Blackwater — caught on tape?

September 23, 2007

The debate over last weekend’s Blackwater shootings, which killed as many as 20 people in Iraq, has been complicated by the competing version of events. Blackwater insists they were attacked by armed insurgents and returned fire in self-defense. Iraqi witnesses say the private security forces fired without provocation.

Of course, a videotape of what transpired might clear things up.

Iraqi investigators have a videotape that shows Blackwater USA guards opened fire against civilians without provocation in an incident last week in which 11 people died, a senior Iraqi official said Saturday. He said the case had been referred to the Iraqi judiciary. […]

Maj. Gen. Abdul-Karim Khalaf, an Interior Ministry spokesman, said Iraqi authorities had completed an investigation into Thursday’s shooting in Nisoor Square in western Baghdad and concluded that Blackwater guards were responsible for the deaths.

He told The Associated Press that the conclusion was based on witness statements as well as videotape shot by cameras at the nearby headquarters of the national police command. He said eight people were killed at the scene and three of the 15 wounded died in hospitals.

Will the video answer all of the questions and resolve the controversy? It’s unlikely.

As Kevin Drum noted, Iraqi officials believe the video is conclusive enough to file criminal charges against the Blackwater employees involved in the shooting. But it may not matter — even Iraqi officials know Blackwater isn’t going anywhere.

An Iraqi official conceded Sunday that Blackwater USA’s exit would create a “security vacuum” in Baghdad and said the U.S. and Iraq were instead working on revamping regulations governing private security companies after a deadly shooting of civilians. […]

“If we expel this company immediately there will be a security vacuum that will demand pulling some troops off the battlefield,” Tahseen Sheikhly, a civilian spokesman for the seven-month-old offensive against militants in Baghdad and surrounding areas. “This will create a security imbalance in securing Baghdad.”

So we’re left with a situation in which Iraqis feel compelled to grudgingly accept Blackwater’s presence, despite instances in which the company may have killed unarmed civilians without provocation. The alternative, they say, would be less stability.

Got it.

Hey CB- you mean “Caught On Tape”?

  • America’s Waffen SS? Guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity?? Who’d’a thunkit??!

    Someone is surprised this happens when you let Southern white boys off the reservation with pick ’em-up trucks and guns???

  • John Barleycorn – that’s not the first time you’ve thrown that out there. What the hell are you talking about? Are you seriously suggesting a bunch of good ol’ boys and ex-Rangers/SAS/SF types are going to TAKE OVER the MILITARY? Why would they do that? The presence of the military and its implicit support from the U.S. government are what keep Blackwater rolling in cash like they had a license to print it. They have quite a bit of firepower, relatively speaking, and stand apart from other “security contractor” companies in that they have their own helicopter fleet – but they’re no match for the U.S. regular forces. The military also keeps Iraqi groups busy that would otherwise concentrate on wiping out Blackwater, which they could probably do if they put their minds to it. Lastly, Blackwater lives in the Green Zone, cheek by jowl with the military and the government. Quite a few Blackwater employees probably have friends still serving among the regulars. Stop that crazy gumflapping about Blackwater taking over the world. They’re a fairly punchy force for their size, but they wouldn’t last five minutes in Iraq without their big brothers in the U.S. Army and in the U.S. government.

  • come on now.

    We should let cold blooded MURDERERS go free so that we can continue the quagmire in Iraq.

    Seems like a good idea to me???

  • Well if the US won’t do anything about Blackwater, and the Iraqi government can’t do anything about them the only recourse is a civil suit. I hope the srvivors and the family members of those slain will sue Blackwater and Eric Prince in a US civil court. And if that doesn’t work by golly turn over that tape, and all the Iraqi governments written condemnations of Blackwater to US officials over to The Hague and get the mercenary bastards for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

  • I can’t say it any better than Neil Wilson did (#5).

    Bush’s adventure in Iraq makes the Vietnam embarrassment look sensible by comparison.

  • Pull the legitimate US forces out, leave Blackwater USA, Halliburton, DynCorp and any other contractor there and let the Iraqi oil now pay their contracts. “If you break it, you buy it” America didn’t break it, Bush did

  • “If we expel this company immediately there will be a security vacuum that will demand pulling some troops off the battlefield,” Tahseen Sheikhly, a civilian spokesman for the seven-month-old offensive against militants in Baghdad and surrounding areas. “This will create a security imbalance in securing Baghdad.”

    Hey, straight out of the Bush White House’s playbook:

    Fuck up Iraq so bad that it would collapse without US troops there, thereby justifying our presence.

  • I am reading Jeremy Scahill’s Blackwater: “The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army”. I highly recommend it even though I’ve just begun it. The few chapters I’ve read has put this entire incident as well as the entire war into a whole new perspective for me. It’s causing me to rethink my beliefs and opinions regarding our post-cold-war defense policies. I’m beginning to be think that the “peace dividend” refers to Halliburton and Blackwater profits and not to real reduced military spending as we believed in the ’90s.

  • If a guy named Sadr were controlling Blackwater, we’d be considering this militia force as yet another destabilizing influence to “surge” against. But since these guys are on our payroll, their absence becomes not a source of peace and fewer dead bodies but a “security vacuum.” Given the reporting I’ve read, Blackwater seems to be a considerable source of pushback against our efforts over there. Maybe we’d be doing better if we got these knuckleheads out of theater.

  • When everyone who knows the war game, except for Field Marshall Von Rumsfeld, says that the troop levels in the Iraq atrocity are far too low to be effective, and when you have the Cheneys etal, of the world trying to privatize warfare for personal gain, the result is Blackwater: a band of mercenary thugs and killers with no rules of engagement and no accountability. Rambos on the rampage. Soldiers of fortune besotted with Hollywood violence, an excess of testosterone, dubious mental stability, not to mention intelligence, and endless opportunities to take out a few more geeks, gooks, towelheads or innocent children.

    Pulling Blackwater out would create a security vacuum? My, my. We are really in control over there aren’t we. All those troublemakers in the green zone who need protection might actually have to leave, and the Iraqis might just have a chance to create an independent country controlling their own oil for a change. We wouldn’t want that now would we. That would be un-American.

  • If anything proves that Iraq’s government is nothing more than a puppet with Bush’s, um, hand up it’s ass, this is it.

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