Today’s Must Read“It may be worse than Abu Ghraib.”
That’s a senior U.S. military official explaining to The Washington Post how strongly Iraqis are reacting to Blackwater’s September 16th shooting of civilians in Baghdad. By contrast, here’s a State Department official: “The bottom line of this is that we recognize that there’s an issue here.”
In the gap between those two assessments lies the acrimony between the Pentagon and the State Department over the shooting. The State Department hired Blackwater to protect its dignitaries in Iraq, and so it has to balance its relationship with the Iraqi government with its need to protect Blackwater from reprisal. But the military sees Blackwater’s relaxed rules of engagement — issued by the State Department — as hurtful to its efforts to turn Iraqis against the Sunni insurgency and the Shiite militias. (More on this later today.)
“They are immature shooters and have very quick trigger fingers. Their tendency is shoot first and ask questions later,” said an Army lieutenant colonel serving in Iraq. Referring to the Sept. 16 shootings, the officer added, “None of us believe they were engaged, but we are all carrying their black eyes.”“Many of my peers think Blackwater is oftentimes out of control,” said a senior U.S. commander serving in Iraq. “They often act like cowboys over here … not seeming to play by the same rules everyone else tries to play by.”
What’s surprising is that many, if not most, of Blackwater’s security teams are made up of former U.S. soldiers, sailors and Marines, including special-operations veterans. The discipline almost always shown in a U.S. uniform appears to break down under relaxed rules of engagement, especially in a place as dangerous as Iraq. A U.S. military intelligence officer asks: “Why are we creating new vulnerabilities by relying on what are essentially mercenary forces?” (Yes, there’s that M-word, which touched off a huge blogospheric controversy when Markos Moulitsas used it.)
Only one problem. The military wants tighter controls over Blackwater and other security contractors, many of whom work for DOD. But a Pentagon source tells the Post that the Defense Department isn’t exactly champing at the bit to take the lead on regulating private military firms, calling it a potential “turf battle.” And that turf battle will extend to Congress, in all likelihood: one Iraq veteran tells the paper that the most likely solution to the renegade-contractor problem will come from Capitol Hill. On the other hand, State sources are obstructing Congressional investigations into Blackwater, raising doubts about any expeditious changes to private-security companies’ legal status in Iraq.
When the Abu Ghraib story broke in 2004, Iraq was much, much more peaceful than it is today, and the U.S. couldn’t afford it then. How much less can the 160,000 troops now in Iraq afford to be unfairly tarred with an even bigger source of Iraqi outrage?