We’ve entered a new phase in the continuing saga of Blackwater, the phase where the Bush Administration finally stops pretending that Blackwater doesn’t exist as they have for the last month or so and instead we learn that they approve the murder of Iraqi civilians tacitly.
The State Department promised Blackwater USA bodyguards immunity from prosecution in its investigation of last month’s deadly shooting of 17 Iraqi civilians, The Associated Press has learned.
As a result, it will likely be months before the United States can — if ever — bring criminal charges in the case that has infuriated the Iraqi government.
“Once you give immunity, you can’t take it away,” said a senior law enforcement official familiar with the investigation.
Let’s stop and think about this for a second. The State Department is the diplomatic arm of the United States of America. Its job is to promote, negotiate, and explain US policy to the other roughly 5.7 billion people on Earth. It’s a daunting task to say the least.
And we have just told those 5.7 billion people that we’ll kill every last one of you in cold blood if we have to in order to get our way, and that there’s nothing we’re going to do about it. Screw you.
That’s American diplomacy in 2007. The State Department is using hired thugs who murder other people’s citizens on their own soil, and then they shield those thugs from any redress from anyone within that country or without. Now, this is the kind of thing we’ve been doing for decades now, but we were more…well…diplomatic about it.
Here in 2007, the esteemed Dr. Condolezza Rice does not give a good goddamn about that. The US foreign policy being promoted, negotiated, and explained in your name as an American citizen is that we will fucking kill you if you piss us off.
A State Department spokesman did not have an immediate comment Monday. Both Justice Department spokesman Dean Boyd and FBI spokesman Rich Kolko declined comment.
FBI agents were returning to Washington late Monday from Baghdad, where they have been trying to collect evidence in the Sept. 16 embassy convoy shooting without using statements from Blackwater employees who were given immunity.
Three senior law enforcement officials said all the Blackwater bodyguards involved — both in the vehicle convoy and in at least two helicopters above — were given the legal protections as investigators from the Bureau of Diplomatic Security sought to find out what happened. The bureau is an arm of the State Department.
So, there you have it. The new phase is that we’re basically telling out putative allies, the Iraqi government that we installed, to go bugger themselves with a rusty cheese grater. We do not care about rule of law, or democracy, or justice, or any of those things our Fearless Leader talks about. It does not apply to the United States Government. It applies to anyone else the United States Government says it applies to, backed up with the very real and very lethat threat of airstrikes, carrier task forces, expeditionary special ops units, and nuclear weapons.
When you do it, we invade your country, kill your leader, kill hundreds of thousands of your citizens, displace millions more, and take your natural resources. When we do it, we say we have diplomatic immunity, and for you to go eat shit and die. This is how American foreign policy works.
Now it’s still possible that the contractors involved may in fact turn evidence against the company they work for…but when you work for a company that kills people professionally, you really do have to wonder about anyone willing to speak out against Blackwater. Would you? The implied threat here is simple: you have immunity as long as you don’t talk. If you talk, we’ll take a lot more than that away from you.
You deal with professional killers. You deal with people who kill in cold blood, without provocation. You’re one of these people. You know exactly what these people are thinking and what they are capable of doing to you. Would you say anything?
So it’s clear what the plan here is: as long as everyone sticks together to the script, everybody gets away with it. It’s the Community of Immunity, and nobody wants to be left holding the bag.
This is the famed other shoe dropping. The plan is to call diplomatic immunity and let the whole issue blow over, like so much dust and debris from a bunker buster detonation.
What will Iraq’s response be to this? What will they do next? The answer will define Iraq, and to an extent the US, for the next generation.
If the answer is “fold their cards” then the US will be in Iraq for perpetuity. If the Iraqs aren’t willing to follow through on this, then they will never be free of us. We will be in Iraq 10, 20, who knows how many years from now, fighting over the last scraps of cheap oil to keep out insane lifestyle as a country vastly overspending beyond its means and overabusing every aspect of the natural, scientific, and religious world.
But if the answer is to “tell the US to get out of Iraq,” if the answer is to demand justice for not only the Iraqis killed that Sunday in Nusoor Square, but for the hundreds of thousands killed by the US, and the millions of refugees we created with our greed and warmongering and hatred…then something might finally change in this country.
