver of the vehicle, 49-year-old Marony Ohanis, drove friends to and from work in order to make ends meet for her family after the death of her husband two years ago. Also killed: 30-year-old Geneva Jalal Entranic. A young boy in the back seat with another woman was shot in the arm, but is expected to recover. Unity Resources was involved in another fatal shooting in March 2006, where one of it's mercenaries killed an Australian resident of Baghdad at a security checkpoint. That incident was later settled with the Iraqi government. Unity Resources also operates in Pakistan, Sudan, Asia and Australia. For yesterday, 45 other people died in shootings and bombings in outbreaks of sectarian violence across Iraq. Among the dead of two car bombings in the oil-refinery town of Baiji were five Iraqi police officers. One of the car bombs went off in front of the house of the police chief, the other in front of the house of Samir Ibrahim, the area leader of the Awakening Council.

The Iraqi government had issued demands that the US severe all contracts with Blackwater in Iraq within six months and that the company pay $8 million in compensation to each of the families of those killed at Nisour Square. The Iraqi government also demands that US authorities hand over those Blackwater mercenaries involved in the shooting spree for prosecution in Iraqi courts. The Iraqi government intends to try them under criminal codes from 1969. The official Iraqi report also found that "Blackwater guards also had killed 21 Iraqi civilians and wounded 27 in previous shootings since it took over security for U.S. diplomats in Baghdad after the U.S. invasion." The US State Department has admitted that Blackwater has been involved in 56 shooting incidents this year alone.

Blackwater CEO Erik Prince worked the crowd at the Association of the US Army trade show today, pushing a warm and fuzzy version of Blackwater. In proposed service involved Blackwater's "Peace and Stability Operations Institute, which would provide armed forces to put down domestic insurgencies and rebellions as a way to prevent genocide. For instance, the civilians being massacred in Sudan are targeted because they support a rebellion against a cruel regime, fought by Sudanese rebel forces.



Blackwater would go in on the behalf of the brutal dictatorship, wipe out the rebels, and leave the local civilians completely undefended and under the same government-paid forces that are killing them. Who will, Blackwater reasons, suddenly feel restraint. And why shouldn't they want a piece of the pie. Naval Facilities Engineering Command currently has a $450 million dollar contract with Dyncorp to provide "global disaster response services." Read: point guns at civilians.

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Blackwater, iraq war, war profiteers, darfur, politics, moonbat

Blackwater Attacked "Not Even By a Stone"

So today the Iraqi government released it's report concluding that Blackwater fatally shot 17 people at Nisoor Square without provocation on September 16th. The Iraqi government also reports that the number injured in the shootings is 27. The spokesperson for the Iraqi government, Ali al-Dabbagh, stated that Blackwater's presence was in response to a bombing near a State Department convoy earlier a mile away, but that the convoy in the Square itself had been threatened "not even by a stone." Ali al-Dabbagh went on to classify the incident as "an intentional murder that needed to be called to account according to the law." The findings of the Iraqi government reflect similar after action reports filed by the US military, which responded to the scene. Meanwhile, the US Embassy announced today a shift in the goals of the joint US-Iraqi Commission towards establishing a blueprint with the intentions that there even are ways to ensure that US-employed mercenaries "do not endanger public safety."

Britan will have it's troop strength to 2,500 by next spring. Brown made his announcment to day to ward off calls from political opponents for a definate time-table on withdrawal, also stating that logistics staff would be redeployed to surrounding nations, and that Britain will not guarantee to Bush to keep troops in Iraq past the end of 2008. Brown also stated that security around the south of Basra would be passed to Iraqi security forces by the end of two months time, ending Britan's combat operations in Iraq. Elsewhere, Petraeus spent the day holding a conference continuing accusations that Iran is actively destablizing the security situation in Iraq. Petraeus commented to Reuters that, "They are responsible for providing the weapons, the training, the funding and in some cases the direction for operations that have indeed killed U.S. soldiers." However, his press conference provided no evidence or declassified intelligence to support his assertions. The Iranian embassy didn't bother to comment.

