BLACKWATER : THE CRUSADE

Justice Dept. Warns of No Charges in Blackwater Killing of Iraqis

The Justice Department is downplaying expectations of criminal prosecutions in last September’s killings of seventeen Iraqi civilians by the private military firm Blackwater Worldwide. The New York Times reports the Justice Department told lawmakers in a private briefing last month that it may not file any charges against Blackwater or the individual guards.

 

Justice Department officials said they face major legal obstacles. Four months after the shooting and nearly five years into the Iraq invasion, it remains unclear whether Blackwater is subjected to any legal jurisdiction for its operations in Iraq.

 

State Department investigators also granted Blackwater guards immunity in return for their testimony in the shooting’s immediate aftermath. In a new report, the group Human Rights First blames the lack of prosecutions on a lack of political will rather than legal uncertainty. The report says: “The U.S. government’s reaction to the shootings has been characterized by confusion, defensiveness, a multiplicity of uncoordinated ad hoc investigations, and interagency finger-pointing.

 

These failures underscored the Justice Department’s unwillingness or inability to systematically investigate and prosecute allegations of serious violent crimes.” Blackwater is being sued in a civil case brought on behalf of some of the victims’ families.

EXTRA INFO CLIP : http://www.nowpublic.com/opinions/blackwater-shadow-war

How To Create Iraqi Orphans. And then how to make life worse for them By Robert Fisk

Western mercenaries killed their 48-year-old Iraqi Armenian mother, Marou Awanis, and her best friend - firing 40 bullets into her body as she drove her taxi near their four-vehicle convoy in Baghdad. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article19177.htm 

 

Dumb and Dumber

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196,000 CONTRACTOR PERSONNEL IN IRAK & AFGHANISTAN

 / The demand comes as the Bush administration has told Congress it's not equipped to oversee the contractors' vital role in the U.S. occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan. Speaking before the Senate Homeland Security Subcommittee, Deputy Undersecretary of Defense Jack Bell said : "We were not adequately prepared to address... this unprecedented scale of our dependence on contractors."

REFERENCES

BLACKWATER : THE SHADOW WAR

BLACKWATER : THE CRUSADE

compilation of horrors

U.S. Cannot Manage Contractors In Wars, Officials Testify on Hill
Problem Is Linked to Lack of Trained Service Personnel

By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, January 25, 2008; A05

With even more U.S. contractors now in Iraq and Afghanistan than U.S. military personnel, government officials told Congress yesterday that the Bush administration is not prepared to manage the contractors' critical involvement in the American war effort.

At the end of last September, there were "over 196,000 contractor personnel working for the Defense Department in Iraq and Afghanistan," said Jack Bell, deputy undersecretary of defense for logistics and materiel readiness.

Contractors "have become part of our total force, a concept that DoD [the Defense Department] must manage on an integrated basis with our military forces," he also said in prepared testimony for a hearing yesterday of the Senate homeland security subcommittee. "Frankly," he continued, "we were not adequately prepared to address" what he termed "this unprecedented scale of our dependence on contractors."

Stuart W. Bowen Jr., special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, and William M. Solis, director of defense capabilities and management for the Government Accountability Office, testified that not enough trained service personnel are available to handle outsourcing to contractors in the wars.

Solis said a military officer with a Stryker brigade deployed in Iraq had told the GAO about a contractor that had mishandled security screenings of Iraqis and foreigners. In the end, Solis said, the officer used his own personnel to accomplish the task, diverting staff from "their primary intelligence gathering responsibilities."

Retired Army Gen. David M. Maddox, who has studied the contracting effort in Iraq as a member of an Army-appointed commission, said in his statement that it "has not fully recognized the impact of a large number of contractors" and "their potential impact to mission success."

Maddox said the Army had five general officer positions for career contracting professionals in 1990 but has none today. The two-star general who runs the Joint Contracting Command for Iraq/Afghanistan, Maddox said, is an Air Force officer.

Maddox added that 3 percent of Army contracting personnel are active-duty and that the acquisition workforce shrunk by 25 percent from 1990 to the end of fiscal 2000. While the contracting workload has increased sevenfold since 2000, he said, about half of the military officers and Army civilians in the contracting field "are certified for their current positions."

Sen. Thomas R. Carper (D-Del.) , the subcommittee's chairman, noted that the Defense Contract Audit Agency has reported that $10 billion of about $57 billion in contracts for services and reconstruction in Iraq "is either questionable or cannot be supported because of a lack of contractor information needed to assess costs." He added that more than 80 separate criminal investigations are underway involving contracts of more than $5 billion.

Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), a subcommittee member who has investigated the contract issue during her trips to Iraq and Kuwait, stressed that "if people are not fired or demoted or if there is not a failure to promote in the military because of massive failure of appropriate oversight and management, things will not change."

But when she asked Bowen and Solis if they knew of anyone who had been fired or denied promotion because of contracting mistakes disclosed in more than 300 reports over five years, they said they knew of none.

LOTS MORE...

BLACKWATER : THE CRUSADE
http://www.2solitudes.com/articles/72/1/BLACKWATER--THE-CRUSADE.html

The sovereign disgust our masters show for humanity is exemplified in this timeless little ditty, vomited by a well know 5 stars vermin...

"Military men are just dumb stupid animals to be used as pawns in foreign policy." - Henry Kissinger

How about giving a little bad press to the absurd cost of the Iraki invasions and putting resources into barbaric, shameful acts like the use of cluster bombs, those packages of brightly colored mini explosives (often made to resemble toys or food packets) that are scattered by the dozens upon contact with the ground where they patiently wait to be picked up by curious civilians (usually children).

Or what about the use of uranium bullets, missiles & bombs that will insure generations of deformed babies and cancer-riddled population ? You've got the biggest war crime since Vietnam and it's 3 millions dead and agent orange victims. Now that's half of the nazi holocaust ! Thank the GOP and our Mindfuck Inc. of a media for keeping the people in the dark for so long.

And don't think the rest of the world doesn't know !

Gonzo nailed it …

We have become a monster in the eyes of the whole world – a nation of bullies and bastards who would rather kill than live peacefully. We are not just whores for power and oil, but killer whores with hate and fear in our hearts. We are human scum, and that is how history will judge us… No redeeming social value. Just whores. Get out of our way, or we’ll kill you. – Hunter S. Thompson

PEACE ANYWAY !