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Grand Jury Investigating Blackwater Over Baghdad Shooting
A federal grand jury is said to be investigating the role of Blackwater Worldwide security guards in the shooting deaths of 17 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad.
The Blackwater guards involved in the Sept. 16 shooting at Nisoor Square in west Baghdad initially were given limited immunity from prosecution by State Department investigators in exchange for their statements about what happened. FBI sources are claiming that there may be evidence supporting the claim made by Iraqi officials that the shooting was unjustified.
Blackwater contends that its convoy was attacked before its guards opened fire, but the Iraqi government’s investigation concluded that the shootings were unprovoked.
I hope this doesn’t turn into some kind of witch hunt. Just because the Iraqi’s have concluded that the shootings were unjustified, doesn’t make it so.
However, I suspect this is more of a dog and pony show for the Iraqi government. In the end, it’s highly doubtful that any of the Blackwater personnel will be charged with anything.
-Chris Jones
Blackwater USA Building Tent City For Wildfire Victims
Blackwater USA’s “Rapid Response Team” is building a tent city for those who lost their homes near San Diego in the devastating wildfires.
Trucks carrying makeshift quarters for up to 200 people, with tents, cots, toilets, showers, power generators, laundry facilities and a community room with TV, are scheduled to arrive today.
Blackwater officials said they are providing everything free of charge and the city will not have to worry about a thing.
This story will either go unreported by most media outlets or if it is reported, the liberal media will find a way to vilify this act of charity by Blackwater.
Blackwater Immunity Draws Criticism From Democrats
Democrats criticized the Bush administration Tuesday for giving immunity to Blackwater USA bodyguards, calling the move a failure to hold the security contractors responsible for the shooting deaths of 17 Iraqi civilians.
The State Department, whose investigators initially promised to shield the bodyguards’ statements in the criminal inquiry of the Sept. 16 shootings, maintained that any lawbreakers “must be held to account” as a result of the inquiry that has since been taken over by the Justice Department and FBI.
The entire investigation into Blackwater was politically motivated from the beginning and it shows once again what cowards the Democrats are.
Blackwater USA did their job and is continuing to do live up to their contractual obligations with the State Department. They were hired to protect diplomats and others from being killed while traveling through Iraq.
Since the very first day they set foot in Iraq, not a single person Blackwater has been charged with protecting has been killed or injured. That is a 100% success rate, and the Democrats want to put them in jail.
It’s unfortunate that civilians are sometimes killed, but it’s a war zone.
-Chris Jones
Blackwater: Fallujah Deaths Unavoidable
Heavier guns and sturdier trucks would not have saved a team of Blackwater USA guards brutally killed in March 2004 after being lured by corrupt Iraqi forces into a well-planned ambush, the embattled private security contractor contends in a report to Congress.
This conclusion sharply contradicts the findings of a congressional investigation led by House Democrats and a wrongful death lawsuit filed by the families of the four slain guards. Blackwater is cast in both as an incompetent, penny-pinching outfit that sent an undermanned and poorly equipped detail through Fallujah, a known insurgent stronghold 40 miles west of Baghdad.
While calling the deaths “a tragic event,” Blackwater says the incident was unavoidable and the guards—former Navy SEALs and Army Rangers—understood the risks of their mission and could have refused to go.
While Blackwater may not be perfect, they’re still the best Private Military Contractor in the world. Any clear thinking person can see that the vilification of Blackwater is 100% pure Washington politics.
Blackwater was hired to keep Diplomats alive as they go about their business in Iraq. To this day not a single Diplomat has been injured or killed while under the protection of Blackwater. Ironically, many of the Democrats who call Blackwater contractors “cowboys” and “criminals” neglected to mention those feelings while they were being guarded by them.
There’s no doubt that civilians have been killed in Iraq by both Blackwater and the U.S. military. As tragic as that is, Iraq is a war zone and that sometimes happens in war zones. While the safety of Iraqi civilians is important, the safety of our personnel is even more important. I don’t expect a Blackwater contractor to wait until he gets shot, before shooting back.
