Author: Zandar1

…the old Bill Cosby joke goes that God’s warning to Noah that the flood was coming was “Noah, how long can you tread water?”

Erik Prince must be wondering how long he can do so, because this ex-Navy SEAL is now officially up to his neck in the deluge.

The congressman leading an investigation into Blackwater said Monday that the embattled security company may have evaded tens of millions of dollars in federal taxes and was seeking to hide its tax practices.

Rep. Henry Waxman, a California Democrat, said that Blackwater has avoided paying Social Security, Medicare and unemployment taxes by treating its armed guards as independent contractors and not employees.

The other two large private security companies in Iraq, DynCorp and Triple Canopy, classify their guards as employees and pay the federal taxes that Blackwater has not, Waxman said.

The issue came to the attention of the IRS when a Blackwater guard working in Afghanistan complained that the company had classified him as an independent contractor. The IRS said Blackwater’s classification was “without merit” and ruled in March that the man was an employee.

They got Capone on tax charges.  There’s also a certain piquant flavor to the irony that Blackwater has been growing fat off of tens of millions of taxpayer dollars…only to face a huge unpaid tax bill.  No matter who’s in charge of the federal government, the IRS is the IRS.

Blackwater agreed to pay back wages and other compensation to the man, but on condition that he not talk to any politician or public official about the company.

“THE UTMOST PROTECTION AND NONDISCLOSURE OF CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION IS OF CRITICAL IMPORTANCE AND IS THE ESSENCE OF THIS AGREEMENT,” the settlement agreement stated in capital letters. Waxman released it after obtaining it by subpoena from Blackwater.

“This nondisclosure agreement is abhorrent on its face,” Waxman wrote Monday to Blackwater founder Erik Prince. “It is deplorable that a company that depends on federal tax dollars for over 90 percent of its business would even contemplate forbidding an employee to report corporate wrongdoing to Congress and federal law enforcement officials.”

Blackwater issued a statement Monday saying that Waxman was incorrect about the tax issue and that the company was appealing the IRS ruling.

The company said the U.S. Small Business Administration has determined that Blackwater security contractors are not employees.

“It is unfortunate that the Chairman has relied upon a one-sided description of the issue to color public perception without all the facts being presented,” the statement concluded.

Blackwater says the Small Business Association is wrong about these upstanding, chamber of commerce style guys.  They’re just like your local Rotary Club, only with rotary carbines and rotary aircraft.  But the thing is that Blackwater’s paddling up this creek without a boat.

SBA spokeswoman Christine Mangi says that SBA did make such a determination — on November 2, 2006. But it was in reference to a dispute about who was a company employee on a project to provide services to Navy vessels in Guam, not Iraq. The ruling, she says, “was for this particular procurement,” not an SBA finding about Blackwater personnel in general, contrary to the suggestion of Blackwater’s response to Waxman.

Furthermore, Mangi explains, the IRS hardly has to defer to the SBA determination about who’s an independent contractor and who’s an employee. “Our findings are for the sole purposes of our small business contracting programs and, to the best of our knowledge, carry no legal weight outside of our programs,” she says.

Wouldn’t it indeed be fun to see Blackwater go down fighting the one fight that all the guns, bombs, and humvees could never help you with:  splitting hairs with the IRS over millions in unpaid taxes.

Go ahead, I want to see the Blackwater training manual on that.

Meanwhile, ol Henry Waxman wants to take a look at DynCorp while he’s at it.

It’s not just Blackwater! Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) has another State Department security contractor in his sights — industry pioneer DynCorp, which, in addition to guarding diplomats in northern Iraq, has reaped over $1 billion from State since 2004 to help train the Iraqi police.

Corruption and mismanagement in the Iraqi police is an old story. The U.S.’s special inspector general for Iraq, Stuart Bowen, told Waxman’s House oversight committee earlier this year that DynCorp had significantly overbilled the State Department. But the extent of the misconduct is unknown: department officials have failed for months to provide documentation about the origins and terms of the contract to the committee, despite numerous promises. Making matters even fishier, State representatives told Waxman’s staff that a single official handles all DynCorp contracts with the department and has for a decade — far longer than is typical in agency-contractor relationships.

Waxman wrote to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice today to remind her that the committee wants the documents on the DynCorp contract that the department promised it in May. There’s an urgency here: last month, a commission headed by Marine General James Jones found the Iraqi police in serious disarray.

As I have said, and many other have pointed out, the PMC problem is both endemic and systemic.  Blackwater is only the public face of the much, much larger issue.  I for one am glad to see that the scrutiny on Blackwater’s books is being extended to other PMC outfitters taking millions of our tax dollars to do what the military is too tied down in Iraq to do.  This is what Bush’s invasion of Iraq on the cheap has gotten us.  Don’t forget that for a moment, because companies like Blackwater are coming to protect a state near you.

There are signs that Blackwater USA, the private security firm that came under intense scrutiny after its employees killed 17 civilians in Iraq in September, is positioning itself for direct involvement in U.S. border security. The company is poised to construct a major new training facility in California, just eight miles from the U.S.-Mexico border. While contracts for U.S. war efforts overseas may no longer be a growth industry for the company, Blackwater executives have lobbied the U.S. government since at least 2005 to help train and even deploy manpower for patrolling America’s borders.

Blackwater is planning to build an 824-acre military-style training complex in Potrero, Calif., a rural hamlet 45 miles east of San Diego. The company’s proposal, which was approved last December by the Potrero Community Planning Group and has drawn protest from within the Potrero community, will turn a former chicken ranch into “Blackwater West,” the company’s second-largest facility in the country. It will include a multitude of weapons firing ranges, a tactical driving track, a helipad, a 33,000-square-foot urban simulation training area, an armory for storing guns and ammunition, and dorms and classrooms. And it will be located in the heart one of the most active regions in the United States for illegal border crossings.

While some residents of Potrero have welcomed the plan, others have raised fears about encroachment on protected lands and what they see as an intimidating force of mercenaries coming into their backyard. The specter of Blackwater West and the rising interest in privatizing border security have also alarmed Democratic Rep. Bob Filner, whose congressional district includes Potrero. Filner says he believes it’s a good possibility that Blackwater is positioning itself for border security contracts and is opposed to the new complex. “You have to be very wary of mercenary soldiers in a democracy, which is more fragile than people think,” Rep. Filner told Salon. “You don’t want armies around who will sell out to the highest bidder. We already have vigilantes on the border, the Minutemen, and this would just add to [the problem],” Filner said, referring to the Minuteman Project, a conservative group that has organized civilian posses to assist the U.S. Border Patrol in the past. Filner is backing legislation to block establishment of what he calls “mercenary training centers” anywhere in the U.S. outside of military bases. “The border is a sensitive area,” he said, “and if Blackwater operates the way they do in Iraq — shoot first and ask questions later — my constituents are at risk.”

This is the future of “corporate warfare” in America.  Our military duties — waging war overseas and protecting our borders — are being farmed out to the private sector.  It’s an army bought and paid for by the BushCo machine, and it’s coming to “protect” you and your family from “terrorists”.

The problem is it’s the “plenary executive” that determines who a “terrorist” is.

A spokesman for the U.S. Customs and Border Protection denied there are any specific plans to work directly with Blackwater. And Blackwater officials say the complex would be used only for training active-duty military and law enforcement officials, work for which the company has contracted with the U.S. government.

But statements and lobbying activity by Blackwater officials, and the location for the new complex, strongly suggest plans to get involved in border security, with potential contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Moreover, Blackwater enjoys support from powerful Republican congressmen who advocate hard-line border policies, including calls for deploying private agents to beef up the ranks of the U.S. Border Patrol. Lawmakers supporting Blackwater include California Rep. and presidential candidate Duncan Hunter — who met last year with company officials seeking his advice on the proposal for Blackwater West — and Rep. Mike Rogers of Alabama, who is sponsoring a bill to allow private contractors such as Blackwater to help secure U.S. borders.

