Blackwater Kills Infant Girl "Insurgent" to Protect US

So today we will explore the most recent disgrace the Bush Administration has set up country up to suffer in Iraq. Blackwater lashed out at rush-hour traffic in Baghdad with a deadly hail of bullets last Sunday, and the Iraqi government is leading a heroic, yet likely doomed, attempt to oust the mercenary firm from its (supposedly) sovereign soil. After seeing their State Department barrel up to a busy traffic circle, Iraqi police officers stepped out into traffic to attempt to clear a path. When they failed to do so quickly enough, Blackwater’s mercenaries open fired on a car with young parents and their infant daughter, killing all three. They then continued to straff construction workers, a bus full of school girls, other fleeing commuters, and shot to death one of the Iraqi police officers. At some point, Blackwater’s helicopters joined in the shooting spree that is reported to have lasted twenty minutes and initially killed eleven. Survivors continue to die of their wounds in local hospitals, and the death toll rises. Blackwater released claims that the young parents and their baby girl were insurgents and had opened fire first.

"We will not tolerate the killing of our citizens in cold blood," al-Maliki told reporters. "The work of this company has been stopped in order to know the reasons."

Al-Maliki said the shootings had generated such "widespread anger and hatred" that it would be "in everyone's interest if the embassy used another company while the company is suspended."

Blackwater spokeswoman Anne E. Tyrrell said in a statement late Monday that its employees acted "lawfully and appropriately" in response to an armed attack against a State Department convoy.



"The `civilians' reportedly fired upon by Blackwater professionals were in fact armed enemies and Blackwater personnel returned defensive fire," she said. "Blackwater regrets any loss of life but this convoy was violently attacked by armed insurgents, not civilians, and our people did their job to defend human life."

…The Interior Ministry had said Monday it had lifted Blackwater's license and ordered its 1,000 employees to leave the country. The next day, Iraqi officials said Blackwater's operations were merely suspended pending an investigation. ….

"It's going to turn the world upside down," said retired Marine Lt. Col. Bill Cowan, an independent military analyst and the co-chairman of WVC3 Group, a security consulting firm. "You can bet the U.S. embassy is doing backflips right now pressuring the Iraqis not to revoke their license."

CODEPINK held a protest in DC against Blackwater on Wednesday, in front of the International Peace Operations Association, the lobbying group which presses the interests of mercenary companies like Blackwater to Republican lawmakers. For a little back ground, view a self-made Blackwater pilot video to grasp how they define themselves.

The New York Times relays that the Iraqis refute Blackwater's claim that its personel were ambushed. The Iraqi government’s initial report, though unverified, says that Blackwater personnel "were not ambushed ... but instead fired at a car when it did not heed a policeman's call to stop, killing a couple and their infant." CNN interviewed several of the Iraqi survivors: "As we turned back they opened fire on all cars from behind. The bullets are in my back. Withing two minutes teh helicopters arrived. They started firing randomly at citizens. No one fired at Blackwater. They were not attacked by gunman. They were not targeted." Other Iraqis report hearing explosions and gun-fire, but no one except Blackwater actually saw any insurgents open fire on the State Department motorcade. That would include the surviving Iraqi police officer who had stepped out in traffic to clear their path.



None of the US employed mercenaries, Blackwater or not, have ever been prosecuted for any of the shootings clearly done by them, even when their targets clearly were not insurgents:

"[There] have been several fatal shootings involving Blackwater guards including one last Christmas Eve [reported by the Wall Street Journal] when a drunk Blackwater employee walking in the Green Zone reportedly fatally shot an Iraqi guard for Vice President Adel Abdul Mehdi. Spend any time hanging out with private security contractors in Iraq and invariably everybody has a favorite Blackwater story. A few weeks ago, a British security contractor showed me a bullet hole on the windshield of his armored Chevy Suburban. He said it happened one evening when Blackwater guards shot at him while he was driving in the Green Zone. "While they were armed and shooting in the Green Zone remains the mystery to me," he says. "But frankly, nothing surprises me about them anymore. I'm just glad I had bulletproof glass"."

Blackwater totals of contracts with the Department of State run $678 million since 2003. Private contractors still enjoy total immunity to prosecution under Iraqi Law, and none have been prosecuted inside the United States for incidents that occurred in Iraq. Blackwater currently fights litigation by the families of several of it’s employees killed in Fallujah in 2004, contesting that any allowance to sue their company directly hinders the ability of the President as Commander-in-Chief to engage in combat operations in Iraq. The State Department exempts Blackwater from needing an Iraqi Ministry Liscense, although such requirements are included in Defense Department contracts. Blackwater remains exempt from being tracked and monitored by US military commanders, from the procedures for reporting shooting incidents that apply to US patrols, or from operating under offensive weaponry restrictions that apply to US soldiers.

