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State Dep't Takes Baby Steps to Rein in Contractors
Not that State is conceding Blackwater or other private-security contractors protecting U.S. diplomats have done anything wrong, but Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is leaning in the direction of imposing a few restrictions on their activity in Iraq:
An internal State Department review ordered by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice recommends overhauling U.S. diplomatic security practices in Iraq after the Blackwater USA shooting incident in which 13 Iraqis were killed, a senior U.S. official said Friday.Rice has ordered the recommendations be followed, including requiring U.S. diplomatic security agents to accompany Blackwater-escorted convoys of U.S. diplomats in Baghdad, said State Department spokesman Sean McCormack.
The government security service also will bolster monitoring of the private security escorts by installing video cameras in cars and recording radio traffic between convoys and the U.S. embassy.
"She wants to make sure there is a management feedback loop," McCormack told reporters.
What's not changed? Oh, yeah -- the rules of engagement that allow private firms to use lethal force with apparently minimal provocation, which U.S. military officials consider a liability. On the other hand, those video cameras are sure to capture some wacky bloopers:
Josh
Zachary
nothing solves situational problems involving guns like a "management feedback loop."
October 5, 2007 12:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
One of the most exasperating facets of the MSM's treatment of the out-of-control, brutal, Hun-like activities of Blackwater and other 'private security' firms in Iraq is their tendency to portray the whole sorry show as being originated, operated and enabled by the Department of State...as though Condi Rice's Cabinet Department is not under the direction of the Oval Office, and that the sorry performances and incidents for which Blackwater is responsible are not something that 'W' and 'Dead-eye' Dick and close associates could do anything about.
Every position that Condi Rice has filled in the Bush administration has been a dismal and costly failure for the U.S.A.
Congress' majority party should demand a replacement for the Head of the State Department.....NOW! And they should accede to the Iraqi 'government's call for the expulsion of Blackwater from Iraq and cut off funding that finances the lucrative 'money-for-innocent-blood' contracts provided to Blackwater by State.
October 5, 2007 12:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
Here's an idea - take the funds paid to private security firms and expand the U.S. diplomatic security corps. Somebody said "nothing is less productive than to make more efficient that which should not be done at all".
October 5, 2007 12:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
so let me see if I have this straight.. Blackwater escorts the diplomats, and U.S. diplomatic security agents accompany Blackwater? Cut out the middle man.
October 5, 2007 1:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
Must Read: Naomi Wolf's scary assessment of the Blackwater issue on firedoglake:
http://www.firedoglake.com/2007/10/05/blackwater-newly-created-thug-caste/
October 5, 2007 1:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
Condi Rice is ABSOLUTELY USELESS.
Because of her incompetence as head of the NSC 3000 died on 9/11.
Because of her incompetence as SOS, she's accomplice to at least 3809 Americans dead in Iraq.
October 5, 2007 2:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
I thought Maureen Dowd redeeemed herself a little this week with her column "Sinking in a Swamp Full of Blackwater".
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/03/opinion/03dowd.html?_r=1&n=Top/Opinion/Editorials%20and%20Op-Ed/Op-Ed/Columnists/Maureen%20Dowd&oref=slogin
She dispensed with the usual clownish embellishments to make her points, summing up:
Mr. Prince was pressed by Representative Paul Hodes about the penalty paid by the Blackwater employee who, while drunk and off-duty at a Christmas party, killed the Iraqi guard.
The man was fired. And he had to pay his own airfare home and forfeit his bonuses, amounting to a loss of about $14,697 — slightly less than the amount paid to the family of the Iraqi he blew away.
More please.
October 5, 2007 3:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
dont forget america,
these pigdog warpig chickenshitz are coming home to roost and they will be driving their ford f150s down your highways and ordering your children around your schools and stopping you if you run a red light.
this war has bred monsters wearing american flags. may bush, cheney, rumsfeld, rice, wolfowitz, perle, feith, libby, addington and all their sucking friends be punished for eternity.
October 5, 2007 4:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
ah yes, send diplomatic security agents out, what one or two of em, and the mercs slaughter some more Iraqis, intentionally or not, and....surprise, the diplomatic agents are heinously "killed by terrorists" or tragically "killed by friendly fire".
Oh I know I would feel comfortable with that as a diplomatic security agent.
October 5, 2007 9:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
W'S 'CORPORATE' DEREGULATED MERCENARIES REMAIN ABOVE ALL US, MILITARY, AND IRAQ LAW.
Even if Rice's new cameras record another atrocity by Blackwater there is no system for arrest, trial, or prosecution of the mercenary perpetrator.
Despite w's claim of nation building democracy, the puppet Iraq government has no legal power over US military citizens, or contractors in their 'country.'
.
October 6, 2007 7:33 PM | Reply | Permalink