The media coverage of Blackwater has been grossly inaccurate and completely ridiculous. Smearing Blackwater is just another way for the chicken shit liberals in the media and the Congress to try and damage the Bush administration.
When visiting Iraq in the future, I’m calling on Democrats to stand on their principles and refuse Blackwater protection. To accept protection from a bunch of lawless mercenaries might appear to some as a de facto endorsement of that companies criminal activities.
-Chris Jones
Henry Waxman Accuses Blackwater of Tax Evasion
The Democratic chairman of a House watchdog committee said Monday that Blackwater USA violated tax laws and may have defrauded the government of millions of dollars, a charge the embattled security firm said is groundless.
Henry Waxman released a March letter from the Internal Revenue Service that states the company’s classification of a security guard as an independent contractor, instead of company personnel, was “without merit.”
Waxman has been investigating Blackwater’s business dealings for several weeks, including whether the State Department unfairly awarded Blackwater a noncompetitive contract and if its guards took control of two Iraqi military aircraft without permission.
The primary factor in determining whether a worker is an employee or independent contractor is the degree of control the business has over its worker. Incorrectly classifying a worker could mean steep penalties for the company, including a $25,000 penalty if the IRS determines an appeal is frivolous or groundless.
Ever since Democrats took control of Congress they have been on a vendetta to take down Blackwater, so it’s no surprise that Waxman would level politically motivated charges.
The Geopolitical Foundations of Blackwater
This is the best explanation I have read for why we need Blackwater and how it got that way. This excellent piece comes from the private intelligence firm Stratfor. Everyone should check out there website.
For the past three weeks, Blackwater, a private security firm under contract to the U.S. State Department, has been under intense scrutiny over its operations in Iraq. The Blackwater controversy has highlighted the use of civilians for what appears to be combat or near-combat missions in Iraq. Moreover, it has raised two important questions: Who controls these private forces and to whom are they accountable?
The issue is neither unique to Blackwater nor to matters of combat. There have long been questions about the role of Halliburton and its former subsidiary, KBR, in providing support services to the military. The Iraq war has been fought with fewer active-duty troops than might have been expected, and a larger number of contractors relative to the number of troops. But how was the decision made in the first place to use U.S. nongovernmental personnel in a war zone? More important, how has that decision been implemented?
The United States has a long tradition of using private contractors in times of war. For example, it augmented its naval power in the early 19th century by contracting with privateers — nongovernmental ships — to carry out missions at sea. During the battle for Wake Island in 1941, U.S. contractors building an airstrip there were trapped by the Japanese fleet, and many fought alongside Marines and naval personnel. During the Civil War, civilians who accompanied the Union and Confederate armies carried out many of the supply functions. So, on one level, there is absolutely nothing new here. This has always been how the United States fights war.
Nevertheless, since before the fall of the Soviet Union, a systematic shift has been taking place in the way the U.S. force structure is designed. This shift, which is rooted both in military policy and in the geopolitical perception that future wars will be fought on a number of levels, made private security contractors such as KBR and Blackwater inevitable. The current situation is the result of three unique processes: the introduction of the professional volunteer military, the change in force structure after the Cold War, and finally the rethinking and redefinition of the term “noncombatant” following the decision to include women in the military, but bar them from direct combat roles.
The introduction of the professional volunteer military caused a rethinking of the role of the soldier, sailor, airman or Marine in the armed forces. Volunteers were part of the military because they chose to be. Unlike draftees, they had other options. During World War II and the first half of the Cold War, the military was built around draftees who were going to serve their required hitch and return to civilian life. Although many were not highly trained, they were quite suited for support roles, from KP to policing the grounds. After all, they already were on the payroll, and new hires were always possible.
In a volunteer army, the troops are expected to remain in the military much longer. Their training is more expensive — thus their value is higher. Taking trained specialists who are serving at their own pleasure and forcing them to do menial labor over an extended period of time makes little sense either from a utilization or morale point of view. The concept emerged that the military’s maintenance work should shift to civilians, and that in many cases the work should be outsourced to contractors. This tendency was reinforced during the Reagan administration, which, given its ideology, supported privatization as a way to make the volunteer army work. The result was a growth in the number of contractors taking over many of the duties that had been performed by soldiers during the years of conscription.