Despite the public outcry in both the US and Iraqi, despite the reports coming from both the (supposedly independent) Iraqi government and from out own military, conservative commentators still cling to a candle for Blackwater. Despite of course, the enormous government malefescence that Blackwater's contracts represent, which is surprising for the supposedly fiscally responsible Republican Party. Richard Novak published a commentary in the Washington Post today containing a glaring number of inaccuracies, especially concerning the events of the attack on a Blackwater-escorted convoy of kitchen equipment in Fallujah of 2004. For one, he boldly lies that those who attacked and killed Blackwater's mercenaries wore the uniforms of Iraqi national police officers, in an attempt of conservatives to make the shooting of any uniformed Iraqi always justifiable.

Novak goes on to boldly lie that the congressional hearings of last Tuesday had not been scheduled until after the September 16th shootings, when they were in fact scheduled early last year. Novak also goes on to accuse the lawyers of the families of the Blackwater mercenaries killed in Fallujah (and the families by extension) of being more interested in a big payout than justice. As to the question of the purpose of the hearings, Novak pushes the idea that Democrats have only the right to explore questions of the Iraq War which have occured since they took control of Congress in early 2007. Such assumption is rooted of course in the de facto assumption that Blackwater is as innocent now as Novak claims it was innocent of gross misconduct in the planning of the 2004 Fallujah convoy. Novak clings to Blackwater's innocence the way some wives cling to the innocence of their cheating spouses, even when the mistress shows up at the husbands birthday party trailing her bastard children.

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troop surge, Blackwater, iraq war, iran, current events, politics, moonbat, war contractors

Take Military Powers Away from Blackwater and ilk

389 to 30 last week, the US House voted to extend coverage of the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act to cover mercenaries in the employ of the State Department, in a bill cosponsored by Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.). Schakowsky, who began pressuring for greater oversight of war contractors shortly after the invasion of Iraq, wrote into the bill provisions which would "require the Justice Department to disclose to Congress the number of complaints filed against contractors, the number of investigations it has initiated and the number of criminal cases it has opened, along with the results of those cases." The Illinois Democrat wrote a letter to Bush in April of 2006, asking him to explain how war contractors were held accountable for their conduct in Iraq. Since then, their numbers have increased from 25,000 to 150,000.

We don't look at the number of contractors who are engaged in military activities, we don't count the deaths of contractors. We think about 1,000 have died," but the numbers aren't official. "We don't really even scrutinize the cost," Schakowsky said.

Now she wants to go further and is drafting legislation to phase out the use of private contractors for military-like activities. "Not KP duty," Schakowsky emphasized. The Blackwater incident "helps pave the way for us to say, 'There are functions that are inherently governmental. Carrying weapons and engaging in strictly military-like activities should be done by people who are clearly accountable employees of the United States.' "

"The government has to have a monopoly on the use of force," she continued. "We have outsourced war to these people, and now we have to bring it back within the government."

Nine Iraqi civilians died in three seperate bombings across Baghdad early Sunday. One bombing targeted an Iraqi police patrol, one targeted a US military patrol, and one the Iranian embassy. All missed their targets and killed civilians instead. The work of the joint US-Iraqi Commission into the Sept. 16 shootings in Nisour Square began. Elsewhere, the US military launched a dawn raid and captured three Shiite milita fighters believed to have played a role in the May 29th abduction of four British mercenaries and a civilian computer expert. The US military still beleives the five to be alive.

Liberal bloggers fire back and forth the Los Angles Times op-ed peice "I survived Blackwater." Janessa Gans served as a US official in Baghdad for two years, and Blackwater provided her security. Gans recounts that indeed, pelting Iraqis with water bottles is a favorite past time of Blackwater mercenaries, and the harrowing speeds they observed driving in the streets. In one particular incident, the Blackwater SUV she was being ferried in, attempted to intimidate one vehicle carrying an older man, a woman, and several children. The Blackwater driver honked and motioned furiously that the slower vehicle should move out of the path of the SUV:

The kids in the back seat looked back in horror, mouths agape at the sight of the heavily armored Suburbans driven by large, armed men in dark sunglasses. The poor Iraqi driver frantically searched for a means of escape, but there was none. So the lead Blackwater vehicle smashed heedlessly into the car, pushing it into the barrier. We zoomed by too quickly to notice if anyone was hurt.

