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Feds Unlikely to Charge Blackwater for Baghdad Shootings
Blackwater Worldwide, the security contractor blamed by an angry Iraqi government for the shooting deaths of 17 civilians, is not expected to face criminal charges -- all but ensuring the company will keep its multimillion-dollar contract to protect U.S. diplomats.Instead, the seven-month-old Justice Department investigation is focused on as few as three or four Blackwater guards who could be indicted in the Sept. 16 shootings, according to interviews with a half-dozen people close to the investigation.
So what does this mean? Well, for one thing, it would certainly seriously damage the company's prospects for government business -- especially its contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan -- if Blackwater were indicted. It also certainly wouldn't help the search for investors. But if a few bad apples get put to justice, well, prospects improve. Blackwater spokeswoman Anne Tyrrell tells the AP, "If it is determined that there are any individuals who need to be held accountable, we support that."
Josh
Zachary
Blackwater spokeswoman Anne Tyrrell tells the AP, "If it is determined that there are any individuals who need to be held accountable, we support that."
I am sure they will support it just as KBR supports bringing its rapists to justice.
I won't be holding my breath on that one.
Lying sacks of shit. And WE pay these people! Our tax dollars funneled into Republican backing corporations who break laws, don't pay taxes, and, hell, generally suck ass.
Proud to be American. You betcha.
O/T: Read Executive orders, acts, lies and the death of open government
May 9, 2008 4:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
More travesty of a mockery of a sham.
In September 2007, the massacre in Nisour Square was only the largest and latest in a string of killings and other crimes by Blackwater.
The next administration needs to dry up the funding from all branches of the federal government to this private army.
May 9, 2008 6:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
So what does this mean?
I'll take "People Who Literally Get Away With Murder" for $1000, Alex.
May 9, 2008 6:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
[Blackwater]Those guys? They were just contractors, not employees, just like we've been tellin' ya! We had no control over them; in fact we hardly knew who they were![/Blackwater]
May 9, 2008 6:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
One would hope they could still be held accountable once Obama is sworn in.
May 9, 2008 7:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
The appropriations committe needs to have an earmark.
No funds to Blackwater...that is an earmark!
May 9, 2008 8:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
WE forgot the Pillage and peal part!
May 9, 2008 8:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
"The old 'It's only a few bad apples' trick.... that's the second time I've fallen for that this week."
May 9, 2008 8:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
Now just hold on a second here. Some patience please. I am absolutely certainly that when George Bush, as he has promised, finds and fires the leaker of Valerie Plame's name, he will then turn his full attention to this issue. Rest assured. The guilty will be vindicated.
May 9, 2008 9:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm afraid you are right, PBen, about the "few bad apples." Bush & Co., though, always overreach, blaming others too much and, at times, getting "blowback" as a result. Blackwater "bad apples" aren't as easily muzzled as Abu Ghraib variety. And the closer we come to the end of "Dubya's" tenure, the more we will see critical mass aggragating against turning a blind eye toward gross outrages. We can see changes in the reaction of certain Republicans on Waxman's Oversight Committee even now. It is tempting to abandon all hope, but maybe not quite yet.
May 9, 2008 11:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
As soon as obama is sworn in? keep dreaming, Obama must hope and pray that Blackwater doesn't fund, and protect some iniative to assasinate him.
It's not really far fetched to imagine a group of let's say, ten guys, that think they're on a Holy mission from the Christian White God to Protect the Holy American White Christian Nation From a Black President.
The country is split down the middle Gallup even says McCain is ahead. So there approximately 150 million Americans who are republicans who really don't like Obama. How hard would it be to find ten such men amongst that group? Granted, it's only 75 MILLION actual men, im assuming women will be excluded from the actual deed.
May 10, 2008 1:54 AM | Reply | Permalink
Consider that the translation of Hezbollah is "Party of God." A political party with its own armed wing dedicated to religious triumphalism. "It can't happen here...."
May 10, 2008 8:54 AM | Reply | Permalink
Yeah, and from the Chicago Tribune-
Secret Service supervisors shared crude sexual jokes and engaged in racially derogatory banter about blacks, and passed around an anecdote about a possible assassination of Rev. Jesse Jackson, according to internal e-mail disclosed in a federal court filing on Friday by lawyers for black Secret Service agents.
