Blackwater USA on the insider fast track

The FBI is assisting the U.S. State Department probe into the September 16 Blackwater USA slaughter of 11 Iraqi citizens in Nisour Square.

One report that has already been completed is from the Iraqi National Police who have identified 12 eyewitnesses who label the shooting as unprovoked.

Edited: Oct 4, 2007:
Death toll, according to hospital records show 14 dead and 18 injured, a toll higher than most previous official tallies.

It will be interesting to see how the two separate findings will compare.

The hearing held today, by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, put Blackwater chairman Erik Prince on the defensive and, as expected, he vigorously rejected charges that his personnel did anything illegal.

So far the incident unfolds beginning when a U.S. State Department convoy, protected by a Blackwater security team, ordered a vehicle to stop to allow the convoy to pass through an intersection. When the vehicle did not stop, the convoy opened fire on it killing the driver, the drivers wife and their child. That seems to me an extremely high price to pay for not yielding the right of way to the convoy. It also sounds arrogant of the Blackwater security force to shoot to kill because they did not get the right of way. The Ugly American syndrome is alive and well in Iraq.

According to State Department policy, which governs private security force behavior, when an approaching vehicle fails to stop after being ordered by the convoy, the convoy is then allowed to fire one shot at the windshield as a warning shot. A question here, did Blackwater personnel actually verbally or symbolically warn the vehicle to stop or did they just fire into the vehicle instead?

No matter the answer, this ‘warning shot’ struck the driver instead of the windshield fatally wounding him. Another question, don’t these guys have better aim than this? Again, no matter the answer, this warning shot became a killing shot.

Since the driver was now dead the car continued to roll forward triggering the other Blackwater personnel to believe they were about to be attacked and so they opened fire on the vehicle.

It seems to me that three facts stand in the way of their defense of this being a righteous shooting. They were premature in opening fire, they reacted with way too much ferocity for not being fired upon and their field of fire was way too wide for attacking this one vehicle.

If they were shooting at this one ‘perceived’ threat, how is that so many other people, not in that vehicle, were killed? Many of the victims were shot in the back, because they were, obviously, trying to escape this onslaught.

How is it that, since the driver was dead, they believed they were being fired upon? If they are so jumpy that they all begin indiscriminately shooting into a crowd without a clear target at the sound of any gun fire, even their own, then they need to be taken out of combat because this is a sure sign that they have been there way too long. Or, they are just itching to kill, in which case they are much more dangerous.

There are a lot of questions raised by this incident, as expected. And these questions are painting a very clear picture of non-professionalism and a cowboy demeanor that true professionals will not allow themselves to be caught up in.

While this one incident is being investigated, there are other incidents involving Blackwater USA that are in question.

One incident alleges Blackwater guards threw frozen bottles of water at civilian cars, breaking windshields. No one was killed.

In December 2006, the State Department arranged for the company to pay $15,000 to the family of an Iraqi guard who was shot and killed by a drunken Blackwater employee.

In another shooting death, the payment was $5,000.

The State Department has counted 56 shooting incidents involving Blackwater guards in Iraq this year. All will be reviewed as part of a comprehensive inquiry ordered by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

Another case involving Blackwater is the alleged smuggling and selling of weapons on the black market.

Blackwater USA is the largest of three private companies contracted by the State Department to provide security for U.S. diplomats in Iraq and has ties to the White House.

But its their ties to the CIA that are most troubling.

Is it any wonder that given Bush’s propensity for excusing his cronies behaviors that Erik Prince’s ‘problems’ will soon be over?

Given Blackwater’s CIA connections, any future investigations into possible wrongdoings should be swept away pretty quickly.

Hired guns and outlaws

Blackwater U.S.A. is a mercenary security force made up of ex-military commandos, ex-police officers and civilians hired to protect corporation and government employees around the world. They are hired bodyguards trained to kill and incapacitate.