Until that point I had never mentioned anything to my drivers about their tactics, but this time I could not contain myself.

"Where do you all expect them to go?" I shrieked. "It was an old guy and a family, for goodness' sake. Was it necessary for them to destroy their poor old car?"

My driver responded impassively: "Ma'am, we've been trained to view anyone as a potential threat. You don't know who they might use as decoys or what the risks are. Terrorists could be disguised as anyone."

"Well, if they weren't terrorists before, they certainly are now!" I retorted. Sulking in my seat, I was stunned by the driver's indifference.

Another op-ed in the Washington Post outlines the arguement against outsourcing war at all. In the debate it's interesting to note that in his congressional testimony, Blackwater executive Erik Prince, when pressed for details of outsourcing's benefits, went from claiming cost-savings to pleading ignorance of his own company's profit margin. But oh, he makes about 800,000 than moonbat. Beyond the cash cow that needs to be pasturized, the contracting of the powers of war is a disaster for any democracy. Our politicians incur only private costs instead of facing public accountability. Blackwater operates in Iraq in situations where it deliberately sacrifices the US mission in order to acheive it's own goals, regardless of the consequences. And as we saw in Fallujah in 2004, private decisions have the effect of committing our generals to courses of action, taking away from our military key decision making powers in tactics and strategy. War is too important an issue for the survival of a democracy for us to allow people to buy that power.

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Blackwater, Iraq war, war, current events, politics, moonbat, liberal, war contractors

Murderer "Fired" by Blackwater Hired By Defense Department

So today, while Prince's testimony before the House Oversight replays on CSPAN RADIO, we learn that Blackwater concealed the reason it terminated Andrew J. Moonen, enabling him to be hired as a mercenary for the Defense Department in Kuwait. Although Moonen's lawyer defends his client by pointing out that he apparently doesn't shoot Americans while drunk, the former paratrooper felt free to incur six traffic offenses since 2002, including driving on a suspended license. Moonen received an honorable discharge after serving with the 82nd Airborne from April 2002 until April 2005. His wife divorced him in December of 2004, but little else has been unearthed.

Moonen who?? The New York Times revealed him as the Blackwater mercenary who got drunk at a Christmas Party in the Green Zone last year, wandered through a checkpoint being manned by the Iraqis, and shot to death a guard there who challenged him. No wonder the Iraqis don't see the point in "standing up" if it means drunk Americans get to gun them down and flee the country. After he shot the Iraqi guard three times, he fled to a nearby guard shack run by Triple Canopy (a Blackwater rival). There, he lied about what happened, claimed he was being pursued by Iraqi insurgents, and denied he was drunk. Triple Canopy pried the gun out of his fumbling hands, and then passed him off to Blackwater. The rest is history...

Andrew J. Moonen returned to the United States within a few days of the incident, his attorney said, but in February he returned to Kuwait, working for Defense Department contractor Combat Support Associates (CSA), a company spokesman said.

Mooney worked for CSA from February to August of this year, spokesman Paul Gennaro said.

Because the State Department and Blackwater kept the incident quiet and out of Moonen's personnel records, CSA was unaware of the December incident when it hired Moonen.

According to Moonen's personnel record, the U.S. Army tried to call him back to service in April 2007, but canceled the request when they were notified he was overseas.

Two months?? You get your @$$ evacked for gunning down a friendly while you were toasted, and you somehow end up next door. Avoiding getting called back to active service and real combat, and a lack of alcohol plus supervision. Meanwhile, the Defense Department either has atrocious employment screening, or else they knew he was dismissed from Blackwater for at least the listed reason: "armed while drunk." Two months later, this is no bar to contracted work with the US government, to carry arms? And then one has to wonder, what did the Blackwater representative who got the background check call say to the Department of Defense, since it obviously didn't include a little "under the table" advice about Moonen's trigger finger. And then there is the honor and integrity of Blackwater itself, measured out by the utter silence in Moonen's personnel records with both the mercenary company and the State Department, on the events of December 2006. Nothing more damning than a blank page.