"The Iraqis despised them, because they were untouchable," said Matthew Degn, who recently returned from Baghdad after serving as senior American adviser to the Interior Ministry. "They were above the law." Degn said Blackwater's armed Little Bird helicopters often buzzed the Interior Ministry's roof, "almost like they were saying, 'Look, we can fly anywhere we want.' "
…Blackwater's conduct at times inflamed tensions inside the Interior Ministry, Degn said. On May 24, Degn was evacuated from the building after an armed standoff between Interior Ministry commandos and Blackwater guards, who had shot and killed an Iraqi driver outside the gates. U.S. and Iraqi officials feared the incident might lead to retaliatory attacks against Americans.

After shooting the unarmed Iraqi driver, Blackwater’s mercenaries found itself surrounded by Interior Ministry commandos with AK-47 assault rifles, but refused to identify themselves. A passing US military convoy attempted to mediate, but eventually a State Department official was called upon to negotiate the return of Blackwater’s employees to the Green Zone.

Later, both Blackwater and the State Department initially denied that the shooting occurred. The company and agency officials then confirmed that the incident had taken place but defended the guards, saying they had followed the rules on the use of force. The State Department said it planned a thorough investigation. Four months later, no results have been announced.

Despite irregularities in Blackwater’s contracts which permit the company a pyramid scheme to make profit off of the State Department, by including profit in it’s contracts twice, and so that the second calculation of profit is calculated off the contract’s total including the first calculation of profit, the Republican lawmakers and Bush officals continue to shield and favor their company. Guess to whose election campaigns Blackwater renders donations, effectively allowing Republicans to fund their politics through tax-payer’s money?

If you don’t understand how the supposedly frugal Republican Party can swallow this, look here for a key insight. You will not find Blackwater’s culpability for the deaths of its mercenaries in Fallujah in 2004 given an accurate recounting, and there will be no mention of unarmored bright red SUV, inferior weaponry, too few men for such a patrol, a lack of experience training as a team, or the fact that they were escorting trucks to pick up pots and pans. All of the truth of how those men were sacrificed by a greedy corporation to increase it's profit margin must be buried to preserve the neo-con world view, where only liberals are capable of sin:

Despite popular belief, contractors are professionals that are held accountable for their actions. Our nation should not resort to criticizing their service, as they fulfill a portion of the war process to the best of their ability. Maybe instead we should reevaluate the circumstance of the media in war time. Just perhaps the veterans of war know better how to conduct operations than politicians, journalists, and peace activists. This is precisely why a high level of attention is given to the prior military service of presidential candidates, because if elected they will serve the role of Commander in Chief.

When the situation’s structure is scrutinized, what one will find at the base is the left and liberal media so opposed to the war in Iraq they will pursue any means necessary to discredit it. The cycle of anti-war activist attacks has proven itself over and over again, as attempts are made to vilify President Bush, his Republican backing, private military companies, the United States Military, and often the United States. They continue to make out America as the national bully, acting only to weaken our democracy from within.

Yes, your eyes do not deceive you. According to this proposal, if Blackwater wants to wander through traffic in Baghdad shooting up school buses full of girls, we must clap and cheer to show we are good patriots and understand our place. We the people are too ignorant to render judgments on issues like war and peace, and should just shut up. When we scrutinize the public uproar over this situation, what we really find is the basic assumption on the part of the liberal media and the American Left that our soldiers should have been doing this duty instead of mercenaries, since they are the real and true professionals, and know what conduct is due their uniforms.




Immediately following Sunday’s incident, Blackwater revoked clearance for any travel out of the Green Zone, which despite four years of occupation and a “troop surge,” requires heavily-armed escort. Yet our politicians should not so easily give into calls that Blackwater must be forgiven in the name of the greater good and the “War on Terror.” Here we look at an astounding opportunity to cut away a major determent to our military’s ability to function in a time of war; reliance on silent partners motivated by profit. No blind eye should be turned to the fact that the operating procedures for private security contractors were written by Lawrence T. Peter, director of the 50- member Private Security Company Association of Iraq. In a blatant conflict of interest, the Pentagon's Defense Reconstruction Support Office employs Peters to consult on it’s issuance of contracts to the members of his organization.

We on the Left wait to see if the Iraq government passes the test to it's people of not actually being a puppet of the Bush Administration, and whether or not Pelosi can seize this opportunity to force a real policy change in Iraq. Blackwater remains silent on the incident via it's website press releases. To the press, Blackwater reportedly describes Sunday's shootings as "Blackwater professionals heroically defended Americans in a war zone.” A Blackwater contractor told the conservative Washington Times: "They will hem and haw, then money will exchange hands and it will go away."

