An Interior Ministry official and five eyewitnesses described a second deadly shooting minutes after the incident in Nisoor Square. The very same Blackwater security guards, after driving about 150 yards away from the square, fired into a crush of cars, killing one person and injuring two others.
Eyewitnesses to the events of Sept. 16 said the Blackwater convoy, after leaving Nisoor Square, headed north and drove into a knot of cars trying to go down a side road to avoid the square.
"They came at a high speed," said Uday Khalid, 25, a policeman. "They just wanted to escape. They were shooting their way out. They were yelling and shouting."
One Iraqi driver slammed on his brakes and tried to turn around, as did other cars. But a Blackwater guard "immediately opened fire on them," said Amar Kurdi, 30, a policeman who tried to manage the traffic to allow the convoy to pass through.
Kurdi said that he saw only the guards from the rearmost Blackwater vehicle shooting. But the Iraqi Interior Ministry official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he is close to the Iraqi government's investigation of the incident, said guards fired from all four vehicles.
The Blackwater guards fired warning shots whenever one of the police officers tried to help the injured, the officers said. "We tried to help the people who were shot, but they wouldn't let us," said Mahdi Daoud, 29, another policeman guarding a civil defense compound.
Moments later, the road cleared and the convoy sped away.
There is no place for cowboys like this in the U.S. military or any associated agency and should have their weapons taken away. They are high on ‘legalized murder’ and view all Iraqis as targets to be ‘taken out’ with extreme prejudice. What they have done amounts to war crimes and need to be prosecuted. Blackwater USA should be taken to account for hiring obviously renegade murderers who think they are above any law. These guys give mercenaries a bad name.
Initial reports by U.S. military officials say the civilians that were fired upon in Nisoor Square did not have any weapons on them. And none of the Iraqi Police or any of the local security forces fired back at them.
The Blackwater guards appeared to have fired grenade launchers in addition to machine guns.
Many U.S. military officials are critical of Blackwater because its guards have a reputation for reckless behavior that officials say reflects poorly on American troops in Iraq. Iraqi citizens often do not distinguish between U.S. soldiers in Humvees and Blackwater guards in armored vehicles.
Erik Prince's version of the incident is complete fantasy compared to eyewitnesses. During the kneejerk, impotent hearing conducted by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee we got to hear Prince’s version:
The testimony said that after a Blackwater team delivered a U.S. government official to a Baghdad destination, a "very large" car bomb exploded "in close proximity to their location." After the team "secured its principal and requested support for its evacuation," a second Blackwater team proceeded to an intersection "approximately one mile away from the explosion site to secure a route of egress" for the first team.
When the second team arrived at Nisoor Square, it said, "they came under small-arms fire and notified the first team to proceed along a different route. The vehicle team still in the intersection continued to receive fire, and some team members returned fire at threatening targets. Among the threats identified were men with AK-47s firing on the convoy, as well as approaching vehicles that appeared to be suicide car bombers."
The team attempted to leave, but "one of their vehicles was disabled by enemy fire" and eventually had to be towed. "Some of those firing on this Blackwater team appeared to be wearing Iraqi National Police uniforms, or portions of such uniforms. As the withdrawal occurred, the Blackwater vehicles remained under fire from such personnel."
According to Prince's prepared testimony, which cautioned that his "current understanding" remained incomplete, only five members of the 20-member team ever discharged their weapons "in response to the threat." Blackwater helicopters "did assist in directing the teams to safety, but contrary to some reports, no one in the helicopters discharged any weapons."
Prince said that "based on everything we currently know, the Blackwater team acted appropriately while operating in a very complex war zone." He said that there was a "rush to judgment based on inaccurate information, and many public reports have wrongly pronounced Blackwater's guilt for the death of varying numbers of civilians."
Blackwater and other security firms providing personal security under contract to the State Department have been implicated in a number of previous Iraqi civilian deaths, injuries and property damage incidents in recent years, but no one has ever been prosecuted in the incidents.
We are doing our military personnel a disservice by hiring these arrogant, street fighting, guerillas. They are nothing more than hired thugs who are more than happy to be paid for killing anything that moves.
Our politicians have put U.S. foreign policy in jeopardy once again by going for the easy, quick answer to lack of military might. They have hired a bunch of terrorists complete with a goon squad mentality and once again their band-aid solution is biting us all on the ass.
The practice of hiring private security forces to ‘supplement’ U.S. military is the beginning of a very dangerous trend. The U.S. will soon have its very own private standing army. One of the tenets of a Fascist state.
The U.S. government is not only providing lucrative contract to Blackwater USA but it is loading up Blackwater’s administrative positions with CIA officials. Cofer Black, a former State Department co-ordinator for counter-terrorism and former head of the CIA's counter-terrorism centre, as vice-chairman. Robert Richer, a former CIA divisional head, joined Blackwater as vice-president of intelligence in 2005.
The real Terrorists work in the US government with the flagged wrapped around themselves as they trample on the Constitution and profit from war. (Taken from Blackwater and Beyond in Congress by esquire07)
Get them out of Iraq , now!
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