The second impetus was the end of the Cold War and a review carried out by then-Secretary of Defense Les Aspin under then-President Bill Clinton. The core argument was that it was irrational to maintain a standing military as large as had existed during the Cold War. Aspin argued for a more intensely technological military, one that would be less dependent on ground troops. The Air Force was key to this, while the Navy was downsized. The main consideration, however, was the structure of the standing Army — especially when large-scale, high-intensity, long-term warfare no longer seemed a likely scenario.
The U.S. Army’s active-duty component, in particular, was reduced. It was assumed that in time of war, components of the Reserves and National Guard would be mobilized, not so much to augment the standing military, but to carry out a range of specialized roles. For example, Civil Affairs, which has proven to be a critical specialization in Iraq and Afghanistan, was made a primary responsibility of the Reserves and National Guard, as were many engineering, military-intelligence and other specializations.
This plan was built around certain geopolitical assumptions. The first was that the United States would not be fighting peer powers. The second was that it had learned from Vietnam not to get involved in open-ended counterinsurgency operations, but to focus, as it did in Kuwait, on missions that were clearly defined and executable with a main force. The last was that wars would be short, use relatively few troops and be carried out in conjunction with allies. From this it followed that regular forces, augmented by Reserve/National Guard specialists called up for short terms, could carry out national strategic requirements.
The third impetus was the struggle to define military combat and noncombat roles. Given the nature of the volunteer force, women were badly needed, yet they were included in the armed forces under the assumption that they could carry out any function apart from direct combat assignments. This caused a forced — and strained — redefinition of these two roles. Intelligence officers called to interrogate a prisoner on the battlefield were thought not to be in a combat position. The same bomb, mortar or rocket fire that killed a soldier might hit them too, but since they technically were not charged with shooting back, they were not combat arms. Ironically, in Iraq, one of the most dangerous tasks is traveling on the roads, though moving supplies is not considered a combat mission.
Under the privatization concept, civilians could be hired to carry out noncombat functions. Under the redefinition of noncombat, the area open to contractors covered a lot of territory. Moreover, under the redefinition of the military in the 1990s, the size and structure of the Army in particular was changed so dramatically that it could not carry out most of its functions without the Reserve/Guard component — and even with that component, the Army was not large enough. Contractors were needed.
Let us now add a fourth push: the CIA. During Vietnam, and again in Afghanistan and Iraq, a good part of the war was prosecuted by CIA personnel not in uniform and not answerable to the military chain of command. There are arguments on both sides for this, but the fact is that U.S. wars — particularly highly politicized wars such as counterinsurgencies — are fought with parallel armies, some reporting to the Defense Department, others to the CIA and other intelligence agencies. The battlefield is, if not flooded, at least full of civilians operating outside of the chain of command, and these civilian government employees are encouraged to hire Iraqi or other nationals, as well as to augment their own capabilities with private U.S. contractors.
Blackwater works for the State Department in a capacity defined as noncombat, protecting diplomats and other high-value personnel from assassination. The Army, bogged down in its own operations, lacks the manpower to perform this obviously valuable work. That means that Blackwater and other contract workers are charged with carrying weapons and moving around the battlefield, which is everywhere. They are heavily armed private soldiers carrying out missions that are combat in all but name — and they are completely outside of the chain of command.
Moreover, in order to be effective, they have to engage in protective intelligence, looking for surveillance by enemy combatants and trying to foresee potential threats. We suspect the CIA could be helpful in this regard, but it would want information in return. In order to perform its job, then, Blackwater entered the economy of intelligence — information as a commodity to be exchanged. It had to gather some intelligence in order to trade some. As a result, the distinction between combat and support completely broke down.
