{"id":13087,"date":"2007-10-02T14:31:22","date_gmt":"2007-10-02T18:31:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/13087.html"},"modified":"2007-10-02T14:31:22","modified_gmt":"2007-10-02T18:31:22","slug":"house-gop-connects-blackwater-petraeus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/house-gop-connects-blackwater-petraeus\/","title":{"rendered":"House GOP connects Blackwater, Petraeus"},"content":{"rendered":"

Given the serious scandals<\/a> surrounding Blackwater’s activities in Iraq, I thought it was at least possible that congressional Republicans would take their responsibilities seriously enough to challenge the company aggressively. After all, it’s easy to create a distinction between the company’s operations and the Bush administration’s mission — there’s a clear disconnect.<\/p>\n

In fact, the Blackwater controversy offers the GOP a terrific opportunity to take a credibility-building hard line against incompetence, recklessness, mismanagement, a lack of accountability, and misspent funds. Republican lawmakers could have used the hearing today at the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform to make a straightforward conservative case: “We shouldn’t cut and run, but we shouldn’t support possible crimes committed by a private army, either.”<\/p>\n

Alas, some House Republicans are just too far gone to act like lawmakers. Take Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), for example, who decided the Blackwater hearing should be about MoveOn.org and Gen. David Petraeus. Seriously.<\/p>\n

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Issa explained to the committee and the hearing audience that he wasn’t there to defend Blackwater, but rather to “defend Gen. Petraeus and the men and women who do their job.”<\/p>\n

In fact, as far as Issa is concerned there shouldn’t even be a hearing into the alleged crimes committed by Blackwater private contractors, because the hearing itself is “a repeat of the MoveOn ad.”<\/p>\n

And lest anyone think this jaw-dropping stupidity was limited to just one House Republican, Rep. Lynn Westmoreland (R-Ga.) relied on<\/a> the “Betray Us” ad during his allotted time, before telling to Blackwater CEO Erik Prince, “There is a party in Congress that doesn’t like companies that make a profit.”
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\nThere will be plenty more to say about the Blackwater hearings in the coming hours and days, but in the short term, here are a few items to keep in mind:<\/p>\n

* Blackwater’s Prince doesn’t want to talk about<\/a> how much money the company has made from Iraq-related contracts. “I’m not a financially driven guy,” the CEO said.<\/p>\n

* Prince doesn’t know<\/a> if there are any laws governing Blackwater’s activities in Iraq.<\/p>\n

* Issa helped prove that Blackwater is a Republican company<\/a> … shortly before concluding that Blackwater is not a Republican company.<\/p>\n

* Prince isn’t clear<\/a> on whether he received no-bid contracts.<\/p>\n

* The State Department is playing the role of Blackwater’ “enabler<\/a>.”<\/p>\n

Stay tuned.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Given the serious scandals surrounding Blackwater’s activities in Iraq, I thought it was at least possible that congressional Republicans would take their responsibilities seriously enough to challenge the company aggressively. After all, it’s easy to create a distinction between the company’s operations and the Bush administration’s mission — there’s a clear disconnect. In fact, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13087","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13087","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13087"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13087\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13087"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13087"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13087"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}