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Blackwater, war contractors, defense department, iraq war, politics, current events, moonbat

Blackwater Faulted By Military for Baghdad Carnage

So today a senior US military official announced that reports from US soldiers present at the scene of the Nisoor Square shooting spree by Blackwater indicate that Blackwater was never fired on by insurgents and used excessive force in the incident. The total Blackwater killed is listed at 14 by Iraqi hospital records. Meanwhile, the Iraqi government revealed that the Blackwater convoy instigated another shooting a mere 150 meters after leaving the square, firing on five fleeing vehicles and killing another unarmed and innocent civilian. In response to its investigations, the US military has halted issuing weapons permits to mercenary companies through the DoD, holding the current level of such permits around 7,000.

"It was obviously excessive, it was obviously wrong," said the U.S. military official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the incident remains the subject of several investigations. "The civilians that were fired upon, they didn't have any weapons to fire back at them. And none of the IP or any of the local security forces fired back at them," he added, using a military abbreviation for the Iraqi police. The Blackwater guards appeared to have fired grenade launchers in addition to machine guns, the official said.

The company has said its guards acted appropriately after being attacked. Blackwater Chairman Erik Prince, in previously unpublicized remarks prepared for delivery at a congressional hearing Tuesday, said the Blackwater guards "came under small-arms fire" and "returned fire at threatening targets."

Time for Congress to pass an amendment censuring Prince for lying to them and the American people. Time for American politicians to be serious about crime again, instead of flying murderers home first class and letting them loose on our streets. Defenders of Blackwater are quick to portray their mercenaries as former US soldiers (when they aren't former members of Columbian death squads), and to ask you who you want to defend you: Congressman Waxman or Prince. (Surely we have not come to the point in the US where we judge the integrity of a man by the size of his muscles?)One of them heads the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. The other one heads a private army operating outside an oath of loyalty to the American people, but amassed on our shores. (Like the Madhi Army, say.) One stands for democratic traditions upon which America was founded and the other one isn't even a real American. One defends liberty and justice for all, and the other one wants to hold power over the streets of our cities without answering to the Constitution. And let's remember how they would exercise that power on the defenseless:

Mohammed Abdul Razzaq was driving into Nusoor Square with his sister, her three children and his 9-year-old son Ali at the same time the Blackwater team arrived.

"They gestured stop, so we all stopped," Razzaq said. "It's a secure area so we thought it will be the usual, we would stop for a bit as convoys pass. Shortly after that they opened heavy fire randomly at the cars with no exception."

"My son was sitting behind me," he said. "He was shot in the head and his brains were all over the back of the car."

Blackwater also lied to Democratic Rep. Waxman of the when it claimed that it could not release documents requested for current congressional investigations without State Department approval. But State Department spokesman Tom Casey revealed that State had already granted permission. Congress isn't the only one having difficulty investigating the Sept. 16th incidents. Blackwater has refused communication with the Iraqi government outside of the FBI's investigation, stating that it is under no legal compulsion to cooperate. Additionally, Blackwater's been giving the US military the cold shoulder:

U.S. soldiers have reviewed statements from eyewitnesses and video footage recorded at Nisoor Square, the official said. Members of a U.S. unit working with Iraqi police were present in the area at the time of the shootings. U.S. soldiers also helped ferry victims to hospitals.

Blackwater, whose primary task in Iraq is to protect U.S. diplomats, has been unwilling to share information about the incident with the U.S. military, the official said, adding that military officials went to Blackwater's compound in the Green Zone but were denied access to company managers.

So far, Blackwater's key public strategies have included lying about what happened, and stressing that their mercenaries are mostly former US soldiers, in an attempt to dilute what it means to actually have the uniform on. As the details out of Nisoor Square get more gruesome as each day passes, these tactics are likely to cause the military to seek more distance in public, as it has today. A desperate Blackwater just hired itself a Public Relations firm to save it's public image. Really. The company in question, Burson-Marsteller, represents such clients as the cigarette maker Philip Morris, nuclear power plants, and the makers of Botox. How fitting of course, since Botox is an toxic agent of war. Even juicier is that Robert Tappan, one of the executives in charge of the account, worked at the State Department as the deputy assistant secretary for public affairs, and he spent six months in Baghdad as director of strategic communications for the Coalition Provisional Authority under Bremer. Undoubtedly, guarded by Blackwater mercenaries.