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Passengers Fail to Observe 9-11 Moment of Silence

So today, the vast majority of Americans seem to have chickened out on flying, count that towards what you will: no one believes Petraeus, people have noticed how many Al-Q terrorist cells keep getting arrested trying to make explosives, rainy weather. Those few who trickled through airports local to moonbat overwhelmingly booked flights without realizing what date they were picking, or else flew for business, because heck, gotta make that buck. Several offical attempts were made to observe moments of silence when the first World Trade Center was struck, as passengers rolled their eyes and continued to take off their shoes. Moonbat found herself off eating lentil soup and completely missed the correct time. Headquarters provided nifty little posters for everyone to sign stating that they remembered the reason why they came to work. As a mark of low morale, no one signed.

En route to and from defending the nation from Osama bin Laden, and to and from the one intelligence class at her college there's been enough student interest in to run, moonbat has been listening to tidbits of Petraeus' "I swear I wrote this despite that the White House rewrites everyone else's testimony, but I hid mine in my underwear drawer and Cheyne would never think to look there" testimony. So sectarian violence is down 45% since last December and 80% in Baghdad alone... as long as you don't include car bombs, Diyala province and anyone shot anywhere else than the back of the head. What are we to do with a General who defines the difference between a terrorist and a criminal by how they shoot you?? Under the spit and polish, the truth remains that the surge has failed. Sectarian violence remains above levels in 2004, 2005, and 2006. Ducking under one month in the last twelve by spinning numbers is political manuevering unexpected from General Betray Us.

People should read the ad before swallowing the inevitable attempts at Republican spin and give MoveOn a fair chance. A difference remains between calling someone a traitor for voicing dissapproval of their President's policy and the commendable act of saying the General has no clothes. When numbers given as Congressional testimony are misleading and false, a General who speaks them betrays the trust of the public, and that act is not removed from moral outrage just because even moonbat favors a few of his overall ideas. Nor should Democrats feel the need to return MoveOn's money. You'd think con-blogs would assume Petraeus had any skin at all.

Six years later.... our military tetters on the edge of an abyss and meets it's recuitment goals only by large cash payments. We still can't translate most of our intercepted SIGINT. Our country got milked by almost $60 billion in wasted contracting dollars by Republican election donors pretending to "work" in Iraq. Electricity production in Baghdad remains 2 hours a day. The Taliban are just about as popular as ever in Afghanistan. Al-Q's mobile terrorist training camps still churn out bomb-makers from international schools in Pakistan. China spends it's time on a Marshal Plan for Africa. Osama bin Laden finds the time to die his beard and follow the real estate mortage crisis in the United States. What has the Republican party done for you lately??

Going Down for the War on Terror

So today moonbat has appeared to rant about how America is loosing the war on terror. Flat out, we must be dead last. As Bush could have been dead a few days ago, when Osama Bin Laden snuck through two security checkpoints at the APEC summit in Australia. Interestingly enough, the international security community is being allowed to huffingly brush off the incident, in reality a bunch of comedians from an Aussie t.v. show "The Chaser," as proof about how "the incident fully vindicated the strength of the events security." And we, the public, seem content to let this one side, despite the fact that real terrorists, who think the same zany way as comedians do, could have easily incinerated the "leader of the capitalist world" almost six years to the anniversary of 9-11. Perhaps the next Director of National Intelligence should be selected from the writer's staff of Saturday Night Live.. as an improvement...



Elsewhere than Iraq, the real war on terror spills over into new battlegrounds, as Al-Q continues to be left relatively unmolested by the US military. White German citizens converted to Islam traveled to PAKISTAN, where they trained in camps last year run by the Islamic Jihad Union, a Central Asian group affiliated with al-Qaeda. Young white men, not Arabs or Persians or Indians or Africans, to all of you who object to airline security so much because, by the gods, you are white.

In June, the Taliban circulated a DVD among local journalists in Pakistan that purported to show a training camp graduation ceremony. Among the 250 graduates were more than a dozen white-skinned young men. One Taliban figure in the video was identified as the leader of a small group of German recruits, according to a copy of the video viewed by a Washington Post correspondent.

Wait, who are these Taliban?? Oh, they still run a whole lot of this country we supposedly have liberated from radical Islamic forces, Afghanistan, where we are now also loosing the war against international heroin. Nothing beats an Administration that can loose two wars in the same country at the same time.

Germany's arrests arrive hard on the heels of the arrests of an unrelated Islamic terrorist cell in Denmark. Two isolated cells, both of which had acquired materials to begin cooking explosives. Cheery.

The Muslims arrested ranged from 19 to 29 years old. They came from Afghan, Pakistani, Somali and Turkish backgrounds and six were Danish citizens, Scharf said.

