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The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
Kidnappings, Torture and Big Money |
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April 9th,
2008 - Two Faces of Blackwater |
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By Bernd Debusmann Reuters April 9, 2008 Washington - It was the
diplomatic equivalent of showing a stiff middle finger to the Iraqi
government: the U.S. Department of State's extension of a contract with the
private security firm Blackwater to protect American diplomats in Baghdad. The contract was set to
lapse on May 7 and its renewal came against the background of a pending FBI
investigation into the killing of 17 Iraqi civilians by Blackwater operatives
in a chaotic incident in a busy Baghdad square last September. Blackwater says
its motorcade came under fire and it acted in self-defense. In the wake of the shooting,
condemned as unprovoked and indiscriminate by the Iraqis, Prime Minister Nuri
al-Maliki said Blackwater should leave the country because "the
abundance of evidence against it makes it unfit to stay in Iraq." He
backed down later and agreed to await the result of investigations into the
killings. The State Department
extended the contract ahead of the FBI's conclusions and this week a furious
Maliki went on CNN to complain that his government had not even been
consulted on the matter. Blackwater's presence is an extremely sore point for
many Iraqis who hate the high-speed, get-out-of the-way-or-die motorcades in
which American officials and visiting VIPs under the company's protection
have been ferried around Baghdad. Prior advice or consultation
on an issue as sensitive as Blackwater is a reasonable expectation - Iraq
officially became a sovereign nation in June 2004 and the U.S. is portraying
itself as a partner rather than an occupation power. It is easy to see why
Maliki, who is not held in high esteem by much of official Washington, would
feel undermined and disrespected. Tribute To Blackwater’s Professionalism The State Department's
assessment of Blackwater differs greatly from the bleak Iraqi views of the
company. That comes through loud and clear in a just-published report by the
Bureau of Diplomatic Security, the unit which signed the contract with
Blackwater and is responsible for its activities in Iraq. The foreword to the report
is signed by Gregory Starr, acting head of the little-known bureau which has
1,450 agents scattered around the world. He succeeded Richard Griffin, so far
the only bureaucratic casualty of the September 16 shooting. Griffin resigned
last October in the face of sharp criticism from Congress over his handling
of the affair. The account of the Bureau's
activities last year makes no mention of the September 16 shootings but pays
tribute to Blackwater's professionalism. "Just three weeks into
2007, Diplomatic Security suffered a tragic loss. On January 23, five of our
highly valued professional security colleagues lost their lives in service to
our nation. "These brave men,
employees of Blackwater...were killed when their helicopters came under
attack while supporting a U.S. Embassy ground convoy traveling down a Baghdad
street. "Their daily duty
entailed sacrifice, service, commitment, and danger. They now take their
place among the 33 private security professionals who have lost their lives
protecting the State Department since 2003. These men understood the enormous
risk in their mission. But they put the safety and security of others above
their own." The U.S. officials traveling
in the convoy escaped unharmed. Blackwater's CEO, Erik Prince, has often
stressed that no U.S. official under his company's protection has been killed
or wounded. "Success 100 percent of the time" in his words. Justice System Along with the rest of the
globe-spanning private security industry, Blackwater executives resent the
widespread popular image of private military contractors as trigger-happy
mercenaries driven by greed and adrenaline, accountable to no one and
overseen by nobody. Such perceptions have been
nourished by a series of incidents, including a much-publicized case
involving the bodyguard of Iraqi Vice President Adel Abdul-Mahdi, Raheem
Khalif. He was shot dead by a drunken Blackwater contractor on Christmas Eve,
2006. The contractor was fired and whisked home to the U.S. but never charged
with a crime. Blackwater and other
security companies in Iraq have operated in a legal fog. They were exempted
from Iraq's fledgling judicial system under the infamous Coalition
Provisional Authority order number 17, decreed just before the U.S. handed
over sovereignty. "Contractors shall be
immune from Iraqi legal process with respects to acts performed pursuant to
the terms and conditions of a contract..." it said. Private security contractors
in Iraq outnumber U.S. military personnel - 180,000 to 160,000 - but in five
years of war, not a single contractor has been charged with a crime involving
Iraqi civilians. In contrast, there have been more than 60 courts martial of
U.S. soldiers. That skewed picture is
supposed to change with new legislation, including a 2006 amendment to the
Uniform Code of Military Justice, which allows civilian contractors to be
tried by military courts. Will that be used to cover cases like the Baghdad
square shooting? Possibly. But there is
reason to be skeptical. The first person to face criminal charges since the
amendment passed (and the first such prosecution since the Vietnam war)
involves an Iraqi-born translator, Alaa Mohammed Ali, who is accused of
having stabbed another contractor. He is scheduled to have his first
pre-trial hearing this week. It is a case of the U.S.
military trying a non-American civilian for assaulting another non-American.
Whether that will be followed by a military court trying an American civilian
for killing Iraqi civilians remains to be seen. © Reuters 2007. All rights
reserved. External link: http://www.reuters.com/article/reutersComService4/idUSL098245720080409 |