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Iraqis Again Call for Blackwater's Ouster
Everything old in the Blackwater case is new again.
After the September 16 shooting at Nisour Squar, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's government first demanded that Blackwater be expelled from Iraq, only to quickly reverse itself under State Department pressure. The Iraqis, seeking a graceful retreat from their initial position, claimed that a post-Blackwater "security vacuum" necessitated that Blackwater remain in the country. (In truth, Iraq has no power to kick Blackwater out, despite being, in theory, a sovereign nation.)
Ever since, the Iraqis adopted the fallback position that Blackwater was guilty of murder and needed to be punished by an international court. But the same Iraqi investigation that called the shootings a murder also says that the government should kick Blackwater out of Iraq within six months, according to the AP, which obtained a draft of the investigation's recommendations.
Iraqi authorities want the U.S. government to sever all contracts in Iraq with Blackwater USA within six months and pay $8 million in compensation to each of the families of 17 people killed when the firm's guards sprayed a traffic circle with heavy machine gun fire last month.The demands _ part of an Iraqi government report examined by The Associated Press _ also called on U.S. authorities to hand over the Blackwater security agents involved in the Sept. 16 shootings to face possible trial in Iraqi courts.
The tone of the Iraqi report appears to signal further strains between the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and the White House over the deaths in Nisoor Square _ which have prompted a series of U.S. and Iraqi probes and raised questions over the use of private security contractors to guard U.S. diplomats and other officials.
Al-Maliki ordered the investigation by his defense minister and other top security and police officials on Sept. 22. The findings _ which were translated from Arabic by AP _ mark the most definitive Iraqi positions and contentions about the shootings last month.
So much for a security vacuum.
Comments (3)
kjoe wrote on October 8, 2007 8:15 PM:Allawi has been v\awfully quiet.
As the nervous cowboys in the movies used to say---"a little too quiet".
08.24.07 -- 2:30PM // link
Allawi's Inside Track?
At TPMmuckraker today we've been explaining the 'boomlet', if that's the word for a manufactured boomlet, to return longtime CIA asset Iyad Allawi to power in Iraq as the successor to Prime Minister Maliki. He's signed on a big ticket GOP lobbying firm to make his case, Barbour Griffith & Rogers. And his account at BGR is being handled by Robert Blackwill, who until recently was the Iraq coordinator at the White House. So he probably gets his calls returned.
Joe wrote on October 8, 2007 9:19 PM:I thought an asset was something of value. By whose definition is Allawi an asset of the US government? According to my own network of much better informed assets (known as Wikipedia.org, but keep that under your hat) Allawi was a member of the group that lied to MI-6 about the existence of a WMD in Iraq. His group provided some of the lies used to push us into Vietnam Redux. A figurehead installed by the US would not survive long in that cauldron. There are no acceptable solutions in Iraq, but just a variety of repugnant ones. The only thing we know for sure is that none of them will be determined by George Bush or the Israel lobby in Washington. I suppose dismantling the only check on Iran wasn't such a good idea after all.
Ferruge wrote on October 9, 2007 2:04 AM:There are no acceptable solutions in Iraq
Well, if I may quibble with the phrasing here, any the solutions are 'acceptable', in the sense that we are going to have to accept one of them whether we like it or not. But yes, even the most acceptable one is still going to be quite repugnant. And to think it has only cost us half a trillion!