From today’s New York Times:
“In the first comprehensive account of the day’s events, the Iraqi Ministry of Interior said that security guards for Blackwater fired on Iraqis in their cars in midday traffic. The document concludes that the dozens of foreign security companies here should be replaced by Iraqi companies, and that a law that has given the companies immunity for years be scrapped.”
It remains to be seen whether the Iraqi government really has any power to ban Blackwater USA and other private contractors. But it’s unlikely. Meanwhile, American officials are conducting their own investigation.
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
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44 Comments
Well,
It’s their country. If they want to ban foreign security firms, let them. Of course, I don;t see the situation getting any better with using the local militias, but hey, it’s their country. Time to turn it over to them. They want it, they got it.
Well, Blackwater is back in business escorting civilian convoys and will, according to the linked piece, resume normal operations on Saturday.
http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/09/21/blackwater/index.html
….waiting for the rest of the story.
I’m scheptical, would’nt be the first time a story like this turned out to be BS.
Will the Blackwater people be prosecuted in Iraqi courts? Is Iraq a sovereign state?
The answer to BOTH questions is the same.
“should be replaced by Iraqi companies, and that a law that has given the companies immunity for years be scrapped.”
WTF, it IS their country right? Pack ‘em up boys, you’re comin home.
Well, a deciding moment here; is Iraq a sovereign nation or a U.S. colony? I guess we’ll find that out now. “It’s not about oil” Bush is going to have to act, and how he acts is going to tell us his real intentions regarding Iraq.
“Imagine a universe where a man can gun down women and children anytime he pleases, knowing he will never be brought to justice. A place where morality is null and void, and arbitrary killing is the rule. A place that has been imagined hitherto only in nightmarish dystopian fiction, like “1984,” or in fevered passages from Dostoevsky—or which existed during the Holocaust and Stalinist purges and the Dark Ages. Well, that universe exists today. It is called Iraq. And the man who made it possible is George W. Bush.”
http://tinyurl.com/25tfwb
“Well, that universe exists today. It is called Iraq. And the man who made it possible is George W. Bush.”"
Imagine a fevered writer with overblown hyperbole and twisted panties.
“Imagine a fevered writer with overblown hyperbole and twisted panties.”
Would that be the White House speech writers?
fleetwood, there’s a lot you don’t know about Iraq. Contractors have taken home movies of themselves shooting innocent civilians and were never punished.
If you work for Blackwater, you can indeed shoot someone in the head for no reason and be sent home with no punishment. It’s the law.
The movie Schindlers list had a scene where the nazi commander played ‘target practice’ shooting Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto. Similarly, Serbs did that with civilians in besieged Sarajevo.
Now we have Blackwater …
it’s their country. Time to turn it over to them. They want it, they got it.
Posted by: littlejohn
after baggin on you for days,
i agree with you on this one.
who’s the cross-eyed black neo-con on msnbc.
ok, he’s a former ass to bush.
can you say “sell out your entire race?”
“maybe it’s just to much time in a tanning booth”
Perfect! An idiot who doesn’t know the difference between too and to.
“Contractors have taken home movies of themselves…”
Are these double secret videos that are for your eyes only?
lolheyblackwater is in big trouble in iraq !!!!i guess saying this makes it correct and takes heat off bush.nice move philhowever i don’t think anyone except 1 or 2 prision guards will or have ever gotten punished.the other day a civillian killing cover-uping officer was found guilty, but no punishment.
i thought they welcomed us with open arms.
Calling Gul Duakat, calling Gul Dukat!!
Come on GD, you “bloodthirsty, nazi mercenary” lay the smack down on these lying, hand wringing, panty wetting lefties. I KNOW that mercs are professional and not psycho killers but libs always obsess over nonsense and bullshit, and the more ridiculous the more likely they are to believe in it!
LJ,” but hey, it’s their country. Time to turn it over to them. They want it, they got it.”
Now that we’ve f**ked it over just about as bad as we can.
fleetwood, there’s a lot you don’t know about Iraq. Contractors have taken home movies of themselves shooting innocent civilians and were never punished.