When questioned at a public hearing with the Potrero planning group on Sept. 13 about Blackwater West, Brian Bonfiglio, a Blackwater spokesman, said, “I don’t think there’s anyone in this room who wouldn’t like to see the border tightened up.” Blackwater currently had no contracts to help with border security, Bonfiglio said, but he emphasized that “we would entertain any approach from our government to help secure either border, absolutely.” Bonfiglio was responding to questions from Raymond Lutz, a local organizer who opposes the new complex. (Lutz recorded the exchange and posted video of it on Oct. 12 at CitizensOversight.org.) Lutz also asked Bonfiglio if Blackwater West would be used as a base for deployment of Border Patrol agents. “Actually, we’ve offered it up as a substation to Border Patrol and U.S. Customs right now,” Bonfiglio replied. “We’d love to see them there.”

Ramon Rivera, a spokesman for the U.S. Customs and Border Protection in Washington, denied Bonfiglio’s claim that the agency is entertaining an offer to use Blackwater West as a substation. “I think that’s just Blackwater trying to sell themselves,” Rivera said.

In fact, Blackwater has been selling itself for direct involvement in border security at least since May 2005, when the company’s then president, Gary Jackson, testified before a House subcommittee. Jackson’s testimony focused on Blackwater’s helping to train U.S. Border Patrol agents and included discussion of contracts theoretically worth $80 million to $200 million, for thousands of personnel. Asked by one lawmaker if his company saw a market opportunity in border security, Jackson replied: “I can put as many men together as you need, trained and on the borders.”

Gee that’s a comforting thought.  And with our National Guard  and Border Patrol so stretched out and unable to provide for the common defense, what happens to America when the Executive Branch of the Federal Government — that believes itself above any and all other laws — has its own private army on American soil, with no oversight from anyone?

We may all find out the answer to that question very soon.  That’s the big ugly bloody iceberg that Blackwater is just the tip of.

…and you’re stuck inside during the storm, sometimes you get cabin fever.

That’s the only explanation I can give for the truly bizarre slate of Blackwater news this week.  Last time I reported on how it looked like Blackwater was done in Iraq and waiting out the clock until May.

It may be sooner than that.

Iraq repeated a call for US firm Blackwater to leave on Saturday almost five weeks after its guards killed as many as 17 civilians, but said it had no problem with other companies that obeyed the law.

“The Iraqi government doesn’t want Blackwater to stay in Iraq,” said a statement from Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh. “There is popular anger against this company because of the crime they committed.”

You know Blackwater is in major trouble because the best defense the Neocon Street Journal can give is that it’s too tough to switch horses midstream.

U.S. officials face a blunt reality as they weigh whether to replace Blackwater USA as the prime protector of U.S. diplomats in Iraq: They have no easy alternative.

Mounting evidence suggesting Blackwater guards shot and killed 17 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad’s Nisour Square without provocation last month has sparked calls within the Iraqi government to throw the private-security company out of Iraq. Some critics in Congress say the State Department should replace the North Carolina-based contractor with government security, even with U.S. soldiers.

With several investigations under way, U.S. officials are considering whether to turn Blackwater’s work over to another contractor, while tightening the rules under which U.S. security contractors operate in Iraq. But finding a replacement could prove difficult.

Blackwater’s security work for the State Department in Baghdad is up for renewal in May, and U.S. officials say it would take at least that long to arrange for another private contractor to take over. Even a new company would have to rely heavily on hires from Blackwater’s employee base of about 1,000 in Iraq. Hiring and training new guards, all of whom must be Americans with classified-security clearance, would otherwise take months.

Blackwater, part of Prince Group LLC, couldn’t be reached for comment.

Blackwater and two other U.S. security companies, DynCorp International and Triple Canopy Inc., are working under a global contract with the State Department that gives them a total of $571 million a year to protect officials in countries like Israel, Bosnia, Afghanistan and Iraq. Iraq alone accounts for $520 million.

Kathleen Hicks, a former Defense Department official who is now a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic & International Studies, said that while the State Department could break Blackwater’s contract before it runs out, it would be easier to see it through to the end.

“Regardless of who they pick, they’re going to have to have much better oversight,” she said.

That’s the best they can do, the argument that it’s easier making Blackwater finish out its contract than replacing them.  Even though that argument is completely undone by the facts that 1) Iraq wants Blackwater out of their own country, 2) all investigations so far show that they massacred over a dozen civilians, and 3) there have been several other shooting incidents before this, we should allow them to stay apparently.

But the writing is on the wall for Blackwater.

Blackwater USA is likely to be eased out of its role of guarding U.S. diplomats in Iraq after a shooting that left 17 Iraqis dead, U.S. officials said Friday.

Blackwater’s role in Baghdad will probably be assumed by one of two other contractors that provide security for the State Department in Iraq, the officials said. Those companies are Triple Canopy and DynCorp International.

Replacing one PMC with another is not a solution, it’s only a recipe for more abuse, bloodshed, and death.  But at least it’s a start.  Let’s keep in mind that these PMC companies are nothing more than armed killers, and armed killers like to exercise their power over others.

Blackwater USA tried to take at least two Iraqi military aircraft out of Iraq two years ago and refused to give the planes back when Iraqi officials sought to reclaim them, according to a congressional committee investigating the private security contractor.

Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, wants the company to provide all documents related to the attempted shipment and to explain where the aircraft are now.

In a letter sent Friday to Erik Prince, Blackwater’s top executive, Waxman said he learned of the 2005 attempt from a military official who contacted the committee. That official is not identified in the letter, nor is the type of aircraft.

Waxman also is seeking a sweeping amount of information about Blackwater’s business, including its contracts with the federal government, profits made since the company was founded a decade ago, Prince’s personal earnings since 2001, and details about the payments to the families of Iraqis killed by Blackwater personnel.

Blackwater spokeswoman Anne Tyrrell said the company is cooperating with the committee but declined to comment further.

Waxman has the right idea.  The PMC problem is about power without accountability and always has been.  It’s a microcosm of what the Bush administration has done for six plus years now:  doing everything possible to allow corporations to run unchecked over the world’s citizens.  The administration itself is nothing more than the logical endpoint of Applied Thuggery 101.  Gather power upwards, shift blame away.

When the U.S. military invaded and occupied Iraq in early 2003, there was no question who would be in charge of security for the official civilians pouring in to remake the country. Under an executive order signed by Bush, the Coalition Provisional Authority and its head, L. Paul Bremer, reported directly to then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. But as U.S. troops became preoccupied with a growing insurgency, the Pentagon hired Blackwater to provide protection for Bremer and other civilians.

The next year, as the United States prepared to return sovereignty to the Iraqis and the State Department began planning an embassy in Baghdad, Rumsfeld lost a bid to retain control over the full U.S. effort, including billions of dollars in reconstruction funds. A new executive order, signed in January 2004, gave State authority over all but military operations. Rumsfeld’s revenge, at least in the view of many State officials, was to withdraw all but minimal assistance for diplomatic security.

“It was the view of Donald Rumsfeld and [then-Deputy Defense Secretary] Paul Wolfowitz that this wasn’t their problem,” said a former senior State Department official. Meetings to negotiate an official memorandum of understanding between State and Defense during the spring of 2004 broke up in shouting matches over issues such as their respective levels of patriotism and whether the military would provide mortuary services for slain diplomats.

Despite the tension, many at State acknowledged the Pentagon’s point that soldiers were not trained as personal protectors. Others worried that surrounding civilian officials with helmets and Humvees would undermine the message of friendly democracy they were trying to instill in Iraq.

So really, all this was Rummy and Wolfowitz’s fault.  They wouldn’t let our brave soldiers protect the State Department, so they just had to resort to using those PMC guys.  How convenient for the current SecDef.

“It was a question of, ‘Do you want uniforms?’ ” the senior DS official said. ” ‘Should the military be doing that kind of work?’ “

It was clear that the mission was beyond DS capabilities, and as the mid-2004 embassy opening approached, “we had to decide what we were going to do,” the former State Department official said. “We had to get jobs done, and to do that we had to have some protection.”

State chose the most expedient solution: Take over the Pentagon’s personal security contract with Blackwater and extend it for a year. “Yes, it was a sole-source contract” justified by “urgent and compelling reasons,” said William Moser, the deputy assistant secretary of state for logistics management, in recent congressional testimony. Midway through the contract, Moser said, an independent audit forced Blackwater’s $140 million proposal down to $106 million.

