The Dark and Ugly Side of Republican Promises....

So today let's start out the new year by remembering fondly one of moonbat's success stories of the last: Moonbat takes on Idiot Private Security Force. As readers of the comments section know, moonbat forced the idiots to "alter" their "rules" to allow women to remove their high heels and thus avoid being screened by slobering 30 year old men. Why are we revisiting this happy episode? Our idiot private security force is back in the news: Video tape of sleeping security guards shakes nuclear industry. Armed guards sleeping on the job. What I love the most is that they are armed, even at the Museum where they screen people entering and exiting, they are armed. But TSA airport screeners are not armed. Even though it's considered appropriate for worse-trained and poorer performing guards of a museum in D.C. to be armed, let's not have armed guards in airports where terrorists might actually attack. In fact, as anyone who works there knows, even the presence of armed police officers is on the decline. But I digress from drooling over this latest outbreak of idiocy.

So Wackenhut's excuse is that they are being pressured to cut costs to the point where they can afford salaries for guards that only attract people who sleep on the job... after being forced to work regularly beyond the 60 work hour limit for nuclear facilities. Somehow though, I doubt any of this has included pay reductions for upper management. This interesting and obviously a private security firm plant blog post finds that in response to growing dissatisfaction with private security, in order to keep their contracts they were going to move away from a cost-plus business model. No for those of you who have been following moonbat's blogs on private security in Iraq, and Blackwater in particular, know that cost-plus is just a fancy word for "fleecing the taxpayer for tropical beach houses." Meanwhile, let's dig a little into the muck and find out more about Wackenhut's "security guards."

Wackenhut exists to kill you if you stop at a truck stop to have sex with your girlfriend. They are also trained to harrass veterans buying diet coke at another truck stop, but if you are a prostitute you are perfectly acceptible. And they area also suing SEIU claiming that union organizing is racketeering. And this is where you taxpayer dollars are going!!

Blackwater Provides US Intelligence to Foreign Buyers

So today we are going to contemplate the politics of using the word treason, especially when it gets so cleverly wrapped in the trapings of globalization. Blackwater developed it's own private intelligence agency and now hires out former CIA agents and their experience to the highest foreign bidder. And they admit point out that they are gleaning information from foreign contacts, developed by it's employees while they were in government service, which would be considered the treasonous exchange of state secrets to a foreign government if these foriegners took their information to a US embassy. The silent side of that logic is that capitalism permits the exchange of US classified information and state secrets to a foreign private individual for money. Shortly after 9-11 there was a lot of focus on the dangers to democracy posed by non-state actors. But it seems that instead of learning from history, conservative Republicans were falling in love with the concept of developing armed religious mercenary forces beyond the control of world government.

You learn in government service that it's not enough to avoid providing proof of wrong-doing, but you must also avoid the opportunity to do that wrong. It's not enough not to be caught having sex with a prostitute, you must also not be found in her hotel room with money in your hand. Here we have former CIA agents and other civil servants, building a shadow intelligence agency to collect intelligence they insist is only open source, after having spent a career developing skills focused on intelligence that was anything but publically available. What do they plan to provide intelligence analysis on? Their Global Fusion Center, staffed around the clock, searches for warnings on everything from terrorist plots on radical Islamic Web sites to possible political upheavals in Asia, [b]labor strikes[/b] in South America and Europe, and economic upheavals that could affect private enterprise. "We're not a private detective," former CIA's head of counterterrorism Cofer Black said. "We provide intelligence to our clients. It's not about taking pictures. It's business intelligence. We collect all information that's publicly available. This is a completely legal enterprise. We break no laws. We don't go anywhere near breaking laws. We don't have to."