The important point is that the U.S. military went to war with the Army the country gave it. We recall no great objections to the downsizing of the military in the 1990s, and no criticisms of the concepts that lay behind the new force structure. The volunteer force, downsized because long-term conflicts were not going to occur, supported by the Reserve/Guard and backfilled by civilian contractors, was not a controversial issue. Only tiresome cranks made waves, challenging the idea that wars would be sparse and short. They objected to the redefinition of noncombat roles and said the downsized force would be insufficient for the 21st century.
Blackwater, KBR and all the rest are the direct result of the faulty geopolitical assumptions and the force structure decisions that followed. The primary responsibility rests with the American public, which made best-case assumptions in a worst-case world. Even without Iraq, civilian contractors would have proliferated on the battlefield. With Iraq, they became an enormous force. Perhaps the single greatest strategic error of the Bush administration was not fundamentally re-examining the assumptions about the U.S. Army on Sept. 12, 2001. Clearly Donald Rumsfeld was of the view that the Army was the problem, not the solution. He was not going to push for a larger force and, therefore, as the war expanded, for fewer civilian contractors.
The central problem regarding private security contractors on the battlefield is that their place in the chain of command is not defined. They report to the State Department, not to the Army and Marines that own the battlefield. But who do they take orders from and who defines their mission? Do they operate under the Uniform Code of Military Justice or under some other rule? They are warriors — it is foolish to think otherwise — but they do not wear the uniform. The problem with Blackwater stems from having multiple forces fighting for the same side on the same battlefield, with completely different chains of command. Indeed, it is not clear the extent to which the State Department has created a command structure for its contractors, whether it is capable of doing so, or whether the contractors have created their own chain of command.
Blackwater is the logical outcome of a set of erroneous geopolitical conclusions that predate these wars by more than a decade. The United States will be fighting multidivisional, open-ended wars in multiple theaters, and there will be counterinsurgencies. The force created in the 1990s is insufficient, and thus the definition of noncombat specialty has become meaningless. The Reserve/Guard component cannot fill the gap created by strategic errors. The hiring of contractors makes sense and has precedence. But the use of CIA personnel outside the military chain of command creates enough stress. To have private contractors reporting outside the chain of command to government entities not able to command them is the real problem.
A failure that is rooted in the national consensus of the 1990s was compounded by the Bush administration’s failure to reshape the military for the realities of the wars it wished to fight. But the final failure was to follow the logic of the civilian contractors through to its end, but not include them in the unified chain of command. In war, the key question must be this: Who gives orders and who takes them? The battlefield is dangerous enough without that question left hanging.
Written By George Friedman
Blackwater chief defends Iraq guards
The boss of US security contractor Blackwater Tuesday staunchly defended his teams in Iraq, as lawmakers assailed the firm involved in a Baghdad shootout which left at least 10 Iraqis dead. Blackwater founder and chief executive Erik Prince, a previously reclusive ex-Navy SEAL, warned of a “rush to judgement” over the deadly September 16 shooting.
“To the extent there was loss of innocent life, let me be clear that I consider that tragic,” said Prince, in written testimony to a House of Representatives committee.
But he said “that based on everything we currently know, the Blackwater team acted appropriately while operating in a very complex war zone on September 16.”
Prince warned that Blackwater had been the victim of “negative and baseless allegations reported as truth.”
“There has been a rush to judgement based on inaccurate information, and many public reports have wrongly pronounced Blackwater’s guilt for the death of varying numbers of civilians.”
Henry Waxman, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform committee, questioned whether Blackwater, reported to have made a billion dollars in US government contracting, was acting in US interests…CLICK FOR THE FULL STORY
Blackwater USA License Being Revoked in Iraq
The Iraqi government said Monday that it was revoking the license of an American security firm accused of involvement in the deaths of eight civilians in a firefight that followed a car bomb explosion near a State Department motorcade.
The Interior Ministry said it would prosecute any foreign contractors found to have used excessive force in the Sunday shooting. It was the latest accusation against the U.S.-contracted firms that operate with little or no supervision and are widely disliked by Iraqis who resent their speeding motorcades and forceful behavior.
Underscoring the seriousness of the matter, the State Department said Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice planned to call Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to express regret and assure him that the U.S. has launched an investigation into the matter to ensure nothing like it happens again.