The senior DS official rejected congressional suggestions that Blackwater’s Republican political contacts and campaign contributions influenced its selection. “I’ll stack our procurement office against anybody else’s,” he said. “Particularly DOD’s.” State officials “could care less whether [Blackwater head Erik] Prince gave money to anybody.” Blackwater was the only contractor in Iraq with helicopters, and it already had personnel and facilities in place.

When the sole-source contract expired in the summer of 2005, State invited bids on a massive “worldwide personal protection services” contract to put its operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere under one umbrella. Blackwater formed a consortium with U.S. firms DynCorp and Triple Canopy, and the group won a multiyear, $1.2 billion agreement.

Under the individual task orders that only the three are eligible to bid on, DynCorp provides personal security in northern Iraq, and Triple Canopy in the south. Blackwater covers Baghdad and Hilla, and has by far the largest share of the $520 million that State spends annually on contract security in Iraq.

And of course the State Department thought it worked so darn well that they just had to expand the contract into a billion dollar mercenary operation.  Really…this is all Condi’s fault too.

Blame blame blame.  Nobody wants it, everybody is throwing it around, and nobody wants to be sans chair when the music stops.  The Pentagon blames State.  State blames the Pentagon.  Pentagon then blames Blackwater.  Blackwater blames State.  State blames the Pentagon again.

And in the meantime, Iraqis keep dying daily, some of course to make sure US government personnel are “protected”.  We’ve ruined the entire country in order to “protect” the interests of the US.

And if you don’t think the plan is to eventually start protecting US government personnel from Americans in America and bring what’s worked so well in Iraq to here…think again.

The Department of Homeland Security and the FBI agree that the homemade explosive devices that have wreaked havoc in Iraq pose a rising threat to the United States. But lawmakers and first responders say the Bush administration has been slow to devise a strategy for countering the weapons and has not provided adequate money and training for a concerted national effort.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, who told the Senate last month that such bombs are terrorists’ “weapon of choice,” said yesterday at a local meeting that President Bush will soon issue a blueprint for countering the threat of improvised explosive devices, or IEDs. Chertoff’s department said in a draft report on IEDs earlier this year that national efforts “lack strategic guidance, are sometimes insufficiently coordinated . . . and lack essential resources.”

Among the shortcomings identified in the report: Explosives-sniffing dogs are trained differently by various federal agencies, making collaboration between squads “difficult if not impossible.” Federal agencies maintain separate databases on bomb incidents. Separately, bomb squad commanders have complained of inadequate training for responding to truck bombs.

Local officials say preparedness efforts around the country remain a patchwork. For instance, the Los Angeles Police Department’s bomb squad, which responds to about 1,000 calls a year, has 28 full-time explosives technicians and is about to move into a new, $8 million downtown headquarters. The squad has an explosives library, a research facility for testing and access to an explosives range for training.

In contrast, the D.C. police bomb squad’s 10 technicians handle about 700 calls a year, but they are housed in portable trailers and must also perform crime patrols. Among the six U.S. metropolitan regions considered top terrorist targets, only the Washington area has not earned the top rating of the DHS three-level scoring system for bomb squads. Regional officials recently decided to spend $7 million in federal grants to buy equipment to lift that rating.

Gosh, I wonder who the Federal government is going to turn to in order to “protect” America from all those IEDs that we’re all potentially capable of threatening the country with?  I’m sure we’ll be protected from IEDs soon by companies like Blackwater, because of course our soldiers will be just too busy in Iraq (and Iran).

We’ll be protected from IEDs just like the Iraqis.

…you have to worry about flooding.  When the ground is already saturated with water, a hard rain can be the trigger that wipes you out.  In Blackwater’s case, the ground is “saturated” in blood.  Organizations and governments are beginning to ask questions not only about Blackwater, but PMCs in general.

Now, I’ve referred to Blackwater as a PMC…Private Mercenary Contractor…for quite some time now.  They prefer to be called “security corporations” like they sell diapers or cars or managed on-line services.  The product they sell is death for money, hence the term “Mercenary”.  The UN seems to agree with the term.

Private contractors like those implicated in the shootings of civilians in Iraq are part of a global trend of hiring recruits from one country to perform military jobs in another, in what a UN expert called a growing new form of mercenary activity.

The independent human rights experts who wrote a UN report obtained by The Associated Press consider the slaying of 17 civilians in Baghdad by security guards working for Blackwater USA last month as underscoring the risk of using such contractors in a country where they have immunity, the chairman of the UN group said.

The report is to be presented to the UN General Assembly next month.

The UN Security Council and General Assembly have opposed the use of mercenaries, but the hiring of foreign soldiers by one country for use in a third is specifically illegal only for the 30 countries that ratified a 1989 treaty against their use. Those 30 do not include either the United States or Iraq.

“The trend toward outsourcing and privatizing various military functions by a number of member states in the past 10 years has resulted in the mushrooming of private military and security companies,” the panel’s 25-page report said.

Note the US never signed on to the “no mercs” treaty in 1989.  I wonder why that was, eh?  Surely the Bushies have been taking full advantage of it.  But the problem with that is who is in charge of these mercs.  Oversight means responsibility and culpability for their actions, and the actions of these companies are to kill people.

The military at least seems to think the PMC loose cannon arrangement isn’t working out.  The  Pentagon wants to be in control if you’ll excuse the pun, of the whole shootin’ match for various reasons.

The Secretary of Defense Bob Gates is now pushing for all armed security contractors in Iraq, including Blackwater, to come under a single authority, the Pentagon.  The Defense Department first telegraphed that they might make a play for contractor control when the Army quickly leaked its initial report on the Nisour Square shootings.  Ever since this, I’ve been waiting for the official turf grab and now, according to the New York Times, it’s here.

On the surface a single entity overseeing all contractors might seem like a good idea.  [Sure does to me; and let’s put these guys under the UCMJ, while we’re at it — ed.] But, as they say in the spy business, nothing is what it seems.  Department of Defense security contractors are already coordinated through a single, DoD entity, the US Regional Cooperation Offices, which are outsourced through a recently renewed $475 million contract to the British firm Aegis which is run by the infamous mercenary, Tim Spicer.  (It also includes intelligence services and security services for the Army Corps of Engineers.)  So most contractors working for the US government in Iraq fall under DoD purview.  The key here is most contractors.  The ones working for the State Department do not participate in the program; but, despite their involvement in the Nisour Square incident, they may not be the contractors most affected.   Of much greater interest is the other government agency not under the Regional Cooperation Offices’ oversight:  the CIA.

Pentagon officials have long been unhappy about the Agency acting independently, running around war zones without coordinating their actions with local commanders.  This is a longstanding turf issue between the CIA and Pentagon that predates the Iraq war or as one senior member of the Intelligence Community once told me, it’s been a problem “since Christ was a corporal.”

The Blackwater shooting incident has provided the Pentagon an opening in the turf wars because the CIA’s paramilitary arm, the Special Activities Division, is heavily outsourced — particularly in Iraq.  If all security contractors fell under the DoD, the Pentagon could not only monitor the Agency, but could control their operations by denying them ground and particularly air assets.  In one simple move, putting all security contracting under the control of the Department of Defense would effectively hand over control of most CIA paramilitary activities to the DoD, ending CIA unilateral offensive paramilitary capabilities in Iraq.

Now that’s a scary thought.  The Pentagon clearly doesn’t like the idea of PMCs running around doing their job for the 21st century.  They want to be running the show, and one unintended consequence from the Blackwater massacre is the crack in the door the Pentagon needs to dominate the industry.

That’s not a good thing.  PMCs are a direct threat to the military-industrial complex as far as the power the Pentagon wields as king of the Bush budgetary scene.  Robert Gates may not be as bad as Rummy overall, but in some ways he’s a lot worse of a warmonger.

And the company that started all this?  It may get washed away in the flash flood.

WASHINGTON – A State Department review of private security guards for diplomats in Iraq is unlikely to recommend firing Blackwater USA over the deaths of 17 Iraqis last month, but the company probably is on the way out of that job, U.S. officials said Wednesday.

