Back in Blackwater, pt II

Today, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform will hold a hearing regarding the Blackwater incidents that have raised so many concerns about the private security contractor’s practices in Iraq. Starting at 10am, witnesses will include:

Erik Prince, Chairman of the Prince Group, LLC and Blackwater USA
Ambassador David Satterfield, Special Adviser, Coordinator for Iraq, State Dept
Ambassador Richard Griffin, Assistant Secretary, Diplomatic Security, State Dept
William Moser, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Logistics, State Dept

Yesterday, a memo to the Committee revealed the product of recent inquiry into the State Department and Blackwater’s operations. The summary of findings includes details of continuous and deadly disregard for human life, sometimes planned in advance of the event itself. Stories of vehicular manslaughter include details of an innocent bystander shot and subsequently run over by a Blackwater security escort; another lists 18 different collisions with Iraqi vehicles while en route to and from a meeting at the Ministry of Oil. The reason for so many collisions? “The tactical commander of the mission ‘openly admitted giving clear direction to the primary driver to conduct these acts of random negligence for no apparent reason.’” The report also demonstrates that over 80% of Blackwater’s engagements involve first-fire by Blackwater contractors, contributing not a little to the company’s reputation for “cowboy” behavior.

In cases where the contractors do not simply leave the scene of the incident (many times, shots are fired from a moving Blackwater vehicle) or do not attempt to cover up the incident, the princely sums of $5000 to $15000 are offered to families as compensation in an attempt to move on quickly and quietly. Those sums are not simply negotiated by Blackwater, either; they are negotiated and by State Department officials involved in the diplomatic fallout of such events. Thus the U.S. government is directly implicated in the series of incidents and almost complete lack of consequences for this company, going so far as to transport a Blackwater agent accused of drunkenly killing a security guard for the Iraqi vice president, getting him out of the country and out of the hands of Iraqi courts. With no court martial as an option for these agents, who are privately contracted (often in multi-million, no-bid contracts that reek of insider advantage and gross mismanagement of taxpayers’ funds), one cannot tell what the fallout may be for those who have killed, maimed, and irreversibly damaged so many Iraqis. Maybe, perhaps, they’ll lose their jobs.

For the full text of the report, click here.