…it pours.
As the crisis for the White House (and that’s what this is now, a full-blown crisis for Bush and his buddies) enters the fourth week, Dana Perino has yet to make a statement about Blackwater. Clearly the strategy of pretending the problem doesn’t exist — a long time Bush playbook favorite employed in such places like Abu Ghraib and NOLA — isn’t working.
The White House’s wingnut wingmen are following suit. After a few initial weak defenses of Erik Prince, the right blogosphere is dead silent, having found a 12-year old boy to pick on rather than busy themselves discussing why paid mercenaries are committing cold-blooded murder in the name of America and the (not-so) almighty dollar.
It isn’t newsworthy you see. Graeme Frost is a softer target.
But that’s not stopping reality from raining down on the heads of Blackwater and the multi-billion dollar PMC industry. And it’s a hard rain.
U.S. soldiers investigating a shooting by Blackwater guards that left 17 Iraqis dead found no evidence the security contractors were fired upon, a source familiar with a preliminary U.S. military report said Friday.
The soldiers also found evidence suggesting the guards fired on cars that were trying to leave Nusoor Square in Baghdad during the shootings, the military source said.
The report said the weapons casings found by soldiers, who arrived about 20 minutes after the shooting subsided, matched only those used by U.S. military and contractors, the source said.
The soldiers “did not find any cartridge casings that would have matched those used by Iraqi security forces or insurgents,” the source said.
Blackwater has no comment on the report, spokesman Anne Tyrell said.
Lt. Col. Mike Tarsa commands the 3rd Battalion, 92nd Field Artillery Regiment of the 2nd Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division. His unit conducts patrols in the Nusoor Square neighborhood of Baghdad, the U.S. military source told CNN.
The unit was first to arrive at the scene, and soldiers took witness statements, photographs, and made assessments.
The source confirmed remarks made by Tarsa that were reported Friday in The Washington Post.
“It appeared to me they were fleeing the scene when they were engaged. It had every indication of an excessive shooting,” Tarsa is quoted as saying.
“I did not see anything that indicated they [Blackwater guards] were fired upon.”
This has what Iraq and this administration has reduced us to. We have been massacring Iraqis for several years now, but this incident is finally beginning to bring it home for a lot of people. The Nusoor Square massacre wasn’t an aberration: it is the norm. Incidents like this have killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis over the course of their “liberation”. They hate us because of it and they have every right to.
But this time is different. This time, the Iraqi government has drawn a line in the bloody sands and are “standing up” and demanding we “stand down”.
And they’re hitting us right where it hurts: the media circus trial.
A US rights group announced Thursday it was filing a lawsuit against private security contractor Blackwater on behalf of a survivor and the families of three victims of a deadly September 16 shootout in Baghdad.
The suit in a Washington federal court accuses Blackwater of murder and war crimes and seeks unspecified damages, the Center for Constitutional Rights said.
Filed by Talib Mutlaq Deewan and the estates of three men killed — Himoud Saed Atban, Usama Fadhil Abbass, and Oday Ismail Ibraheem — the suit claims Blackwater “created and fostered a culture of lawlessness amongst its employees, encouraging them to act in the company’s financial interests at the expense of innocent human life,” the center said in a statement.
“This senseless slaughter was only the latest incident in a lengthy pattern of egregious misconduct by Blackwater in Iraq,” said lawyer Susan Burke.
“At the moment of this incident, the Blackwater personnel responsible for the shooting were not protecting State Department officials. We allege that Blackwater personnel were not provoked, and that they had no legitimate reason to fire on civilians,” said added.
In response to the increased scrutiny, Blackwater has now decided that it doesn’t like being under the microscope.
Blackwater USA has ended an inquiry into the private security contractor’s performance by withdrawing from an industry group that initiated the review after the company’s guards were accused of killing 17 Iraqis in Baghdad last month.
The International Peace Operations Association said in a statement Friday that Blackwater withdrew its membership two days after the group decided to examine whether the contractor’s “processes and procedures” complied with the group’s code of conduct.
Blackwater joined the association in August 2004 and had been “a member in good standing,” according to the statement, which said the group decided Monday to conduct the review.
The Washington-based peace operations association represents security contractors and companies that provide logistics support services.
All member companies are required to follow the group’s conduct code, which the group described as a “set of ethical and professional guidelines for companies in the peace and stability operations industry.”
J.J. Messner, the association’s director of programs and operations, would not cite a specific episode that prompted the group’s decision. Messner said Blackwater representatives initially agreed such a review was appropriate. He would not say why the company decided to sever the relationship.
“It would be inappropriate for us to mind read,” Messner said.
We however, are free to speculate. Blackwater has some very ugly skeletons in their closet. Journalists are taking notice and are asking questions about Blackwater and their PMC brethren. They’re hiding more incidents like these like all the PMCs. It’s hard to have a good PR face when your business is killing people for money.
And the rain keeps coming.
Incidents like the Blackwater shooting four weeks ago happen because arrogant companies are hiring inexperienced staff, one Iraq security operator told AFP, as others defended the industry.
“Some of the large companies don’t give a monkey’s because they are so arrogant,” said Will Geddes, the managing director of British consultancy ICP that works in Iraq reviewing contractors’ operations.
“The problems come when individuals are presented with situations and they don’t have previous experience to call upon.
“Then they have no point of reference and that is why you possibly hear of civilians being killed or injured, because people don’t have the experience,” explained the head of International Corporate Protection.
An army of cheap curiously overpaid thugs. Nothing more.
Many question whether the estimated 30,000 private security contractors seemingly compensating for an overstretched army in Iraq are up to the job, and if things go wrong how they can be made more accountable.
The civilian soldiers have closed ranks in Iraq since the Blackwater shooting but those willing to talk to AFP insist they abide by their strict rules governing the use of force and see no need to change the law.
“We ensure that our employees have extensive operational experience which gives them the maturity to react effectively if things go wrong,” said Patrick Toyne Sewell from one of Iraq’s biggest operators ArmorGroup.
Geddes, however, painted a different picture and pointed out that it only takes one “weakest link” employee in a tight situation and events can take a drastic turn for the worse.
“You have to behave responsibly and respectfully in the environment you are travelling in and be very, very conscious that you are not pissing off the locals unnecessarily,” he said.
He recounted horror stories of occasions when his outfits have had to deal with the backlash from naive, inexperienced operators riding roughshod over the sensitivities of local communities.
“You have to have qualified people, ones not motivated by watching too many Rambo movies.
“If you are a responsible company you can weed those guys out at interviews and, if for whatever reason they get through, you get them out as quickly as possible.”
Toyne Sewell admits that ArmorGroup’s Iraq employees are partly motivated by money — wages can top 10,000 dollars a month — but says many want to continue using their army training and do their bit to help to rebuild post-Saddam Iraq.
$120K+ a year for hired thuggery. Meanwhile, we won’t even pay our soldiers the benefits they’ve earned because we short them one day on the 730 days they need to have to earn college money.
When it rains, it pours. And the Nusoor Square massacre has released a flood of anger, recriminations, soul-searching and even more questions to be answered.