Blackwater’s work escorting U.S. diplomats outside the protected Green Zone in Baghdad expires in May, one official said, and other officials told The Associated Press they expect the North Carolina company will not continue to work for the embassy after that.

It is likely that Blackwater does not compete to keep the job, one official said. Blackwater probably will not be fired outright or even “eased out,” the official added, but there is a mutual feeling that the Sept. 16 shooting deaths mean the company cannot continue in its current role.

State Department officials spoke on condition of anonymity because Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has not yet considered results of an internal review of Blackwater and the other two companies that protect diplomats in Iraq.

Department officials said no decisions have been made and that Rice has the final say.

They gave admiring appraisals of Blackwater’s work overall, noting that no diplomats have died while riding in Blackwater’s heavily armed convoys.

Down the drain, it seems.  Surely they will be replaced by yet another group of paid killers, but it’s interesting to see that the darlings of the PMC circuit are getting the axe.

It seems like a pretty sure bet they won’t get that contract renewal, because for the first time, the Decider has spoken on the issue — after having a month to formulate the White House reponse, or whatever he deciderated to deciderate.

President Bush did not directly answer a question Wednesday about whether he was satisfied with the performance of security contractors.

“I will be anxious to see the analysis of their performance,” Bush said at a news conference. “There’s a lot of studying going on, both inside Iraq and out, as to whether or not people violated rules of engagement. I will tell you, though, that a firm like Blackwater provides a valuable service. They protect people’s lives, and I appreciate the sacrifice and the service that the Blackwater employees have made.”

Remember that in Dubya’s world, paid mercenaries who gun down innocent civilians of one country in order to “protect people’s lives” (specifically government officials of the USA) “provide a valuable service” to all of us.

Those raghead sunzabitches?  He’s not so worried about protecting them from the PMCs.

Into each life, a little rain must fall.

Into Blackwater’s life is coming down a lot more than just a little rain.  The Iraqis have finished their investigation of the September 16th shooting, and the results are quite clear:  nothing short of an unprovoked slaughter.  And now the Iraqis want Blackwater gone.

Iraq’s Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki asked the U.S. State Department to “pull Blackwater out of Iraq,” saying the private contractors committed unprovoked and random killings in a September 16 shooting, an adviser to al-Maliki told CNN.

 Adviser Sami al-Askari told CNN the Iraqis have concluded their investigation into the shooting at Nusoor Square in Baghdad.

Al-Askari said the United States is still waiting for the findings of the American investigation, but al-Maliki and most Iraqi officials are “completely satisfied” with the findings of their probe and are “insisting” that Blackwater leave the country.

Once again, we come to the real question:  who is running Iraq’s “democracy”, the US military or the Iraqis themselves?  The Iraqis have stated their opinion, but does it even matter to the Bush neocon junta?

Even more, we have US citizens accused of cold-blooded murder of Iraqis.  “Diplomatic snafu” doesn’t even begin to describe it.  There’s a huge rift between the Maliki and Bush governments over this.  Each one believes they have the other one over a barrel right now.  Who blinks first may go a long way towards determining if we stay in Iraq forever or start the long road home.

U.S. Embassy spokeswoman Mirembe Natango told CNN by telephone that the Iraqi-U.S. joint commission met and is proceeding with its work on the matter.

“We need to let the joint commission do its work,” she said, adding that once the joint commission has finished, it will make policy recommendations.

Blackwater CEO and founder Erik Prince has said the team was attacked and was defending itself at an intersection not far from the heavily guarded Green Zone on September 16. Seventeen Iraqis were killed, including women and children, and 27 were wounded, according to Iraqi officials.

Prince told CNN Sunday that the guards did not commit “deliberate violence.”

“There was definitely incoming small arms fire from insurgents” he said on CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on “Late Edition.”

Somebody’s lying here.  Either Erik Prince is lying baldfaced to America (and I might add possibly to Congress) or the Iraqi government is putting on a hell of a show in order to get rid of Blackwater.

Evidence is overwhelmingly against Blackwater, of course.  It would be entirely different if this was the first incident of its kind, but it’s not.

In fact, when the UN is throwing around terms like “war crimes” for what the Bush PMC army is doing in Iraq and Afghanistan, you know you’re in for a bad day.

The Iraqi government is now demanding the expulsion of the Blackwater security firm, a perfectly sensible desire on the part of a sovereign government, even if it might not be justified in this particular case. United Nations officials in Baghdad and an American civil liberties organization, meanwhile, are suggesting that contractor security personnel in Iraq be investigated for “war crimes.”

The latter proposition — put aside for a moment the presumption of guilt and the inflammatory language of “war crimes” and “crimes against humanity” — goes to the heart of a much larger problem: Is the United States eroding the distinction between military and civilian, and if so, what implications does this have for the war against terrorists?

An Iraqi government investigation into the Blackwater incident on Sept. 16, in which 17 civilians were killed, concluded with five recommendations, one of which is that the United States stop using Blackwater. U.S. and Iraqi officials are now negotiating the expulsion of Blackwater and their replacement by “a new, more disciplined organization that would be answerable to Iraqi laws,” in the words of the Iraqi recommendations. The U.S. isn’t particularly defending Blackwater: It just wants a replacement organization in place before Blackwater leaves.

The FBI has taken over the investigation in Baghdad to determine what happened and whether a crime was even committed. Recognizing that the contractors operate in a legal netherworld outside of the military courts martial system and are also outside of Iraqi civil law, the House of Representatives has approved legislation that would subject civilian guards working under U.S. contract to prosecution by U.S. courts. Similar legislation is expected to be introduced in the Senate.

Blackwater’s replacement is one thing, but the war crimes angle is entirely something different.  The PMC problem is both endemic and systemic right now.

While Iraqi authorities focus on expelling Blackwater, United Nations officials in Baghdad are following a different tack: “Investigations as to whether or not crimes against humanity, war crimes, are being committed and obviously the consequences of that is something that we will be paying attention to and advocating for,” said Ivana Vuco, the U.N.’s senior human rights officer in Iraq. The U.S. Center for Constitutional Rights has also filed suit against Blackwater, saying it violated U.S. law by committing “extrajudicial killings and war crimes.”

Blackwater USA founder Erik Prince, while accepting that his company’s fate in Iraq is probably a foregone conclusion, has vociferously defended the company. “There was no deliberate murder, no deliberate violence by our guys,” Prince said this weekend.

Put aside for a moment the political motivations of both the U.N. and the center. Under international law, a war crime is a violation of the laws of war by any person, military or civilian. A crime against humanity is a much broader term involving large-scale atrocities against a body of people. The war crime most applicable to the Blackwater incident is that involving “willful killing” or “great suffering or serious injury to body or health” — that is, intentionally, with no regard for the distinction between the military status of the victim.

This standard is quite high; the term “war crime” shouldn’t be used lightly. The Blackwater guards would need to be shown to have intentionally targeted civilians, knowing they were civilians, in the commission of their crime — if there was a crime committed.

And if we start asking about Blackwater and war crimes, Bush has to be scared about somebody asking about the US military and war crimes as well, it’s the only logical endpoint of the PMC fiasco.  Blackwater is virulently awful ground for the President and his neocon pals, and they are trying to get this taken care of as soon as possible.

But the problem will not go away.  Endemic and systemic problems do not vanish overnight.

Which brings us to the question: Who are these guys anyway? They are in a war zone, carrying guns, with authority granted by the U.S. government to engage in warfare under the name of “security.” Blackwater has about 1,000 employees in Iraq, constituting less than 1 percent of the contractors in the country.

That means there are tens of thousands of similar civilians also out there in Iraq and other countries with ambiguous legal standing. Many are armed men who do not wear the uniform of any state, men whom the U.S. government has said are subject to the laws of war rather than the laws of civil society. And yet, they do not wear the uniform of the United States and are not lawful combatants under the laws of war.

We have only begun the scratch the surface of what the Blackwater era means, but to me a central question is our obligation as a society to continue to maintain the distinction between who and what is military and who and what is civilian. The more the military (and the American government) relies on civilian contractors with guns in war zones and on battlefields, the more it signals that those who wear the uniform of a recognized nation state are just one of many “combatants” out there.