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Blackwater, war contractors, Iraq war, current events, politics, liberal, moonbat

Blackwater Bloggers Plan to Hunt Down Liberals in USA

Blackwater has the guns and money to go to any means to save it's hold on the taxpayers' teat. For example, the issue of coverage in blogs, or shall we say, the fine art of creating a blog to promote your own company. Blackwater Facts which claims that "We're supporters of Blackwater USA, the heroic private security company that has lost more than two dozen of its own men while protecting American diplomats, VIPs and others in Iraq, Afghanistan and around the world. We set up this blog shortly after the September 16, 2007 incident in which terrorists attacked an American diplomatic convoy near Baghdad, because we were fed up with all the misleading media coverage." Right under the blog archives which allow you to read the April 23, 2006 post written to promote the idea of employing Blackwater as international peacekeepers instead of the United Nations. (LIE) Whoever Standish was, his blogger identity was last altered this month. The name choice likely refers to Captain Miles Standish, who gets referred to excitedly as private security contractor, but in truth he was an English Knight, first retained as the military captain of the Plymouth Pilgrims, and once they reached Plymouth, elected as military captain of the colony, much in the way that we elect Sherriffs.

"Standish" also boosts the blog with a link to another blog he/they set up, "About Blackwater." Set up September 24, 2007, it's one post is basically a wholesale copyright infringement of Blackwater's entire "about" section on it's website. As "friendly links," Standish includes the International Peace Operations Association and a mirror blog BlackwaterReporting, which you can follow throught to the original blog, FairReporting. All careful to claim they have no affiliation with Blackwater, except IPOA. The curious nature of Standish differs from sheer idiocy because BlackwaterFacts is a poison of a different sort: blog branding. Namely, when either employees pretend to be independent bloggers who just admire their company, or the company hires a branding company to pretend to be harmless "we love" bloggers. Standish's post of 5:09 Wednesday afternoon attracted the attention of TMR. After some 40 taunts and jibs, the blogger finally confessed:

I am a contractor for Blackwater and they are the best emplyoer I have ever had. My family is well provided for and I live the life of adventure, and defend freedom. You liberals are spinless lackeys of Islamist terror, and anti-free market biasd toward the liberal. I get all my information from real blogs not left wing and Fox News. America, rest easy, support your troops AND Blackwater. I fear that if you don't you will be sorry.

THIS IS LIBERAL MEDIA BIAS CRAP, MADE UP TO AID THE ENEMY, NOT TRUE! LIBERALS, WHEN WE COME HOME, WE WILL HUNT DOWN THOSE WHO HURT THE USA!

Moonbat isn't exaggerating about how common it is to hear these things declared in the comment sections for "we love" Blackwater blogs. Often, comments are made referrencing a coming civil war where conservatives will hunt down and purge America of all liberals. You won't find the above quotes in the comments section of BlackwaterFacts anymore. After two hours of onslaught by muckraking bloggers, the BlackwaterFacts threw up comment moderation, and finally today errased all of it's self-confessional comments, and all comments made to it's blog yesterday. Although like most of the other "we love" Blackwater blogs out there, which can be traced to brand marketing firms through their ISP numbers, as a blogger.com creation, BlackwaterFacts gets some cover by a more low-brow approach. But the purpose of Blackwater facts becomes clear in the pages of it's own proflifferic blogging today, when it posts in self-congratulations for reaching the #1 of Google Blog Search for searches keyed to Blackwater. Or so it claims....