America and Iraq have learned quite bloodly over the past few months that Blackwater doesn't believe that any laws apply to them at all, or should. If laws applied to Blackwater, as they have consistently argued in court, the ability of the Commander-in-Chief to wage war would be crippled, even while Blackwater was busy changing it's name from Blackwater USA to Blackwater Worldwide. Odd that Black insists that their intelligence operations don't involve pictures, while the live feed from al-Jazeera plays in the background and GoogleEarth is a common feature on computers across America. Yeah, who can blame the reader who swallows that one. But what is Black talking about in terms of gathering information from terrorist websites that's publically available. We happen to have had it out in public quite recently that the gathering of information from these sites uses technologies that provide illegal uses if they were used to hack say, information from Target's pharmacy records about whose getting emergency contraception. Even open source, we are talking about a global form of Operation CHAOS. Yes, the building of files on union activists and anti-war protestors in order to protect the interests of the highest bidder. Funded by conservative Republicans who are using your tax money.

How concerned should a democracy be considering that this intelligence is being fed into an organization with no alligence to the United States, and will consist of analysis of anyone who they have been paid to spy on. Such activities can be reasonably understood to include infiltration both of internet groups and face-to-face of anti-war and fair trade organizations, labor unions and human rights groups. A list of the children of labor rights organizers in Brazil and their schools and routes home. A method of concealing arms shipments from international inspection or even the law. The interrogation of democracy activists in Burma. The suppression of local activists protesting the corrupt regime in Nigeria and it's support by international oil companies. All of which are activities fundamentally in odds with the spread of democracy in the world and the idea of open societies.

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!!

Technorati Tags:
Blackwater, Blackwater Facts, war contractors, Iraq, politics, current events

Republicans Open For Attacks Over Airline Security

So let's be honest. The Republican side of the ticket statements to the American public that their support for the Iraq War and The Great Wall of Texas proves that they are keeping America safe. When the Democratic side of the ticket replies that by watching over civil liberties we are saving Americans from their government, we look like we think paper and lawsuits can protect people from ending up like those who jumped to their deaths out of the World Trade Center. And what we concentrate on now is not an effective counter to the 9-11 propaganda of the neo-cons. Lawsuits and civil liberties don't stop hijackers. And by keeping to such a strict form of attack of the "War on Terror," Democrats and liberals participate in the Republican strategy of using valid concerns over terrorism to push conservative agendas on spying and illegal immigrants. Years after the publishing of Lakoff's "Don't think of an elephant" we are no better at finding ways to define the argument that allow us to attack them at their weakest point.

Think of Katrina and the debacle of emergency management. That's a point that remained valid because constant media attention has kept the issue about how a hurricane devestated an American city, and the Bush Administration failed in it's duties. But we have let the neo-cons define terror threats in terms of phone calls and illegal immigrants, both old debates around which hard concerta wire got laid decades ago between both Democrats and Republicans. While attention to both issues remains important, gaining an inch in either debate will require trench warfare and an immense spilling of loyal blood. Especially without a liberal President and a liberal veto proof majority in Congress, and at least a fair and moderate Supreme Court. But will the fear that the CIA is listening to your phone call to your mother on Sunday night bring voters to the polls? Not likely. The vast majority of American voters understand they aren't likely to be the political operatives that an abuse of power could target, in a return of Hoover-style surveillance. Most of us really aren't that interesting.

What was 9-11 about? It was a group of men, who were on terror watch-lists, had expired visas, had arroused concern by the FBI for their unusal interest in flying skills. It was a low-key, well-planned, easily repeatable attack and it was real. And the Republicans are doing everything they can to make people forget that, and get the American public to think of 9-11 in terms of rogue nuclear nations and weed coming in over the border with Mexico. Why are they so energized to do so? Just like Katrina exposing the farse that Bush had made of FEMA, it shouldn't take another 9-11 style attack on our country to expose what the Bush Administration has done with airline security. Especially, since if there is ever another attack, liberal concentration on lawsuits and potential government abuse will be the Republican ticket to ducking the blame. But right now, airline security is a weak juicy underbelly to the Republican mantra that they are the ones to protect Americans.