The distinction between what is military and what is civilian is thus eroded. In the current war — one in which our enemies have made a point to obliterate that distinction — I am not sure this is a difference we want to let dissolve.

These are the questions that need to be asked…and the questions the Bush junta are desperately trying to avoid.  This is precisely why Blackwater is so dangerous to Bush and why the right wing noise machine has been all but silent.  Any scrutiny, any press, any attention to this issue is a no-win situation for this President.

Bush keeps pretending the problem doesn’t exist.  But in the end, he’s trying to dodge raindrops.

…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.

Three weeks into the latest incident, the Blackwater story is still on America’s front page, and despite heavy pressure from the State Department, the Iraqis aren’t letting Blackwater go.

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Iraq said on Sunday security guards from the U.S. firm Blackwater “deliberately killed” 17 Iraqis in last month’s shooting incident in Baghdad and that it would take legal steps against them.

Government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said an investigation set up by Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki found no evidence that the U.S. security firm had come under fire during the incident.

“What they committed is considered a crime of deliberate killing and they must be held accountable according to the law,” Dabbagh said, adding the company itself could face legal action.

Dabbagh’s toll from the shooting was higher than the 11 deaths previously reported by Iraqi officials and the tone of his statement suggested Iraqi anger over the September 16 still burns strongly.

The counterstrike against Blackwater has entered a new phase.  The Iraqis are accusing the company of “deliberate killing” and saying they must be held accountable.  The argument that Blackwater is immune to Iraqi prosecution and will be taken care of by US justice is clearly not good enough for the Iraqis anymore.

I really believe this incident holds the potential to unravel the entire Bush “imperialism by mercenary” plan that is key to the neocon  perpetual war state, and that’s why the beltway cognoscenti allowed the Blackwater hearings and subsequent legislation to be passed with nary a peep out of the White House.  Both the Republicans and Democrats realize that there cannot be a war in Iraq now without the PMCs, so the appearance of “being on top of things” is absolutely vital to convincing the American people that mercs aren’t so bad.

Because right now the American people are mad as hell at Blackwater.

Protesters targeted the site of a planned training facility for Blackwater USA, the private security contractor that is under fire for recent actions in Iraq.

Organizers said about 300 people gathered Sunday at the 824-acre site in Potrero, a rural area about 45 miles east of San Diego and just north of the U.S.-Mexico border.

A dispatcher with the San Diego Sheriff’s Department did not know how many protesters showed up.

The training camp would include shooting ranges, a driving track and a helipad on a property formerly used as a chicken ranch.

The Potrero Planning Group has endorsed plans for the camp, but final approval may still be months way.

Planning Board Chairman Gordon Hammers has said the camp would provide an economic boost to the area.

The prospect of a training camp in the area has divided the community. Protesters want a recall vote against members of the planning group.

Citizens’ Oversight Projects member Raymond Lutz said the recall attempt was akin to a referendum on the project.

“If the recall is successful, the community has voted down the project,” Lutz said. “At that point, Blackwater should drop the project and spare the community any further agony.”

The Blackwater story is visceral and easy to understand on a basic, gut instinct level.  These guys are getting paid more than our troops, are all over Iraq, and are committing war crimes in our name.  It seems like Blackwater has been in the news almost daily, and just like the My Lai massacre turned the country solidly against the Vietnam War, Blackwater is becoming the seed of darkness that all the frustration, anger, and outrage about Iraq is metastasizing around.

Granted there’s a far difference between My Lai and Blackwater, one being US military, the other being mercenary, but as with My Lai, the additional scrutiny keeps revealing worse incidents, if not a pattern, if not an organized campaign of war crimes as the logical endpoint.  That’s the real danger:  the present privatized warfare issue reveals too much about its past (war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan) and its future (use as enforcement against US citizenry) for the White House to withstand.

That’s the long term effects of this.  More in the short term, the PMC industry is in real trouble now.

Will Blackwater USA’s travails spread to the two Northern Virginia companies who share a controversial $3.6 billion contract to provide security services in Iraq?

Experts say DynCorp of Falls Church and Triple Canopy of Herndon have much to gain or lose depending on the outcome of investigations into Blackwater’s conduct in Iraq, where its employees allegedly fired on and killed Iraqi civilians.

“There’s going to be a continuing drumbeat of bad news for this company,” said Peter Singer, an expert on private security at the Brookings Institution who is critical of the industry. “As competitors, that’s good news for them. . . . Maybe it means [Blackwater] is less likely to win contracts the future.”

Any new business, however, could be lost in the damage to the industry’s reputation, some say. “If I were advising either of those companies, I would be worried about the Blackwater incident coming back to haunt the whole issue of private security and how it’s used in Iraq,” said Deborah Avant, a political science professor at the University of California at Irvine.

DynCorp is a 60-year-old company with $2 billion in annual revenue. Triple Canopy was born just four years ago and has ridden the recent boom in government contracting to collect hundreds of millions in revenue. Both will undoubtedly be subject to whatever measures are put in place to address the Blackwatersituation.

On Thursday, for instance, the House passed a bill to make all private contractors in Iraq and other combat zones subject to prosecution in U.S. courts. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, meanwhile, ordered an overhaul of U.S. Embassy security practices in Iraq, tightening government oversight of diplomatic convoys escorted by private security contractors.

No doubt some enterprising journalists are going to realize that DynCorp and Triple Canopy have their own skeletons to hide.  The real difference in the potential for war crimes among PMCs and the ones our military are capable of doing is that it’s much, much harder to drape the American flag around the shoulders of a PMC merc than an Army private in order to justify them.  In the end, half a million dead Iraqis and millions more made refugees because of George W Bush is a pretty nasty legacy…and then there’s Iran.

Make no mistake:  Blackwater in the news directly threatens the efforts to bomb Iran.  The longer it stays news, the less chance Bush has of pulling the trigger.

With all the Blackwater follies, it’s been a while since I’ve gotten to some non-Blackwater-based outrage in our “Serious Village” press.

But hey, that’s what Sundays are for.  Today’s contestant: WaPo’s Geoffrey Wheatcroft a Brit who reminds us that using family connections in politics IOKIYAR, but if you’re Hillary, you ought to be ashamed of yourself.

Among so much about American politics that can impress or depress a friendly transatlantic observer, there’s nothing more astonishing than this: Why on Earth should Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton be the front-runner for the presidency?

She has now pulled well ahead of Sen. Barack Obama, both in polls and in fundraising. If the Democrats can’t win next year, they should give up for good, so she must be considered the clear favorite for the White House. But in all seriousness: What has she ever done to deserve this eminence? How could a country that prides itself on its spirit of equality and opportunity possibly be led by someone whose ascent owes more to her marriage than to her merits?

Look, I’m not terribly fond of many of Hillary’s policies, I am very cool with some of them.  But I have to ask “in all seriousness” why the Hill-Haters are even broaching this particular subject with the current occupant in the White House being the most shining, glaring, radioactive, and incanfuckingdescent example of nepotism and favoritism in politics since Tammany Hall and Teapot Dome.

Has Geoffy here even looked at the documented examples of how Dubya’s entire professional life has been his father bailing him out of one failure after another only to be rewarded with greater and greater responsibility and power despite his complete incompetence?  Is that not the definition of nepotism?

And we’re supposed to be worried about Hillary’s bona fides with Chimpotron, Jr in the Oval Office?  You’re kidding me.  Two graphs in and you’re in such an unfathomable hole this has to be satire.  Disguising this as “stop and think about America’s new hereditary rule” wasn’t a problem in 2000, unless of course we can use it in hindsight to say “You know, Hillary’s worse than Dubya and she’s even less qualified.”

We all, nations as well as individuals, have difficulty seeing ourselves as others see us. In this case, I doubt that Americans realize how extraordinary their country appears from the outside. In Europe, the supposed home of class privilege and heritable status, we have abandoned the hereditary principle (apart from the rather useful institution of constitutional monarchy), and the days are gone when Pitt the Elder was prime minister and then Pitt the Younger. But Americans find nothing untoward in Bush the Elder being followed by Bush the Younger.

Correction.  I’m an American, and I found a whole lot of things untoward about Bush the Younger, which is why I voted for Gore and then got disenfranchised by people in black robes (instead of the usual white ones in history.)