If you work for Blackwater, you can indeed shoot someone in the head for no reason and be sent home with no punishment. It’s the law.
Posted by: leftcoaster | September 21, 2007 at 03:35 PM
Yes, fleettwood said it best.Are these double secret videos that are for your eyes only?
Posted by: fleettwood | September 21, 2007 at 04:52 PM
So, are you going to share these double secret videos leftcoaster or are they stored under piles of dung at the fertilizer plant? :)
What can be put past the mentality of a hired gun slinger?
“Are these double secret videos that are for your eyes only?”
Indeed. Quite a charge there. Taking video of shooting innocents.
Do you think the conservatives at CNN, CBS, ABC, NBC etc., might want to show us some of this?
So you think they wouldn’t, if it were true?The “you peoples”! BAH!
If the Iraqi government cannot license, deport or otherwise choose who does what on its soil, it is NOT a real sovreign government and the Iraqi people are under no obligation to recognize it as such.
Absolutely true Kev – Bush will protect him and order his flunky Maliki to back down. However, this will further illegiimize the regime.
Ben
How many stories like this have we heard out of Iraq that werent true?
Look what’s become of the Haditha story?
Now you can throw your tin foil helmet on like CF or Capn if you want, but I always considered you one of the more rational lefties on this shitty little blog.
A little concrete evidence please?
Even the Times hedged their bets by printing at least part of the other side of the story.
Maybe they’ve been burnt to many times.
Haditha? That has never been disproved; just covered up.
Let’s have an investigation done by someone other than Blackwater or ots employer. Let’s let the Courts do their job. And, since Iraq is a sovereign state, it has to be THEIR COURTS!
If the Democrats will get off their asses and stop giving Bushco any money all this shit will stop.
This entire Blackwater fiasco and Bush’s silence on the matter leads me to suspect that all we have been hearing is true about this group of mercenaries.
To have Blackwater mercenaries being above the law is the most ridiculous PR move of all. If Bush is so concerned about the terrorists recruiting and attacking the US, then perhaps Bush needs to show by example that the US is a country that holds people accountable for their actions.
I just watched a documentary about the Nuremberg trial. The major reason the USA wanted the Nazi leaders to have a trial was to show that the USA was on moral ground and allowed even the most despicable people a trial.
Blackwater sounds like a bunch of thugs that get their kicks by killing people and if this is true, then what makes them any different than Saddam’s henchmen?
If the Democrats will get off their asses and stop giving Bushco any money, then all this shit will stop.
never mind i got it now…
“New Figures Reveal Aggressive GOP Obstructionist Strategy”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2007/09/21/new-figures-reveal-aggres_n_65374.html
“Prior to its introduction, Senate Democrats and Republicans agreed that, in order to avoid a procedural tit-for-tat, there would be a 60-vote threshold on all Defense Authorization amendments. “
If the Democrats will get off their asses and stop giving Bushco any money, then all this shit will stop.
Posted by: Ed Friedemann
well mr ed how do you propose that the dems do that without a veto proof majority.
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – The U.S. Marines have dismissed charges against an officer accused of failing to report accurately the U.S. killing of 24 Iraqi civilians in Haditha in 2005.
Capt. Lucas McConnell was granted immunity
by Camp Pendleton’s commanding officer, Lt. Gen. James Mattis, and will cooperate in the remaining Haditha prosecutions, the Marines said in a statement.
there you go girls.
“The defense attorney said the proper focus should be on military commanders who set the basic rules of engagement for U.S. forces.”
lollike thats gonna hapen.
http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=12829
So, are you going to share these double secret videos leftcoaster or are they stored under piles of dung at the fertilizer plant? :)
Posted by: Kansas
Indeed. Quite a charge there. Taking video of shooting innocents.
Do you think the conservatives at CNN, CBS, ABC, NBC etc., might want to show us some of this?
So you think they wouldn’t, if it were true?The “you peoples”! BAH!
Posted by: fleettwood
you 2 are too dumb to have a clue about how to be part of a free country.
why would a conservative show video that would bust bush?
go smoke some more crack d.a.