To point out how Democratic dialogue over 9-11 has wandered onto thin ice, here's a blog from Congressman Mike Honda from California. His concerns are certainly valid and commendable, and ensuring that people aren't arbitrarily targeted due to their religion is a worthwhile Democratic goal. However, as this has become the Democratic response to 9-11 and airline security, and focuses on a very small part of the American voting public, we are left open to attacks of weakness and pandering by neo-cons. While nothing we do on the issue of airport security is likely to bring over Republican voters, swing voters are going to look closely at the two sides, and they are going to consider the Republican argument stronger. Which is unfortunate because this is an issue over which the Republicans and neo-cons have left themselves wide wide open.

Let's start with this: Rates of Failure to Find Suicide Bomb Tests by TSA.

Yesterday, Representative Kirk from Illinois rose on the House floor during open comments to bring up this subject, calling for a reveiw of airport security involving congressional leaders and the upper management of TSA. This set up and review has been coming for a long time and it has nothing to do with improving airport security, but wrapping up a federal agency as a private contract and handing it out to Republican campaign contributors. The study itself is questionable, given that it compares two of the worse airports against an airport that has been the subject of intensified training. But more importantly, the review will include the upper management of TSA and given current SSI laws which prevent airport screeners from commenting frankly in public, it holds no hope of providing accountability or insight into what is going on in airport security. However, airport passengers have begun to notice that there are fewer screeners at airports than there used to be, and job searches show that TSA offers part-time employment instead of concentrating on a full-time and steady workforce. Without full union representation, and full union rights for airport screeners, the public and Congress will find the truth elusive.

All of this will go on despite the prime opportunity this represents to assail the Republican line that private contractors are the route to take with American government. For instance:

1. Private Contractos Mass Mails SSNs to Wrong People.

TSA spokeswoman Amy von Walter said the breach was "an administrative error, and the contractor has taken steps to ensure it's not repeated." Accenture, a contractor that handles TSA personnel, sent 1,195 documents to the wrong former employees during a recent mailing, according to a letter signed by Richard Whitford, TSA assistant administrator for human capital. The documents were standard forms that are sent to employees after they leave the government. The forms often list an employee's Social Security number, birth date and salary. It's unclear how many forms had that information.

2. Private Contractors Loose Hazardous Material Trucker Data on TWO laptops.

According to a letter the TSA sent to lawmakers on Oct. 12, the laptops—both of which belonged to a TSA contractor—contain names, addresses, birthdays, commercial driver's license numbers and, in some instances, Social Security numbers of the affected truckers.

3. Go back to the use of private contractors in the founding of TSA.

Those details are contained in a federal audit that calls into question $303 million of the $741 million spent to assess and hire airport passenger screeners for the newly created Transportation Security Administration after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The audit, along with interviews with people involved in the passenger-screener contract, paints a rare and detailed portrait of how officials at the fledgling agency lost control of the spending in the pell-mell rush to hire 60,000 screeners to meet a one-year congressional deadline.

The audit, performed by the Defense Contract Audit Agency at the TSA's behest, spotlights scores of expenses: $20-an-hour temporary workers billed to the government at $48 per hour, subcontractors who signed out $5,000 in cash at a time with no supporting documents, $377,273.75 in unsubstantiated long-distance phone calls, $514,201 to rent tents that flooded in a rainstorm, $4.4 million in "no show" fees for job candidates who did not appear for tests.

The audit faulted the prime contractor, NCS Pearson Inc., which was hired by the TSA to test, interview, fingerprint, medically evaluate and pre-certify the candidates. The audit said Pearson failed to properly justify costs and improperly awarded subcontracts without competitive bidding. The audit also said the company demonstrated a "lack of management or oversight of subcontractors."

One of the audit's key revelations is that a decision to move the hiring process from Pearson's 925 U.S. private assessment centers to 150 hotels and other meeting facilities added at least $343 million to the cost of the contract, according to an estimate by Pearson. The company said it was ordered to make the change by the TSA, which said it made the decision in collaboration with Pearson.

Here we find outselves on difficult ground. While the actual testing methods used cannot be disclosed, in order to find enough acceptable hirees in the part-time worker labor pool, physical requirement tests are rumored to have been eliminated. Also rumored is it's not uncommon for the hirees to enter their own personal data into the private contractor's database for their background checks, while overseen by one contractor. Undoubtably, the contractors get paid as if they enter the data.