What people really are looking at isn't Google rank, by google blog search which ranks by relevance and date of the blog's posting. There is no number one slot, as it updates as each new entry is made. Even no name blogs can land the slot as the first blog in the search, if they were the newest blog published. When I began blogging today, Crooks and Liars had just bumped them off. And even now, they've been bumped off by a Media Matters for America story. An aside on the second story: In their coverage of the oversight hearings, USAToday and the LATimes both noted that Republicans united in defending Blackwater, but neither noted extensive campaign contributions by Blackwater executives or its founder, or the involvement of its founder with the conservative Council for National Policy, which supported Bush in his bid for the Presidency. I digress... So as soon as a new blog entry for "Blackwater" gets published by anyone with links, that new entry becomes the top of the heap. Sometimes it takes a little investigation and clicking on links, but you can catch a lot of people puffing up their own importance. Of course, as they love to remind you, they are bloggers with guns and they have plans for us liberals...

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Blackwater, current events, blogging, politics, liberal, moonbat, Iraq war

The Smoking Guns of Blackwater's Mercenaries

So today the world has a view into the lives of five of the innocent people gunned down by Blackwater's mercenaries in Baghdad's Nisoor Square on September 16th. Construction workers had just finished painting flowers on the walls of the square following reconstruction after a truck bombing. A banner reading "Creators of Life are Always Victorious" fluttered in the noon breeze. Ali Khalil was a 54-year-old blacksmith and father of six children, and had felt safe enough in the capital to reopen his shop three days earlier. Osama Fadhil Abbas was a 40-year-old car dealer on business. Mehasin Muhsin Kadhum, a 46-year-old doctor, and her twenty-year-old son Ahmed Haitham, were returning home with college application forms for Kadhum's daughter. At 25, Mahdi Sahib supported his whole ten member family on his taxi driver's salary of $480 a month, and while he could not replace the broken windshield wipers of his taxi, continued to nurse the hope that he would one day save enough money to marry. Fifteen minutes later, as Blackwater sped away from the smoking scene, their murdered victims would range from grandfathers to wives to schoolgirls to an infant.

On that day, the Blackwater convoy was responding to a bombing near a State Department convoy about a mile away. As the Blackwater armored vehicles entered the square, a heavily guarded area near Baghdad's affluent Mansour neighborhood, Iraqi police officers moved to stop traffic.

Kadhum, the doctor, and her son Haitham, who were in the flow of cars the officers were trying to stop, didn't react quickly enough. A Blackwater guard fired, striking Haitham as he sat in the driver's seat, three witnesses said.

"The bullet went through the windshield and split his head open," recalled traffic police officer Sarhan Thiab. "His mother was holding him, screaming for help."

The car, which had an automatic transmission, kept rolling. Another officer, Ali Khalaf, tried to stop the vehicle as another spray of bullets killed Kadhum.

Thiab fled first, then Khalaf, followed by bullets that struck a traffic light pole, a billboard and their police guard post. Then the Blackwater guards escalated their firepower, engulfing the sedan in flames.

Osama died trying to flee from his truck when Blackwater turned their guns on it next. Khalil died within minutes of being brought to the hospital; when his wife arrived with bed sheets and water, she was sent to the morgue. Sahib died slowly over three hours from internal bleeding, while family members held his hands. The uncle of twenty-year-old Ahmed Haitham, had rushed to aid the shooting victims, and come upon Ahmed's and his mother's burned bodies in the hospital. He called Ahmed's father, who rushed to the Square, only to find the family's charred car missing it's license plate, but the number written next to it in the sand. Later in the hospital, Haitham Ahmed was able to recognize the bodies of his family by his wife's dental work and one of his son's shoes.

On the cab roof of Osama's white Volkswagon truck are bullet entry holes, with trajectories that indicate they came from fire from above. Although witnesses testify that Blackwater mercenaries fired out of their helicopters as people tried to flee for their lives, the company has denied this claim. Dr. Kadhum's white car still sits in Nisoor Square, and Haitham Ahmed is determined to see it remains there until there is justice for the deaths of his wife and son. Iraq's government has not responded to his inquiries.

"They have killed my beloveds. They were innocent," he lamented on Wednesday. "We don't have any contacts with any party, any side. We are all doctors."

"What I want is the law to prevail," he added. "I hope that this act will not go without punishment."

There were opportunities, he said, for his family to flee Iraq. But he and his wife believed in the promise of a new Iraq. "I feel pain when I see doctors leaving Iraq," he said.