Feds Target Blackwater in Weapons ProbeWASHINGTON — Federal prosecutors are investigating whether employees of the private security firm Blackwater USA illegally smuggled into Iraq weapons that may have been sold on the black market and ended up in the hands of a U.S.-designated terrorist organization, officials said Friday.
In the United States, officials in Washington said the smuggling investigation grew from internal Pentagon and State Department inquiries into U.S. weapons that had gone missing in Iraq.
It gained steam after Turkish authorities protested to the U.S. in July that they had seized American arms from the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, rebels.
more good news for blackwater.bush isn’t going to do anything about this except whine some more about moveon.org
http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=12829
Go watch the video on this page, its basically a trophy video of private security personal shooting up Iraqi traffic for the sport of it.
In the blue highlighted part, that says shooting gallery, there is a video link.
Lots of bad things happen when you make war a for profit enterprise. This is just another one. The worst one is where ya keep the war going to keep the gravy coming in.
And that ladies and gentleman is exactly what is and has been happening in Iraq these last 4 years.
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article2984819.ece
THE REAL STORY of Baghdad’s Bloody Sunday
Six days ago, at least 28 civilians died in a shooting incident involving the US security company Blackwater. But what actually happened? Kim Sengupta reports from the scene of the massacre
Published: 21 September 2007
The eruption of gunfire was sudden and ferocious, round after round mowing down terrified men women and children, slamming into cars as they collided and overturned with drivers frantically trying to escape. Some vehicles were set alight by exploding petrol tanks. A mother and her infant child died in one of them, trapped in the flames.
The shooting on Sunday, by the guards of the American private security company Blackwater, has sparked one of the most bitter and public disputes between the Iraqi government and its American patrons, and brings into sharp focus the often violent conduct of the Western private armies operating in Iraq since the 2003 invasion, immune from scrutiny or prosecution.
Blackwater’s security men are accused of going on an unprovoked killing spree. Hassan Jabar Salman, a lawyer, was shot four times in the back, his car riddled with eight more bullets, as he attempted to get away from their convoy. Yesterday, sitting swathed in bandages at Baghdad’s Yarmukh Hospital, he recalled scenes of horror. “I saw women and children jump out of their cars and start to crawl on the road to escape being shot,” said Mr Salman. “But still the firing kept coming and many of them were killed. I saw a boy of about 10 leaping in fear from a minibus, he was shot in the head. His mother was crying out for him, she jumped out after him, and she was killed. People were afraid.”
At the end of the prolonged hail of bullets Nisoor Square was a scene of carnage with bodies strewn around smouldering wreckage. Ambulances trying to pick up the wounded found their path blocked by crowds fleeing the gunfire.
Yesterday, the death toll from the incident, according to Iraqi authorities, stood at 28. And it could rise higher, say doctors, as some of the injured, hit by high-velocity bullets at close quarter, are unlikely to survive.
There needs to be a complete investigation. There needs to be a trial. And the trial must take place in the country in which the incident took place.
IF Iraq is a sovereign and free country and bush claims that will happen. Conversely, if that does not happen then it proves the claim to be a lie.
Damn right, Patriot.
You can have control or you can have democracy but you can’t have both.
Bush wants both . . .
A lot of this could have been prevented.
Wanna get ooutraged?
I know you all in favor of the war didn’t bother to see Fahrenheit 911. There’s a scene in it you should really see. It would make you understand why you’ve been so foolish to continue to support this.
Conference hall. Lotsa suits. Greasy little mid management type tells the assembeled group. “There’s gonna be money. Lots of money and for all of you.”
Something like that.
Go see it. It’ll educate you. It might even make you mad as hell. It did me. That was more than 3 years ago now. Never too late to educate yourself though.
But don’t you know JR? The movie is all fiction. ESPECIALLY THE PARTS THAT PORTRAY BUSH! THEY USED A REALLY HORRIBLE ACTOR FOR THAT!
OOPS! That was real …
Anybody got figures on this?
I mean, just how many armed persons do we have in Iraq? And if the private ones behave badly and are made to leave, where does that leave the troops?
This again, is what happens when you turn war into something other than a necessary nasty business.
Oh Blackwater, keeps on rolling, Iraqi moon keep on shining your light on me.