But Geoffy manages to make this all worse.

At a time when Americans seem to contemplate with equanimity up to 28 solid years of uninterrupted Bush-Clinton rule, please note that there are almost no political dynasties left in British politics, at least on the Tory side. Admittedly, Hilary Benn, the environmental secretary, is the fourth generation of his family to sit in Parliament and the third to serve in a Labor Party cabinet. But England otherwise has nothing now to match the noble houses of Kennedy, Gore and Bush.

And in no other advanced democracy today could someone with Clinton’s resume even be considered a candidate for national leadership. It’s true that wives do sometimes inherit political reins from their husbands, but usually in recovering dictatorships in Latin America such as Argentina, where Sen. Cristina Fernendez de Kirchner may succeed President Nestor Kirchner, or Third World countries such as Sri Lanka or the Philippines — and in those cases often when the husbands have been assassinated. Such things also happened (apart from the assassination) in the early days of women’s entry into British politics. The first woman to take her seat in the House of Commons was Lady Astor, by birth Nancy Langhorne of Danville, Va., who inherited her husband’s seat in 1919 when he inherited his peerage, but we haven’t seen a case like that for many years.

Here’s the wacky part.  You can replace the word “Clinton” with “Obama” or “Edwards” or “Richardson” or “Dodd” or “Biden” and the article would make about as much sense with editing on the issues.  You see, voting for Hillary would set back women, just like voting for Obama would set back African-Americans, or Richardson would set back Hispanic-Americans, because really the Democrats are all about nepotism and favoritism, unlike, say, the GOP.

In one democracy after another, women have been enfranchised, entered politics and risen to the top. The United States lags far behind in every way. A record number of women now serve in Congress, which only makes the figures — 71 of 435 House members and 16 of 100 senators — all the more unimpressive. Compare those statistics with Norway’s, where 37 percent of lawmakers are women. In Sweden, it’s 45 percent.

More to the point, women who make political careers in other democracies do it their way, which usually means the hard way. Not many people had fewer advantages in life — by birth or marriage or anything else — than Golda Meir, born in poverty in Russia and taken to the United States as a girl before she settled in Palestine. She was one of only two women among the 24 people who signed Israel’s declaration of independence in 1948. After serving under David Ben-Gurion as foreign minister, she became prime minister in 1969 — stepping into a man’s shoes, it’s true, but those of her predecessor, Levi Eshkol, who died unexpectedly in office.

The wingers on this side of the pond are always comparing people to Reagan, I wonder who the Brits have for that?  Oh yes…

Four years later, Meir showed that a woman could lead her country in war as well as peace, an example that Margaret Thatcher would follow. Thatcher made her way from a lower-middle-class home to Oxford at a time when there were few women there from any background. She then had not one but two careers, as a barrister and as an industrial chemist. (One of the gravest charges against her is that she helped invent a noxious concoction called “Mr. Whippy” squirtable ice cream.) After the traditional blooding of British politics — fighting and losing a parliamentary election — she entered Parliament in 1959 and served there for more than 30 years, working her way up as a Conservative backbencher, junior minister and then cabinet minister, speaking, debating, listening (yes, even Thatcher sometimes listened), pounding the streets at election time and attending dreary meetings in her constituency.

She not only had no advantages, but she was at a disadvantage in what was still very much a chaps’ party — dominated by men who had attended the same schools, served in the same regiments and belonged to the same clubs. But she ignored all that. In 1975, she was the only Tory with the guts to challenge Edward Heath for the party leadership, and in 1979 she led her party to victory in the first of three general elections.

To be sure, some women in politics have been less successful than others. France’s first female prime minister was Edith Cresson, who lasted less than a year in office, and the first Canadian was poor Kim Campbell, who held the job for less than six months before leading her party to catastrophic electoral defeat. But Helen Clark in New Zealand and Angela Merkel in Germany have fought the political fight on equal terms, neither expecting nor receiving any favors because of their sex.

See, squirtable ice cream = world leader.  Being First Lady and then a Senator = total bitch.

What a contrast Hillary Clinton presents! Everyone recognizes the nepotism or favoritism she has enjoyed: New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd has written that without her marriage, Clinton might be a candidate for president of Vassar, but not of the United States. And yet the truly astonishing nature of her career still doesn’t seem to have impinged on Americans.

Seven years ago, she turned up in New York, a state with which she had a somewhat tenuous connection, expecting to be made senator by acclamation (particularly once Rudy Giuliani decided not to run against her). Until that point, she had never won or even sought any elective office, not in the House or in a state legislature. Nor had she held any executive-branch position. The only political task with which she had ever been entrusted was her husband’s health-care reforms, and she made a complete hash of that.

We’re all Maureen Dowd, you see.  And it’s not like our current President met the same criteria only in Texas instead of New York, didn’t have a national office of any kind, and in fact made a hash of an entire state.

No doubt she has been a diligent senator, even if the cutting words of the New Republic’s Leon Wieseltier about “the most plodding and expedient politician in America” ring painfully true, and no doubt her main Democratic rivals have only quite modest experience themselves: Obama’s stint in the Illinois state legislature before entering the U.S. Senate in 2005, John Edwards’s one term in the Senate. But both men are unquestionably self-made, and no one can say that they are where they are because of any kin or spouse.

Amazing.  Inferring Hillary is a bull dyke bitch for the last decade plus hasn’t worked, so now we’re going to start comparing her to Barbie.  She only exists politically because of her husband, he defined her.  She didn’t have anything to do with her success at all.  

Predictably enough, Sen. Clinton’s husband has tried to defend her with his quicksilver tongue, speaking recently on BBC Radio here, where he’s plugging his new book, and on television back home. Dynasties mean the kings of France, Bill Clinton told Tim Russert on “Meet the Press,” whereas Hillary has had “a totally different career path” from his, “from a different political base” to a different “set of expertise areas.”

“And I think the real question here is not whether she’s establishing a dynasty,” he went on. “I don’t like it whenever anybody gets something they’re not entitled to just because of their families. But in this case, I honestly believe . . . she’s the best suited, best qualified nonincumbent I’ve had a chance to vote for.” (Really? Better qualified, in terms of experience, than Hubert Humphrey or Jimmy Carter or Walter Mondale or Michael Dukakis?) “So I just don’t want to see her eliminated because she’s my wife,” the former president added. The gentleman doth protest too much on behalf of his lady, methinks: This is the best Clintonian evasive style. No one for a second thinks Sen. Clinton’s marital status should be held against her. The question is whether she has any other serious claim to high office.

That’s odd, you’re exactly doing that.  You’re holding who she is married to as something that should be held against her, and then saying she has no serious claim to high office.  As opposed to whom, Rudy Giuliani, a guy whose claim to fame was being the mayor (note, zero national political experience) of NYC during the worst terror attack on US soil and then fucked that up royally?  Fred Thompson, who was a Senator and a TV actor like Reagan?  Mitt Romney, who was a state governor?  Huckabee, same thing?  Brownback, Senator.

But you see, Hillary’s Senate stint doesn’t count.  Jesus.

By way of what English barristers call a bad point, the former president mentioned that, after Robert F. Kennedy had served as his brother’s attorney general, Congress made it illegal for a president’s family member to be in the Cabinet. “I actually agree with that,” Clinton said. “I think it would be a mistake for Hillary to give me a line policy-making job.” So was it a mistake for him to have given her the health-care job?

All in all, “Democracy in America,” not to mention equality or feminism in America, can sometimes look very odd from the outside. We’ve seen Jean Kennedy Smith made ambassador to Dublin (and a disastrous one) because she was famous for being a sister, then Pamela Digby Harriman made ambassador to Paris (and rather a good one) because she was famous for being a socialite.

Now Hillary Rodham Clinton has become a potential president because she is famous for being a wife (and a wronged wife at that). Europe has long since accepted the great 19th-century liberal principle of “the career open to the talents.” In the 21st century, isn’t it time that the republic founded on the proposition that all men are created equal — and women, too, one hopes — also caught up with it?

Nepotism, Favoritism, and Qualifications are only important if you’re Hillary.  Everybody else?  You get a free pass.