Interior Ministry spokesman Abdul-Karim Khalaf said eight civilians were killed and 13 were wounded when contractors believed to be working for Blackwater USA opened fire in a predominantly Sunni neighborhood of western Baghdad.
“We have canceled the license of Blackwater and prevented them from working all over Iraqi territory. We will also refer those involved to Iraqi judicial authorities,” Khalaf said.
The spokesman said witness reports pointed to Blackwater involvement but said the shooting was still under investigation. It was not immediately clear if the measure against Blackwater was intended to be temporary or permanent.
Blackwater, based in Moyock, N.C., provides security for many U.S. civilian operations in the country.
The secretive company, run by a former Navy SEAL, has an estimated 1,000 employees in Iraq and at least $800 million in government contracts. It is one of the most high-profile security firms in Iraq, with its fleet of “Little Bird” helicopters and armed door gunners swarming Baghdad and beyond.
Phone messages left early Monday at the company’s office in North Carolina and with a spokeswoman were not immediately returned.
The U.S. Embassy said a State Department motorcade came under small-arms fire that disabled one of the vehicles, which had to be towed from the scene near Nisoor Square in the Mansour district.
“There was a convoy of State Department personnel and a car bomb went off in proximity to them and there was an exchange of fire as the personnel were returning to the International Zone,” embassy spokesman Johann Schmonsees said, referring to the heavily fortified U.S.-protected area in central Baghdad also known as the Green Zone.
Officials provided no information about Iraqi casualties but said no State Department personnel were wounded or killed.
The embassy also refused to answer any questions on Blackwater’s status or legal issues, saying it was seeking clarification on the issue as part of the investigation.
Al-Maliki late Sunday condemned the shooting by a “foreign security company” and called it a “crime.”
State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said the United States had not been notified of any Iraqi government decision to revoke Blackwater’s license and declined to speculate as to how that might affect State Department activities if it happened.
“The bottom line is that the secretary wants to make sure that we do everything we possibly can to avoid the loss of innocent life,” McCormack told reporters in Washington.
The decision to pull the license was likely to be challenged, as it would be a major blow to a company at the forefront of one of the main turning points in the war.
The 2004 battle of Fallujah — an unsuccessful military assault in which an estimated 27 U.S. Marines were killed, along with an unknown number of civilians — was retaliation for the killing, maiming and burning of four Blackwater guards in that city by a mob of insurgents.
Tens of thousands of foreign private security contractors work in Iraq — some with automatic weapons, body armor, helicopters and bulletproof vehicles — to provide protection for Westerners and dignitaries in Iraq as the country has plummeted toward anarchy and civil war.
Monday’s action against Blackwater was likely to give the unpopular government a boost, given Iraqis’ dislike of the contractors.
Interior Minister Jawad al-Bolani called the shootings “a crime that we cannot be silent about.”
Many of the contractors have been accused of indiscriminately firing at American and Iraqi troops, and of shooting to death an unknown number of Iraqi citizens who got too close to their heavily armed convoys, but none has faced charges or prosecution.
“There have been so many innocent people they’ve killed over there, and they just keep doing it,” said Katy Helvenston, the mother of Steve Helvenston, a Blackwater contractor who died during the 2004 ambush in Fallujah. “They have just a callous disregard for life.”
Helvenston is now part of a lawsuit that accuses Blackwater of cutting corners that ultimately led to the death of her son and three others.
The question of whether they could face prosecution is legally murky. Unlike soldiers, the contractors are not bound by the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Under a special provision secured by American-occupying forces, they are exempt from prosecution by Iraqis for crimes committed there.
Khalaf, however, denied that the exemption applied to private security companies.
Iraqi police said the contractors were in a convoy of six sport utility vehicles and left after the shooting.
“We saw a convoy of SUVs passing in the street nearby. One minute later, we heard the sound of a bomb explosion followed by gunfire that lasted for 20 minutes between gunmen and the convoy people who were foreigners and dressed in civilian clothes. Everybody in the street started to flee immediately,” said Hussein Abdul-Abbas, who owns a mobile phone store in the area.
[AP]
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