And:
The disclosure of the messages follows an incident last month in which a noose was found in a room used by a black instructor at a Secret Service training facility in Beltsville, Md. Agency officials said that episode was under internal investigation.
And:
A March 3, 2003, message describing Jackson as the "Righteous Reverend" was passed among several Secret Service supervisors. The message, an anecdote about a missile striking an airplane in which Jackson and his wife were traveling, concludes, it "certainly wouldn't be a great loss and it probably wouldn't be an accident either."
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-secret-servicemay10,0,713309.story
May 10, 2008 3:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
Most corrupt administration in US history.
May 10, 2008 7:49 AM | Reply | Permalink
Well, Gee, it's not like Blackwater is freakin Arthur Anderson or anything. Come on. What's a few dead Arabs more or less? They kill each other for sport anyhow. Jeez.
May 10, 2008 11:57 AM | Reply | Permalink
The supremists and wanton profiteers in the Bush government may decieve the cowards in congress, - and the complicit parrots and "message-force multipliers in the socalled MSM, - and American people into tolerating or excusing or Blackwaters lawlessness, financial malfeasance, not too mention murder - but I doubt the Iraqi people will be easily duped.
The Bush government is never held accountable for crimes, nor are the Private military, intelligence, and PR contractors awarded nobid openended multihundredmilliondollar contracts behind the peoples back held accountable for crimes, nor are the message-force mulitipliers on the pentagon payroll held accountable for bruting the Bush government parables and propaganda - nor the finance high priests in the predator class held accountable for fraudulance, financial malfeasance, tax evasion, or wanton profiteering.
No one is accountable for anything. We live in a world of lawlessness, under the tyrannical reign of criminals, supremists, fascists, pathological liars, and wanton profiteers.
In the bloody costly noendinsight neverendingwar world conjured and hoisted on the peoples backs by the neocons and the Bush government - there are no laws and there are no rules. Be advised however, that is this same world there are no laws, and there are no rules for anyone.
May 10, 2008 6:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
but I doubt the Iraqi people will be easily duped.
Unfortunately, it seems to me that the story suggests that whether the Iraqis are duped or not is pretty much a moot question. Or, as Cheney remarked so tellingly, the other day: "So?"
Be advised however, that is this same world there are no laws, and there are no rules for anyone.
Tony I'm afraid again you're just a little off the track, behind the curve: There NEVER are rules that bind the powerful, and they make (and enforce) the rules that bind the rest of us. They have the guns and the Eric Princes. We have our anger. I tried taking my anger out the other day to the range, but I guess I'd got my powder wet...
May 11, 2008 9:59 AM | Reply | Permalink
This is ticklish ground tokin librul, but I assure you some of us are not bound by, or beholden to the perversions and betrayals of the Bush government, - and since there are no laws, - there are no laws for anyone.
Americans deceive themeslves by imagining there are no solutions. The solutions, may in fact be outside the normal constructs of what we as Americans as laws, - but again there are no laws. We are as free to operate outside the law as our oppressors. It is only an act of volition that prevents America from changing what are obvious criminal enterprizes, perpetrated by obvious criminals, and working to restore the rule of law, and the Constitution to America. Now, all of the former structures of American democracy lay butchered, burnt and splattered on the ground, - so we operate in a world with no laws, and nor rules other than survival. Some of us will not go willingly or without fierce contest to Gitmo, or the noose.
In a world where there are no rules, - there are no rules for anyone.
May 12, 2008 2:59 AM | Reply | Permalink
The only rule is: "Might makes Right."
Those with the guns get to make the rules for those who do not have guns.
May 12, 2008 7:13 AM | Reply | Permalink
One would hope that Obama will invoke a full, thorough, legitimate investigation into Blackwater and any and all business subsidiaries and the like to determine their fitness to contract with the US Government.
In reality, the answer is No. Blackwater is not fit.
We do not need a mercenary army.
May 12, 2008 12:17 PM | Reply | Permalink