Blackwater U.S.A. has been paid millions of dollars by the U.S. government, our tax dollars, to protect U.S. civilian employees and contract workers because the U.S. military force is not large enough to do it themselves. The American people do not want us in Iraq and therefore cannot raise a sufficient military to finish what was started there.

Blackwater's duty, as it is with any private organization, is first to their own organization, and secondly to whomever hire them.

It is inevitable that there will be a few men in every organization who will go beyond the legal guidelines to do their job. Individually, they will feel 100% justified in their actions. To the greater society they are immoral, unconscionable murderers.

The fighting in the streets of Iraq is the same terrorist tactics that took place in Viet Nam. This alone is the only correlation that can be drawn to that war. The enemy does not wear readily-identifiable uniforms. They blend in very well with the civilian population and are protected by their civilian supporters. Frustration among U.S. military and civilian security forces runs high due to this single fact. In a hostile situation such as Iraq with its day-to-day street fighting there are bound to be civilian casualties. This is the whole idea behind terrorist tactics, to force the aggressors to be perceived as murderers so that terrorist groups can tell the world ‘look at America, they come into our country and kill our civilians, they are blood-thirsty murderers, we must all rise up against them'. If the fighting was here in the U.S. the terrorist could not use this tactic.

However, since the U.S. government is the leading cause of why these terrorist groups are in Iraq, the U.S. government alone can put an end to it.

I have no faith that whatever we are are trying to accomplish in Iraq is ever going to come to fruition.

There is no valid reason for the U.S. to continue its participation in this struggle between two thick-headed, narrow-minded groups who think they are the only ‘chosen’ people who are allowed to occupy this planet. They are fed only by the deeply ingrained hatred for one another based in centuries old need for retaliation. To attempt to alter the course of the history of these people is pure folly.

Their only ‘crime’ against the United States is that they have vast reserves of oil that Americans want to feed their out-of-control and insane desire to own the most gas-guzzling, environmentally-damaging vehicles on the planet. Our appetites for fuel consumption cannot be curbed by higher gas pump prices. Our appetite for faster, ever bigger vehicles cannot be slowed down by threat of draining the well dry. We are convinced that there is always some way to hang on to those oversized vehicles, no matter how much fossil fuel they burn. We will fight tooth and nail to hang on to this foolish need to dominate this planet, as witnessed by the war in Iraq.

If we had been more reliant on alternative fuel sources these past six years this war in Iraq would not have taken place. If auto makers would stop making vehicles that can reach speeds far above the posted speed limits of ‘every’ American roadway we could take a giant leap forward in producing alternative-energy vehicles and lessen the threat to this planets oil resources that are needed for other machinery besides automobiles.

Corporations, and therefore individuals, are getting filthy rich from money made from the blood spilled in Iraq, over oil. Good Iraqi citizens have been uprooted from their ancestors homes, over oil. They have lost family members to random bullets fired by mismanaged, over-zealous security forces who would rather ‘kill them all and let God sort it out’, over oil.

This illegal war is based on the fact that spoiled, arrogant Americans cannot control their lustful need to, not just ‘have everything’, but also to ‘control everything.’ Our hunger for faster cars, our drive to be #1, along with our petty and selfish need to ‘answer to no one’ causes the rest of the world to stand back, shake their collective heads and frown in disgust at how pampered and petulant we have become.

We need to refocus our energy policies from one of killing people and destroying lives for the domination of oil reserves that will eventually be depleted, to a policy of alternate energy sources that is healthier for our planet and ultimately healthier for us. In adopting this new policy we might even be able to show the rest of the world that we are not as selfish and greedy as we have been showing ourselves to be. No. That would be asking for too much.

In the meantime, back in the real world, America and Blackwater U.S.A. are not above man’s law, and they certainly are not above God’s law. By protecting these individuals from prosecution their protectors are placing themselves against these laws and as such should be prosecuted as well. But then again, George W. Bush has lived against the law since he took office so what’s new, right?