The indictment is built largely around the testimony of a sixth Blackwater operative who has already pleaded guilty to two charges as part of an agreement to testify against his colleagues. The guard, Jeremy Ridgeway, described how he and the other Blackwater operatives used automatic rifles and grenade launchers to fire on cars, on houses, a traffic officer and a girls’ school.
The indictments represent the first time in more than five years of the Iraq occupation that the Justice Department has brought criminal charges against armed private contractors for crimes committed against Iraqis. Blackwater, as a company, faces no charges in the case.
This is very significant. The fact is that no armed contractors have ever been prosecuted under any legal system, not under Iraqi law, not under US military law and not under civilian law. The Nisoor Square massacre, was the single greatest massacre committed by private US government forces in Iraq during five years of the occupation. So the fact that these men who are alleged to be responsible for that are being criminally prosecuted and could potentially face a mandatory minimum of thirty years in jail, if they’re convicted, is significant.
However, Erik Prince, the owner of Blackwater; Condoleezza Rice, the Secretary of State; George Bush, the President—they’re not being held responsible for this. And the fact is that, once again, the US government is rolling out this “bad apples” narrative to describe the actions of Blackwater and saying that the company as a whole is a good company, a responsible company, but just these few guys did some bad things. And the fact is that this is a five-year pattern of misconduct and this kind of activity by Blackwater forces. What we’re going to see is a token prosecution of a handful of Blackwater guys, when it’s the system of the radical privatization of war that needs to be taken on forcefully.
the first victims that day, shortly after noon on September 16th, 2007, were a young Iraqi medical student named Ahmed Haitham al-Rubaye and his mother Mehasin. And the Blackwater guys have said that they believed that their car posed some kind of a threat or was potentially a suicide bomber, and they shot Ahmed Haitham al-Rubaye in his head as he drove that car and then launched some kind of a projectile at the vehicle, blowing it up and killing his mother Mehasin inside. Blackwater forces have said that it was a defensive measure.
But the bottom line here, is that the company is not going to be held accountable, except lawsuits like that brought by the Center for Constitutional Rights, where they are suing Blackwater as a company, Erik Prince as an individual, trying to hold them accountable for the conduct of the men on the ground. These guys, like at Abu Ghraib, will take the fall for an entire system, and the reality is that they are five bad actors in a filthy, rotten system that needs to be confronted head on.
There’s no greater symbol of the lack of true change in US foreign policy than Barack Obama retaining the man that George W. Bush chose to be the Defense Secretary at the Pentagon. this is a kettle of hawks that have been assembled in the White House to run US foreign policy. Jim Jones and his connections to Chevron and Boeing. Hillary Clinton, Susan Rice, it’s a very hawkish cabinet.
On the Blackwater issue, though, Gates, obviously has been much, much better than Donald Rumsfeld, in the sense that he has realized that these contractors are out of control and pose, a threat to US troops and Iraqi civilians alike. And the issue that Gates has zeroed in on is the fact that these Blackwater forces are paid much more than regular US soldiers and that they’re not held accountable under the same legal system.
Barack Obama does not have a great position on Blackwater and other private forces. In fact, he says that he cannot and will not rule out using them in Iraq. He has also said that there’s going to be a continued role for contractors in the private war industry, in the US national security apparatus.
Interestingly, Hillary Clinton was only the second person to sign onto legislation to ban Blackwater. As Secretary of State, that would technically be her area of operations. So it’s going to be interesting to see if Hillary Clinton follows through and actually tries to implement some kind of a ban, which she’s on paper supporting.
Jeremy Scahill talking with Amy Goodman.
Jeremy Scahill, Democracy Now! correspondent and author of Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army.
– from democracynow. 9 Dec 2008.
Jeremy Scahill has a personal axe to grind with Blackwater. Anything he out… says should be viewed in that regard.
I have it on good testimony that the Blackwater guards were targeted and ambushed in this square full of civilians to provide the maximum impact and maximum number of collateral damage.
Why is it that the Arab on Arab and muslim on muslim killings go unnoticed and without comment, but the minute a US military or security guard kills a muslim, the whole muslim community shouts it
Think about the situation is US. There are a lot of people killing and getting killed there. And there are some schools in US there kids go there with semi-automatic guns and kills other kids and people. There are the issues within that country. But when somebody bombed Pearl Harbour things become different.
Whats happening in Iraq is also some what similar to that. To protect American Oil interest innocent people and kids are getting killed there. US also creates tension in that region. The root cause of all the problem in the middle east is the greed of American corporates.
So the issues you mentioned are different.