This is the decision point. The Iraqis made an issue of this. They demanded justice from us. They demanded that we respect their sovereignty. They demanded that we respect their justice, their democracy, their decisions, and their people. Now, they have received our reply.
We replied that the Iraqis will never, ever receive justice for any of the people we’ve killed. We have replied that the only redress they have is to take up arms against the might of the superior military machine and to die by the dump truckload in order to exact a death toll a sliver of a percentage point against us. We have replied that they will forever by our slave caste, our conquered, our vassals. We have replied that we can take anything and everything from them and any time we choose: their property, their heritage, their history, their culture, their freedoms, their identity, and their lives.
How would YOU reply to that in turn?
That is what is truly at stake here. That is what has been behind the Blackwater massacre that fateful day all along. The underlying monstrosity of what we have done to these people is reflected in the microcosm of this sin smaller in scope but no lesser in its injustice.
We have given immunity to Blackwater’s contractors. In effect, the power of our unitary executive has granted immunity to all its minions both great and small that carry out the atrocities in its name.
This is America in 2007. We are the bad guys in this movie. Millions of us don’t realize it. Millions more do, but they are resigned to our hideous fate. Still, there are those that remain that protest the dying of a country’s ideals, a country formed to combat tyranny in all its various guises. But the greatest civic experiment in modern history is all but over now.
It is in precarious danger of ending as all stereotypically dastardly villains end: Broken, alone, and only in the end aware of the true failure of their lack of their most basic moral ideals corrupted and explained away for loftier goals.
No aspect of humanity is more vicious, more banal, more truly dangerous than our ability to justify anything.
Just ask the families of the Iraqis gunned down by Blackwater. Hell, ask any Iraqi anywhere.
Who will grant them immunity from us?
Update [2007-10-30 13:1:5 by Zandar1]:
It seems that CNN is reporting that there is no immunity deal for Blackwater.
No immunity deal was offered to Blackwater USA guards for their statements regarding a shootout in Iraq last month that left 17 Iraqi civilians dead, a senior State Department official told CNN Tuesday.
The statement contradicts comments made Monday by a U.S. government official who said the guards were promised their statements would not be used against them in any prosecution resulting from the September 16 shootings in Baghdad.
The senior State Department official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of a lack of authorization to speak on the matter, said the department’s Diplomatic Security branch does not have the right or ability to offer any kind of immunity and did not do anything that would inhibit prosecutors if charges are to be pursued.
“We want to see anyone who violated laws or broke rules held accountable,” the official said. “Nothing that was done prevents anyone from being prosecuted if they broke the law.
“It’s a gross distortion of understanding of the situation to say that anyone at State attempted to shield any of these individuals,” the official added.
Maybe, just maybe, the State Department isn’t as stupid as I thought it was. But my statement about our response to Iraq still stands: We’ve told them to basically go screw themselves, and then we wonder why we’re losing the war.
The Dems are making the right noises at least.
Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, earlier on Tuesday accused the Bush “amnesty administration” of letting its allies, including security contractors in Iraq, shirk responsibility for their actions.
“In this administration, accountability goes by the boards,” Leahy said. “That seems to be a central tenet in the Bush administration — that no one from their team should be held accountable, if accountability can be avoided.
And the Iraqi response I talked about? Looks like they aren’t going to fold their hand after all, but they’re not playing to win.
Meanwhile, Iraq’s parliament is considering a draft bill that would require security companies operating in the country to obey Iraqi laws with no immunity, Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said Tuesday.
“All security companies operating in Iraq, those affiliated with them and non-Iraqi parties they have a contract with, are subject to Iraqi civil and penal laws,” al-Dabbagh said. “There will be no immunity.”
The draft bill would also subject security companies to Iraqi laws concerning visas, residency, taxes and customs, al-Dabbagh explained.
The law apparently would not be retroactive, but would address only violations that occur after its passage.
There’s the catch of course, it looks like Blackwater may indeed still get away with this. The Dems are insane if they don’t push this in the elections. Many progressive blogs over the last day have pointed out the unifying theme of the Bushies granting immunity to people they want to protect who they know have broken the law. That apparently may not extend to murder in cold blood…but then again, it was the Bushies who put the current immunity law in place to begin with.
And of course the biggest criminal is still getting away with it.
