Same As It Ever Was...

UPDATE BELOW 21 SEP 07 13:46 CST

Ah, David Byrne, you have never spoken truer words...

September 17th, 2007:

BAGHDAD - The Iraqi government announced Monday it was ordering Blackwater USA, the security firm that protects U.S. diplomats, to leave the country after what it said was the fatal shooting of eight Iraqi civilians following a car bomb attack against a State Department convoy.

The order by the Interior Ministry, if carried out, would deal a severe blow to U.S. government operations in Iraq by stripping diplomats, engineers, reconstruction officials and others of their security protection.

The presence of so many visible, aggressive Western security contractors has angered many Iraqis, who consider them a mercenary force that runs roughshod over people in their own country.


Larry Johnson:

First problem. Blackwater does not have a license to operate in Iraq and does not need one. They have a U.S. State Department contract through Diplomatic Security. Instead of using Diplomatic Security officers or hiring new Security officers or relying on U.S. military personnel, the Bush Administration has contracted with firms like Blackwater, Triple Canopy, and others for people capable of conducting personnel security details. State Department is not about to curtail the contract with Blackwater, who is tightly wired into Washington. Plus, State Department simply does not have the bodies available to carry out the security mission.

Second problem. The Iraqi government has zero power to enforce a decision to oust a firm like Blackwater. For starters, Blackwater has a bigger air force and more armored vehicles then the Iraqi Army and police put together. As Spencer Ackerman reported, Blackwater’s little bird helicopter (an aircraft normally used by U.S. special operations forces) that was firing mini guns at Iraqi targets on the ground this past weekend.

I can only imagine how Americans would react if there were Russian, Chinese, Mexican, or French security firms running around the United States and getting into firefights in tough neighborhoods, such as South Central Los Angeles. We would just shrug our shoulders and say nothing. Right?

Yeah, that’s what I thought. This incident will enrage Iraqis and their subsequent realization that they are impotent to do anything about it will do little to support the fantasy that the surge is working. There are some Iraqis who genuinely want to run their own country. But we are not about to give them the keys to the car. Blackwater is staying.

Jeremy Scahill on CNN:

SCAHILL: Well, the in fact of the matter is the Bush administration failed to build the coalition of willing nations to occupy Iraq. And so, instead, the administration has built a coalition of billing corporations.

SCAHILL: Right now in Iraq, the private personnel on the U.S. government payroll outnumber official U.S. troops. There are 180,000 so-called private contractors operating alongside of 165,000, 170,000 U.S. troops. So really now the U.S. military is the junior partner in this coalition. The mercenary component of the private sector involvement has been totally unaccountable. They operate with impunity. They kill Iraqi civilians and no charges are ever brought against them, in Iraqi law, U.S. law, military law.

HOLMES: If you’re critical of what companies like companies like Blackwater are doing and how they are behaving, what’s the alternative?

SCAHILL: I think the United States needs to withdraw from Iraq. And I believe the U.S. government needs to pay reparations to the Iraqi people. We hear all of this talk of militias and sectarian violence. What about the militias that the U.S. has deployed in Iraq that are running around the country unaccountable? No, I believe — and I’ve spent a lot of time in Iraq — I believe the United States needs to withdraw and pay reparations to the Iraqi people. The arrogance of the West, toward Iraq is incredible. This is a civilization that’s been around for thousands and thousands of years. We think that we’re going to somehow bring the solution to Iraq? No, these are people that can very much dictate their own destiny and they should be allowed to do so, and mercenaries need to get out of Iraq immediately.

Democracy Now!, September 21, 2007:

In Iraq, the private security firm Blackwater USA is reportedly back on the streets of Baghdad despite an announced ban on its activities. The Iraqi government said it had revoked Blackwater’s license this week after its guards killed up to twenty-eight Iraqis in an unprovoked mass shooting. But a Pentagon spokesperson said today Blackwater is guarding diplomatic convoys following talks with the Iraqi government.



UPDATE:

NYT:

BAGHDAD, Sept. 20 — Iraq’s Ministry of Interior has concluded that employees of a private American security firm fired an unprovoked barrage in the shooting last Sunday in which at least eight Iraqis were killed and is proposing a radical reshaping of the way American diplomats and contractors here are protected.

In the first comprehensive account of the day’s events, the ministry said that security guards for Blackwater USA, a company that guards all senior American diplomats here, fired on Iraqis in their cars in midday traffic.

The account says that as soon as the guards took positions in four locations in the square, they began shooting south, killing a driver who had failed to heed a traffic policeman’s call to stop.

“The Blackwater company is considered 100 percent guilty through this investigation,” the report concludes.