Since the other candidates…especially the leading GOP ones…cannot attack Hillary’s experience directly, they have to rely on our “liberal media” to do it for them.  How nice.

Yet another story in the Blackwater/PMC file surfacing today, and it’s almost too crazy to believe.  Yet the results are pretty undeniable.

Several years ago, George Clooney, Mark Wahlberg, and Ice Cube starred in Three Kings, a heist movie where a group of Gulf War soldiers snuck into Iraq during the first Gulf War and stole Saddam’s hidden stash…not of WMD, but of gold.  Clooney plays Major Archie Gates, who’s a pretty mercenary character, but even Archie’s gold-plated heart is melted when he sees the conditions in Iraq under Saddam, and the heist turns into a humanitarian mission of sorts.  Still, the movie works because the story is at least possible:  you have the chaos of war, a dictator’s hidden treasure hoard, a long suffering people and a lot of open desert.  Heists during a war are nothing new to either history or Hollywood.
Which brings us around to America’s favorite PMC “brand” Blackwater.  Just how mercenary are these guys?  It’s important to keep in mind in the end that these guys work for money…lots of it.  TPM’s Spencer Ackerman has the breakdown of the breakout.

It’s a prime example of the lawlessness in Iraq. The details are sketchy and disputed, but here they are: An Iraqi corruption judge, continually thwarted in his pursuit of justice, finally helps convict a high-ranking official. But then the official breaks out of jail. Or, rather, the official is helped out of jail by guards working for one defense contractor, but is then returned — only to leave jail with the help of another. Allegedly.

Testimony today from Iraqi corruption judge Radhi Hamza al-Radhi touched on the conviction of
Ayham al-Samarrai, the former Iraqi electricity minister. al-Radhi helped put al-Samarrai away for what the judge called “wasting” public funds. al-Samarrai is the highest-ranking official to be convicted of corruption in Iraq.

Now these are some pretty serious charges here, folks.  Breaking out a corrupt minister, especially one supposed to be in charge of arguably the largest single infrastructure failure on earth, Iraq’s electrical grid, has to be pretty high on the list for an investigation by both law enforcement AND the media.

His name may be familiar to Blackwater watchers. Last month, an Iraqi defense official told McClatchy’s Leila Fadel that Blackwater helped break al-Samarrai out of prison in the Green Zone last December. Today, however, al-Radhi suggested that the defense official was wrong. A rival private-security company, DynCorp, assisted al-Samarrai’s prison break, al-Radhi said.

DynCorp?  This gets even better, two rival PMCs each trying to blame the breakout on each other.  Anyone ever play Shadowrun?  That’s a tactic I’ll have to remember in that corp-run game of the dark future.  Of course that future may be pretty close, looks like…

But DynCorp says it’s a huge misunderstanding. “It’s absolutely untrue,” says spokesman Gregory Lagana. “We are absolutely 100 percent convinced it wasn’t us.” However, Lagana says, he knows why al-Radhi thinks DynCorp was behind it. Two DynCorp employees, one named George Dillman and another whom Lagana didn’t recall, were stationed in Iraq to assist in training Iraqi policemen. Among the police stations the two were detailed to was the Green Zone station where al-Samarrai was detained. In October, al-Samarrai, who holds dual U.S.-Iraqi citizenship, told the DynCorp employees that he would be murdered if he was convicted.

And I’m sure the millions in corrupt kickback cash had nothing to do with THAT decision.

When Samarrai was convicted, the DynCorp employees tried to help al-Samarrai, to whom they had become sympathetic. They improperly transported him to the U.S. embassy to seek protection for him. But the embassy told them that their intended transfer was improper, and took al-Samarrai back to the Iraqi police. “That was our last contact with him, and the two guys were fired,” Lagana said. “They had no business doing what they did.” The story was first reported in The Chicago Tribune last December.

I’m sensing a “but” here…

However, al-Samarrai’s story doesn’t end there. According to Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-MA) — and confirmed by Stuart Bowen, the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction — al-Samarrai is currently living in Chicago. It’s still not certain which contractor sprung al-Samarrai from jail. But beyond that: who helped al-Samarrai get back into the U.S.?

That’s a damn good point.  Despite the denials from DynCorp and Blackwater, the indisputable fact is that SOMEBODY got this joker out of Iraqi prison and into Chicago.  Somebody most likely got paid a pretty fat fee to do so.  There’s certainly a very good story here about which PMC may have done so, but the real question is “If a PMC did this, why aren’t there a whole lot more people in prison?”  Furthermore, if the US Government, in this case the special inspector general for Iraqi reconstruction as well as the House of Representatives, KNEW an Iraqi minister convicted of corruption by our allies, the Iraqi government, was living in Chicago after magically escaping prison…WHY is he still in Chicago?

It’s like lancing a massive boil.  Just under the skin is a cesspool of corruption and behind it all the infection that caused the mess in the first place. PMCs like Blackwater have been that boil for years now, and it’s had time to get absolutely gigantic.  Now that it’s been cut open, there’s a lot of truly disgusting stuff we’ll have to wade through in order to fix the problem.

But the source of the infection is the Bush Administration, and that needs to be excised as well.

The results of the Little Prince’s testimony in front of Congress can’t be making anyone in the Bush Administration happy.

There are competing bills in the House, one by Rep. David Price (D-NC) (Update [2007-10-4 13:54:32 by Zandar1]: which passed overwhelmingly 389-30) the PMCs are lining up behind, the other, by Barack Obama is far more strict.

Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) has proposed clarifying that private contractors accused of misconduct can be tried under U.S. law and urging the Pentagon to pursue such civilian prosecution. Following a Sept. 16 shooting that infuriated the Iraqi government and got the contracting firm Blackwater USA briefly barred from the country, Senate aides are working on adding parts of Obama’s plan to the defense authorization bill.

Obama told Bush in a Monday letter that he should pin down information immediately on offenses committed by contractors.

“It is our government’s obligation to ensure that security contractors in Iraq are subject to adequate and transparent oversight and that their actions do not have a negative impact on our military’s efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan,” Obama wrote.

His proposal also would require the Justice Department inspector general to report to Congress on the number of complaints it has received against private contractors, and the number of investigations opened and criminal cases pursued in response. Baghdad officials are investigating Blackwater’s actions in the Sept. 16 violence and other recent incidents that caused Iraqi civilian casualties, and the State Department launched its own probe late last week.

Obama told Bush he was “disturbed” by the Blackwater episode, which “raises larger questions about the role of private security contractors.”

Those “larger questions” are the greatest concern to the Bush Administration, and should be of the utmost concern to Americans.  John Edwards would go even further.

Mr. Edwards, in Portsmouth, N.H., called for ending the outsourcing of military and security missions to contractors. He presented a plan to expand the jurisdiction of American law enforcement agencies to cover contractors overseas and used the case to highlight his opposition to the Iraq war and Bush administration tactics.

“The Bush administration is keeping the war in Iraq going, despite the overwhelming opposition of the American people,” Mr. Edwards said. “And they are doing it in part by performing an end-run around the all-volunteer force.”

Kudos for Edwards to bring up the elephant in the room. The only reason we’re able to stay in Iraq is because of these PMC mercs, they’re unregulated, and they are indeed an end-run around the all-volunteer force that our military is today.  These mercs are there specifically to get around the draft.  They are being paid far more than America’s military and that money is coming from our pockets.  The PMCs are Bush’s way of continuing the war forever, because he knows a draft would invoke a massive response from the people.

The PMCs are Bush’s back door draft.  They always have been:  he lowers the numbers of military troops in Iraq and increases the PMCs.

But now people are asking questions about why we even have PMCs in Iraq at all, and the answers they are getting are far more sinister.  The Iraqis aren’t standing for it either.

The official Iraqi investigation into last month’s Blackwater shooting has been submitted to the government and recommends the security guards face trial in Iraqi courts, and that the company pay compensation to the victims, an Iraqi government minister told The Associated Press on Thursday.

The three-member panel, led by Defense Minister Abdul-Qader al-Obeidi, finished its work earlier this week and submitted the report and recommendations to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki on Tuesday, the government minister told AP on condition he not be identified by name.

