We have been reading since the onset of the war in Iraq about the privatized military of the Republican's dream in Blackwater USA (according to their website:"the most comprehensive professional military, law enforcement, security, peacekeeping, and stability operations company in the world"). This type of mercenary operation in years past was loathed world wide. Generally western military types would be hired to intervene in third world hot spot many times in Africa.The third world well remembers these events. Today we sponsor these outrages in the name of building freedom and democracy in Iraq.
McClatchy has a great article that examines the recent behavior of Blackwater and the death and destruction they are raining down on Iraq.
The article is titled "Blackwater guards killed 16 as U.S. touted progress" and it provides great detail on a number of incidents that have either gone under the radar or were not personalized in any way we could feel the pain. What follows are the details from 3 different incidents that explorers the violence that this company can visit on the civilian population whether or not they are attacked.
On Sept. 9... Batoul Mohammed Ali Hussein came to Baghdad for the day.
A clerk in the Iraqi customs office in Diyala province, she was in the capital to drop off and pick up paperwork at the central office near busy al Khilani Square, not far from the fortified Green Zone, where top U.S. and Iraqi officials live and work. U.S. officials often pass through the square in heavily guarded convoys on their way to other parts of Baghdad.
As Hussein walked out of the customs building, an embassy convoy of sport-utility vehicles drove through the intersection. Blackwater security guards, charged with protecting the diplomats, yelled at construction workers at an unfinished building to move back. Instead, the workers threw rocks. The guards, witnesses said, responded with gunfire, spraying the intersection with bullets.
Hussein, who was on the opposite side of the street from the construction site, fell to the ground, shot in the leg. As she struggled to her feet and took a step, eyewitnesses said, a Blackwater security guard trained his weapon on her and shot her multiple times. She died on the spot, and the customs documents she'd held in her arms fluttered down the street.
Before the shooting stopped, four other people were killed in what would be the beginning of eight days of violence that Iraqi officials say bolster their argument that Blackwater should be banned from working in Iraq.
On Sept. 13 ... a roadside bomb detonated, ripping through one of the Blackwater vehicles.The blast killed two Blackwater guards. As other guards went to retrieve the dead, they fired wildly in several directions, witnesses said.
Mohammed Mazin was at home when he heard the bang, which shattered one of his windows.Then he heard gunfire, and he and his son, Laith, went to the roof to see what was going on.What they saw were security contractors shooting in different directions as a helicopter hovered overhead. Bullets flew through his home's windows, he said.
No civilians were killed that day, but five were wounded, according to Iraq's Interior Ministry.
The following Sunday, Blackwater guards opened fire as the State Department convoy they were escorting crossed in front of stopped traffic at the al Nisour traffic circle...
In the car were a man whose name is uncertain; Mahasin Muhsin, a mother and doctor; and Muhsin's young son. The guards first shot the man, who was driving. As Muhsin screamed, a Blackwater guard shot her. The car exploded, and Muhsin and the child burned, witnesses said.
Afrah Sattar, 27, was on a bus approaching the square when she saw the guards fire on the white car. She and her mother, Ghania Hussein, were headed to the Certificate of Identification Office in Baghdad to pick up proof of Sattar's Iraqi citizenship for an upcoming trip to a religious shrine in Iran.
When she saw the gunmen turn toward the bus, Sattar looked at her mother in fear. "They're going to shoot at us, Mama," she said. Her mother hugged her close. Moments later, a bullet pierced her mother's skull and another struck her shoulder, Sattar recalled.
As her mother's body went limp, blood dripped onto Sattar's head, still cradled in her mother's arms.
"Mother, mother," she called out. No answer. She hugged her mother's body and kissed her lips and began to pray, "We belong to God and we return to God." The bus emptied, and Sattar sat alone at the back, with her mother's bleeding body.
At the present time Blackwater and all like contractors are immune from Iraq and apparently US law. Order 17 passed by Jerry Bremer as Proconsul accomplished this.
Order 17 is a document little-read today, yet it essentially granted to every foreigner in the country connected to the occupation enterprise the full freedom of the land, not to be interfered with in any way by Iraqis or any Iraqi political or legal institution. Foreigners -- unless, of course, they were jihadis or Iranians -- were to be "immune from any form of arrest or detention other than by persons acting on behalf of their Sending States," even though American and coalition forces were to be allowed the freedom to arrest and detain in prisons and detention camps of their own any Iraqis they designated worthy of that honor. (The present prison population of American Iraq is reputed to be at least 24,500 and rising.)
Tom Engelhardt.
These recent stories are but a subset of the outrages that have occurred. After allegedly shooting an Iraqi VP's guard a Blackwater operative was spirited out of Iraqi with no further legal consequences.
An off-duty Blackwater guard is also suspected in the December shooting death of a bodyguard assigned to one of Iraq's vice presidents. The guard was returned to the United States and no charges were filed.
Times Argus
I can't understand what kind sovereignty the Iraqis have been granted but if we are expecting them to stand up and defend themselves then we should make Blackwater and all such contractors accountable for shooting and killing the innocent throughout Iraq.