His son was going to follow in his footsteps. In his third year of medical school, the soccer-loving, multilingual Ahmed planned to become a surgeon.

Now, he said, his two other children, Mariam, 18, and Haidar, 16, are concerned about his safety. "Enough of the pain, enough of death in Iraq."

Mariam was born in the last phases of the Iran-Iraq conflict. Her eyes filling with tears, she said she wanted to leave: "I was born in one war, I don't want to die in another."

Original plans for the FBI's investigation included Blackwater guards. It took a release to the press about these plans and pressure from Congress, and 24 hours, for the State Department to think it was wise to alter these arrangements so that the department's Diplomatic Security Services would be assigned to that task. The White House is meanwhile denouncing legislation passed by the House which would apply all regulations currently used to provide oversight and federal jurisdiction over Defense Department war contractors in Iraq, to those under contract with State, including Blackwater. The law in question is the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act. The bill passed 389-30. Via the Office of Budget Management is the claim that such equal jurisdiction in contracting would have "intolerable consequences for crucial and necessary national security activities and operations."

Questions continue to emerge on the conduct and operations of Blackwater on that day. Blackwater revamped it's website since the shooting, dropping press reports and news briefings, and reducing the publicly available information about it's company. However, you can still buy company apparel. The State Department's intial report on the Sept. 16th incident was written by a current Blackwater employee. Secretary of State Condollezza Rice exerted pressure on the Iraqi government to allow Blackwater to remain inside Iraq, creating the public perception that the government of Iraq cannot act with autonomy. Even the officials Blackwater guarded on September 16th highlight the need for impartial investigations:

A bomb exploded on the median of a road a few hundred yards away from the meeting, causing no injuries to the Americans, but prompting a fateful decision to evacuate. One American official who knew about the meeting cast doubt on the decision to move the diplomats out of a secure compound.

“It raises the first question of why didn’t they just stay in place, since they are safe in the compound,” the official said. “Usually the concept would be, if an I.E.D. detonates in the street, you would wait 15 to 30 minutes, until things calmed down,” he said, using the abbreviation for improvised explosive device.

But instead of waiting, a Blackwater convoy began carrying the diplomats south, toward the Green Zone. Because their route would pass through Nisour Square, another convoy drove there to block traffic and ensure that the diplomats would be able to pass.

CNN interviewed one of the Iraqi Police stationed at the Square, who stated that Blackwater threw water bottles at the police upon entering the Square and then proceeded to drive the wrong way around. The police officer Sarhan noticed that the guards looked nervous. When the traffic didn't immediately halt, the mercenaries opened fire with warning shots, and then began shooting vehicles. When Sarhan attempted to rescue Kadhum, after her son was shot dead in the driver's seat, he and another police officer were unable to halt the rolling car. Even in uniform, he too became a target:

"I wanted to get his mother out, but could not because she was holding her son tight and did not want to let him go," Sarhan said. "They immediately opened heavy fire at us."

"Each of their four vehicles opened heavy fire in all directions, they shot and killed everyone in cars facing them and people standing on the street," Sarhan said.

The shooting lasted about 20 minutes, he said.

"When it was over we were looking around and about 15 cars had been destroyed, the bodies of the killed were strewn on the pavements and road."

Sarhan said no one ever fired at the Blackwater team.

"They became the terrorists, not attacked by the terrorists," he said.

"I saw parts of the woman's head flying in front of me, blow up and then her entire body was charred," he said. "What do you expect my reaction to be? Are they protecting the country? No. If I had a weapon I would have shot at them."

War is ugly, that much is true. But this was not war, this was murder, done by a company operating for profit committing acts of barbarity for which our own uniformed soldiers will face an accounting for on the streets of Baghdad. For how much longer will we tolerate having a military and a foreign policy held hostage to the profit margins of neoconservatives, who would see the power to make war and peace shifted to an auction? How does having the readiness of our forces undermined to create overpaid positions for at-will war contractors further American security? What does it say about the future of democracy as a government about humans that we allow senseless bloodshed for the mere sake of convenience? Who should be held accountable for the descent of the "war of the willing" into the "war of the billing?" How long will the burned out car of a woman doctor sit on the side of the road?

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