There's a very good report on discussing private versus federal airport security by the General Accounting Office. If you want to really understand airport security though, read what is claimed is being done by TSA management, and then the next time you fly, ask the TSOs there if it's true or not. Look around and see what's happening beyond the fact that you can't take your water bottle.

There are other weak points to go after Republican mismanagement of our nations terrorism efforts. For instance, as noted in a Senate Commerce Committee by Missouri Democrat MacCaskill, there a great lapse in security at overseas repair stations for airlines in terms of background checks. There should be honest discussion about TSA's application of SSI rules to prevent any dissent or critcism escaping the agency, and also the absurd application leading to some confusion for the public. Honestly, this is one of those cases where SSI claims are bogus. International fliers may present handwritten passports, where the expiration dates and names are all entered by hand. Countless US states allow the renewal of driver's liscenses by mail, to the point where the person has considerably aged compared to their photograph. Even if states have reasons to not renew driver's id's in five year intervals, that doesn't mean that photo identification should not be undated. Photo identification, in the age of credit card and ID theft, is appropriate as a part of airport security, even though recent intensification in this area admittedly has been aimed at finding illegal immigrants.

Airline security as a way to come out on top of the Homeland Security debate between liberals and conservatives is ripe for the taking, but it's a window that won't be open for long. It should be our issue, and it can be. Reframing the debate, as Lakoff points out, gives us a real chance to show our strengths and values, instead of always being on the defensive. With our record of standing up for civil liberties to balance out a call for a renewed focus on airline security, positions us better in the public debate. Airline security is being able to quickly match names against watch lists, and see Al Gore's "Assault on Reason" if you don't understand how important that is. Six years after 9-11 and hundreds of millions of dollars later, it's not possible for the Bush Administration to do what credit card companies do all the time. It would be done if it hadn't been used as a way to make Republican war contractors rich. Airline security is bomb sniffing dogs to prevent frontal attacks on people waiting in ticket lines outside of security. Count how many you see on a busy morning the next time you fly. Airline security is the testing for explosive traces. Next time you fly, how many people are getting their heavy sneakers and boots tested? Their bookbags tested? Ask the airport screeners about their views of their jobs and what they spend their time doing. Ask for the truth and then write your senator and congressional representative.



9-11 involved strong and trained young men using small hand weapons to hijack airplanes and fundamentally change America and our politics. Yet years later, we still let warmongering neo-cons define the debate and set us up to take the blame if it happens the next time. If there is another 9-11, they plan to make us take the blame because we are weak and don't support the war in Iraq. They will trot out how many times they focused on homeland security and they will control the debate. If we let them. Homeland Security and counterterrorism at it's most basic is airport security, and it's time to sent the Republicans to remedial class.

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9-11, war on terror, homeland security, 2008 elections, liberal, moonbat, politics

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?

Technorati Tags:
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

White House Terror Officials Feed Intel to Fox News

So today we wake up to discover that the recent OBL video overshadowed by sordid tale of how it was acquired early by the Bush White House and then leaked to FOX NEWS. Two senior officials in Bush's Administration were given an emailed link around 10 a.m. to the video on a private intelligence company's website that monitors Islamic terrorists. Those two officials are White House counsel Fred F. Fielding and Michael Leiter, who holds the No. 2 job at the National Counterterrorism Center. The Search for International Terrorist Entities first contacted Fielding, and then emailed the link to Fielding and also to Leitner, at the suggestion of Joel Bagnal, deputy assistant to the president for homeland security. Fielding and Bagnal both told SITE that Bush's White House did not yet have a copy of OBL's video.

Within 20 minutes, a range of intelligence agencies had begun downloading it from the company's Web site. By midafternoon that day, the video and a transcript of its audio track had been leaked from within the Bush administration to cable television news and broadcast worldwide.

The founder of the company, the SITE Intelligence Group, says this premature disclosure tipped al-Qaeda to a security breach and destroyed a years-long surveillance operation that the company has used to intercept and pass along secret messages, videos and advance warnings of suicide bombings from the terrorist group's communications network.