Mmmm... why aren't they Iraqi, do you suppose? No Iranians?

Moonbat lies awake at night often thinking about terrorism. No big surprise considering that unlike a lot of hot-air baffoons, her job entails preventing them from killing innocent Americans should all those intelligence and police operatives fail to discover and stop them in time. But the time has passed for sleepless nights. The time has come for laughter. The time of employing comedians in the ranks of our intelligence agencies, and in our congressional committees has arrived. Comedians understand the mind of a terrorist. Obviously, we can't rely on the Republicans anymore. The life of our President is clearly at stake.

Moonbat Takes On Idiot Private Security Force

So today found moonbat off to do her volunteer work at her favorite Museum, all up in her girlie clothes and girlie heels. Of course, just beyond the front door lies the private security force and their little amateur screening area, which impresses a real Transportation Security Officer not in the least bit. One key difference between TSA and this gaggle of guards, is that unlike an airport there is no same-gender screening, which means that they have a group of 30-40 year old men waiting around to screen women who set off the alarm because they were high heels. As moonbat prefers and has done for the past two years, she yanked hers off and tossed them on the x-ray belt. One of the male officers immediately jumped forward and insisted that she had to wear them through the walk-through metal detector.

Oh yeah? There might be glass. Really? Now, if all passengers who fly on airplanes are required to remove their shoes to pass through airport security at the decision of the Department of Homeland Security, one can reasonably conclude that there are no realistic legal or saftey concerns, especially since liability rests with the Museum and not the security force. So why the eager insistance? Well... moonbat could trip. What, into your waiting arms? So, moonbat insists on a supervisor, and after it becomes apparent that no one else will be allowed to enter until one is summoned, behold, when it was insisted that none were in the building, one can be found. After listening to the presented case, and looking at the growing line of scowling visitors, the supervisor relents.

Moonbat prances shoe-free through the walk-through metal detector. She slings her now x-rayed purse up onto her shoulder and begins to put on her heels. Supervisor insists that she come with him because he is going to have to file an incident report about her behavior, so that her supervisor can councel her on cooperating with security in the future. Sure. Glad to put things on paper. Not a problem. Moonbat reaches for her other heel.

Oh no, that won't do. Even though so many concerns were sighted to prevent moonbat from removing her heels for screening, it suddenly is okay for her to walk through the museum in bare feet.... because the supervisor seizes moonbat via her purse and attempt to haul her physically across the museum whilst she puts her other heel back on her foot. Oh now it was on. A good measure of steel in "take your hands off me" and he let go, all full of apologies, and made a quick retreat to his office. Another guard waddled up and with almost 300 lbs of authority told me there was no need to have an "attitude" and took down moonbat's information on a napkin. Moonbat found great amusement in forcing a choice between allowed to use her cell phone in the security area to listen to her voicemail (which even TSA allows) and being able to give the extention of her boss. Hah! So the guard had to waddle back off to look up the correct number. Now of course, for moonbat's chance to file a grievance. Only after twice insisting that complaint forms be provided for her, were such forms produced, and she was assured she could fill them out at her station and drop them off on her way out of the Museum later. Likely there was some hope moonbat would cool off and forget. Fat chance!!

Flew through the paperwork, scanned off a copy for her dear readers and also for the head cheese, and pranced right back down to drop them off. Of course, the real sticker is that this will likely result in absolutely no discipline measures against the guard, or any productive change in screening policies, like same gender or the right to remove your heels. Though people might love to whine and complain about the security screening procedures for airports done by TSA, few consider the alternatives of using private security firms to whom politicians have to curry favor in order to get campaign contributions. If Lockheed Martin did airport screening, you can be assured that your local Congressmen could never afford to investigate any real offense that occurred... but since it's all in house, it's safe to wack away at any infraction on the part of TSA. So for all those of you who like to complain that you got screened because the wire in your bra set off the walk-through metal detector, imagine instead of a female screener, an eager 30-year-old and 6 ft tall slobering hulk. And oh, yes, moonbat always wears her Victoria Secret... even today. Cheers!!

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Bush Buys Voodoo Dolls of House and Senate

So today I'm here to complain about these strange pricking feelings being reported covertly by Democratic members of Congress through their staff. White House Press Secretary Yellow Snow insists that it has nothing to do with what presidential aides bought their boss this morning in a Washington (Still Citizen-Free Capital of the Free World thanks to the Republican Party) D.C. voodoo shop or that Pelosi rocked out that House Appropriations Bill. After releasing an exclusive report yesterday showing video footage of the voodoo shop that purported to demonstrate it was a "massage parlor" for discriminating clientel, Politico now entertains us all with a story about how the prick reported- sorry, was reported all wrong.

Ouch. What the... OUCH!!