The minister said the report was issued under the signatures of al-Obeidi, Maj. Gen. Tariq al-Baldawi, the deputy minister of national security; and Maj. Gen. Hussein Ali Kamal, the deputy interior minister for intelligence and security affairs.

The cabinet minister said the report determined that 13 Iraqi civilians — not 11 as originally reported — were killed when Blackwater USA guards sprayed western Baghdad’s Nisoor Square with gunfire Sept. 16. The investigation maintained, as Iraqi authorities have throughout, that the Blackwater guards had not been fired on when they unleashed the fusillade. It said no shots were fired at Blackwater personnel throughout.

Blackwater has said its guards, which protect State Department personnel in Baghdad, only used their weapons after they came under fire.

The Iraqi report said the Blackwater guards had violated accepted rules of engagement, should face trial in the Iraqi justice system, and that the company should compensate the families of the victims.

The split between where the US and where Iraq stands on Blackwater cannot be bridged.  One of the two is going to have to lose, and lose big time.  Blackwater is becoming an election albatross around the GOP’s collective necks, and even they are starting to chafe.  This is not an issue of the press hiding the good news, this is an issue of the world finally paying attention to the bad news.  It seems every day more sordid details are coming up about Blackwater incidents, and people are coming to the correct conclusion that without these PMCs we can’t stay in Iraq.

The Iraqis have figured this out.  America is starting to figure this out too.

The aftermath from yesterday’s hearings on Blackwater were by MSM accounts, barely worth mentioning.

The chairman of the Blackwater private security firm said yesterday that guards working for his company have “acted appropriately at all times” while protecting U.S. diplomats in Iraq and accused critics of making “baseless allegations of wrongdoing” against them.

In a contentious hearing before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Erik Prince said it is up to the Justice Department, not Blackwater, to investigate shootings and other acts of violence involving Blackwater employees and, if warranted, prosecute personnel involved in the deaths of Iraqi civilians.

“We fired him,” he said of a Blackwater employee who allegedly shot and killed a security guard of one Iraq’s vice presidents last Christmas Eve while intoxicated. The man was fined “multiple thousands of dollars,” Prince said. But “we can’t flog him. We can’t incarcerate him. That’s up to the Justice Department.” The guard has not been charged.

But senior State Department officials testified that it remains unclear whether U.S. laws cover the contractors. “The area of laws available for prosecution is very murky,” said Richard J. Griffin, head of the department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security. “That lack of clarity is part of the problem.”

A “lack of clarity” was the problem, like the deaths of so many Iraqi civilians at the hands of a group of PMC mercs was in fact just a big misunderstanding, an accounting mistake of karma.  Prince’s answers were rather bad, but few if any Democrats really asked the big questions:  why the hell are we using more contractors than soldiers in Iraq anyway?

Over at Wired, P.W. Singer has more on the fallout.

The best encapsulation of the entire hearings on this important matter of national security was that offered by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA).  He led his remarks by saying, “Hopefully, we will get to serious discussion.” Then he proceeded to talk about everything from diabetes drugs to Moveon.org — as opposed to the issues at hand.

Much of the air was taken out of the hearing by the decision made to restrict from discussion the events of September 16th. There was a sensible reason for this: The FBI opened an investigation the day before (coincidentally or not, depending how much of a conspiracy theorist you are). No one wanted to say anything to contaminate an ongoing investigation. But it sure made things less exciting and less important, since September 16th was what had prompted the hearings in the first place.

The hearing revealed a fascinating, but also disturbing, lack of awareness in Congress about the private military industry. Members on both sides repeatedly struggled with the most basic facts and issues that surround the over 160,000-person contractor force in Iraq: Everything from the number and roles of contractors to their status and accountability, or lack thereof. It was quite clear that this was the first time that many had been forced to think much about the issue (even though the industry is over a decade old and the supplemental funds have been paying for the use of contractors in Iraq, year after year).

What I found especially telling, given the consistently weak grasp of the issues, was that multiple representatives opened their remarks by talking about how Blackwater contractors protected them while on visits to Iraq. They often meant this as a compliment to the firm, and also a way of establishing their credentials on the issue.  But it usually backfired, revealing a lack of simple curiosity.  It showed that they’ve known about the massive use of contractors for years – they just didn’t bother to ask any questions, even when the issue was in their faces.

Many representatives questioned the issue of legal status of contractors and why they weren’t being held accountable. No one had a good handle on this.  Prince, for one, frequently mentioned how he had fired employees who may have violated some law, but could not go beyond such an action.  And no one was there from the Department of Justice to explain why they have avoided prosecuting these same employees.

The lack of clarity on the legal issues was perhaps illustrated best in an odd exchange between Representative Rep. Bruce Braley (D-Iowa) and Mr. Prince. The Congressman pressed Prince about what laws contractors might be held accountable under; the chairman of one of the leading firms in the industry found himself unable to give an immediate reply. (Note: This discussion also left aside the cold, hard fact that none of the various laws they pondered have actually been used for a battlefield contractor in Iraq.)

He’s right.  Congress hasn’t had to think about the PMC issue because until yesterday, they hadn’t really had to face the elephant in the room.  For years now we’ve been outsourcing the war to government contractors who are getting rich off taxpayer money.  It’s not so much a private army, but a privatized Army, if you’ll excuse the pun.

And given the GOP record on privatization over the last 5-6 years, is anyone surprised that they turned it into a smörgåsbord of graft and quid pro quo where wealthy GOP donors reap the benefits of access to the fat cats at the expense of American jobs, money, and in this case lives?  The GOP has done the exact same thing to nearly every aspect of government control: let the industry regulate itself by removing any and all oversight and let the foxes in charge of the entire poultry business, not just the henhouse.  Years of this has affected the quality of our food, our toys, our infrastructure, our environment, our health care, our schools, our lives.  At every turn we’re expected to pay for it with far greater costs than regulation would set the government back, but that would rob the GOP of the chance to line the pockets of the wealthiest.

So again, why are we surprised that unregulated PMCs are really just a graft operation with guns and dead Iraqis?

And let’s not forget the incident that started this all.

It started out as a family errand: Ahmed Haithem Ahmed was driving his mother, Mohassin, to pick up his father from the hospital where he worked as a pathologist. As they approached Nisour Square at midday on Sept. 16, they did not know that a bomb had gone off nearby or that a convoy of four armored vehicles carrying Blackwater guards armed with automatic rifles was approaching.

Moments later a bullet tore through Mr. Ahmed’s head, he slumped, and the car rolled forward. Then Blackwater guards responded with a barrage of gunfire and explosive weapons, leaving 17 dead and 24 wounded — a higher toll than previously thought, according to Iraqi investigators.

Interviews with 12 Iraqi witnesses, several Iraqi investigators and an American official familiar with an American investigation of the shootings offer new insights into the gravity of the episode in Nisour Square. And they are difficult to square with the explanation offered initially by Blackwater officials that their guards were responding proportionately to an attack on the streets around the square.

The new details include these:

¶A deadly cascade of events began when a single bullet apparently fired by a Blackwater guard killed an Iraqi man whose weight probably remained on the accelerator and propelled the car forward as the passenger, the man’s mother, clutched him and screamed.

¶The car continued to roll toward the convoy, which responded with an intense barrage of gunfire in several directions, striking Iraqis who were desperately trying to flee.

¶Minutes after that shooting stopped, a Blackwater convoy — possibly the same one — moved north from the square and opened fire on another line of traffic a few hundred yards away, in a previously unreported separate shooting, investigators and several witnesses say.

But questions emerge from accounts of the earliest moments of the shooting in Nisour Square.

The car in which the first people were killed did not begin to closely approach the Blackwater convoy until the Iraqi driver had been shot in the head and lost control of his vehicle. Not one witness heard or saw any gunfire coming from Iraqis around the square. And following a short initial burst of bullets, the Blackwater guards unleashed an overwhelming barrage of gunfire even as Iraqis were turning their cars around and attempting to flee.

Let’s not forget that this was but a single example of the butchery that happens daily in Iraq in our name, as Erik Prince put it, “A lot of people call us mercenaries. We are Americans, working for Americans, protecting Americans.”

And they accomplish this by killing Iraqis, taking the money, and running.  And people wonder why we’re losing in Iraq.