"Techniques that took years to develop are now ineffective and worthless," said Rita Katz, the firm's 44-year-old founder, who has garnered wide attention by publicizing statements and videos from extremist chat rooms and Web sites, while attracting controversy over the secrecy of SITE's methodology. Her firm provides intelligence about terrorist groups to a wide range of paying clients, including private firms and military and intelligence agencies from the United States and several other countries.

The precise source of the leak remains unknown. Government officials declined to be interviewed about the circumstances on the record, but they did not challenge Katz's version of events. They also said the incident had no effect on U.S. intelligence-gathering efforts and did not diminish the government's ability to anticipate attacks.

While acknowledging that SITE had achieved success, the officials said U.S. agencies have their own sophisticated means of watching al-Qaeda on the Web. "We have individuals in the right places dealing with all these issues, across all 16 intelligence agencies," said Ross Feinstein, spokesman for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

At first blush, we are faced with the idea that the Bush Administration is so extraordinarily sloppy with controlling sensitive information, that people began forwarding the emails sent to Feilding and Leitner at-will. As a federal employee, constantly trained in the handling of sensitive information and reminded by marks on every document and email, this innocent excitement seems implausible. Of course, this wouldn't be the first time that analysts in either the CIA or the DIA have used or misused intelligence in order to fight their constant turf battles. How alarming it is that Bush has created an entire security apparatus in order to fight terrorism and it's plagued at the top by people who just want to be the first to leak to their overlords at FOX NEWS.

Conservative bloggers are fighting the notion of a White House Intel Leak tooth and nail. One attempt involves stating that since the transcipts, which include a translation, were done on the 6th, the day before the link was provided to the White House, that is de facto proof that American intelligence had the video the day before... because only American intelligence could have done the translation. However, the Jawa Report is in (deliberate?) error. The "marks" are in fact SITE marks. You can discover that for yourself by hunting down the original posting of the "marks" on FOX NEWS... which shows the same document without the header chopped off. The header clearly shows the translation was downloaded off a SITE website and gives the address.



CounterterrorismBlog also corrects another one of The Jawa Reports inaccuracies, when it claimed that blogger Laura Mansfeild had the video. Laura Mansfeild only knew the video was coming, and released a link to another jihad video which came out the day before. The Jawa Report goes on to claim that it had the video, but check out their actual posting of the OBL video. The time stamp reads as posted By Dr. Rusty "John Doe" Shackleford at September 7, 2007 03:39 PM. That would be after the release on FOX NEWS. One amusing misquote of Jawa's "marks" claim further distorted the claim to the point that the marks proved ABC had the video and transcript on the 6th!!



Other conservative bloggers attempt to make hay with an ABC story on the video after latching onto the date marker for the article, which reads 9:23 AM. The Jawa Report's blog on the marks has found life as a source for this spin. At first blush, perhaps to those who didn't actually read the article, it would seem that ABC had the transcript previous to SITE's emails at 10 AM. However, when you get to the bottom of the article, you find the words "This post has been updated." Which means that the original story of the Blotter, talking about DHS statements on possible terrorist attacks against the US and New York City on 9-11, which you can extrapolate out of the text, was amended later to include the blurb that there was a new video. You would think that they would take this as a chance to scream about how the liberal media is just trying to discredit the DHS and US counterterrorism by making it seems as if the DHS got caught sleeping, but even a chance to scream "liberal media bias" gets sacrificed in the need to defend Bush.

Con-blogs resist document comparison between the ABC and FOX transcripts which leave little room for doubt that they are the same document, and work hard at insisting that ABC posted the video before FOX. The evidence against them would be the comment section for the Blotter's post. Surely, if ABC had posted the actual video at 9:23 as is being claimed, the comments would include references to the contents. Yet the comments contain no discussion of OBL's rant on the state of the mortgage industry in our country. And it is not until 3:37:45 PM that comments on the content of the video begin, including a count on the number of times OBL says "Wake Up."

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White House, Bush, terrorism, Al-Qaeda, moonbat, politics

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

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