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The State Dept.’s Murderous Guardians
By Robert Scheer
10/05/07 "TruthDig" -- -- How did it come to be that the
ostensibly best-educated and most refined representatives of the
United States in Iraq are guarded by gun-toting mercenaries who
kill innocent civilians? More urgently, why did State Department
employees and their bosses in Washington tolerate—and pay to
conceal—the wanton murder conducted on their watch?
That’s the real scandal of the more than $832 million the U.S.
State Department paid Blackwater, investigated this week by the
House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, headed by
Henry Waxman (D-Calif.). The issue is not simply that of the
Blackwater forces’ horrid behavior but, more important, why the
mayhem they unleashed upon innocent Iraqis was approved and
covered up by the Bush administration. For example, why did a
top State Department official initially suggest a payment of
$250,000 of American taxpayers’ money to conceal the uncontested
fact that, as the House committee report states, “a drunken
Blackwater contractor killed the guard of Iraqi Vice President
Adil Abd-al-Mahdi”?
The State Department enabled the Blackwater shooter to be
spirited out of the country within 36 hours, and although
Blackwater subsequently fired him, he has never faced any
criminal charges. Nor have any of the others involved in the 195
shooting incidents Blackwater officials admitted have occurred
in the past two years, incidents in which 84 percent of the time
Blackwater contractors fired first. According to Blackwater’s
own documents, the congressional committee reports, “in the vast
majority of incidents ... Blackwater shots are fired from a
moving vehicle and Blackwater does not remain on the scene to
determine if their shots resulted in casualties.” During one
trip U.S. diplomats made to the Ministry of Oil, 18 different
Iraqi civilian vehicles were smashed by the fast-moving
motorcade. Those hit-and-runs were conducted in full view of the
escorted State Department officials without any of them forcing
a subsequent investigation.
Despite all the nonsense about a “liberated Iraq,” one of
President Bush’s favorite phrases, the Iraqis still lack the
authority to prosecute American mercenaries occupying their
country because of a law pushed through by then-U.S. proconsul
Paul Bremer, who was also guarded by Blackwater personnel.
Bremer awarded the original no-bid contract to Blackwater, run
by a major Republican campaign contributor, Erik Prince, who has
donated $225,000 to the GOP. Prince’s sister Betsy DeVos was
Michigan’s Republican Party chair and a Bush-Cheney “Pioneer”
who came through with at least $100,000 for their 2004 campaign.
But this is not yet another story about payoffs to the GOP
faithful who have predominated in the occupation and are totally
untrained for their assigned tasks in the restructuring of a
country that they know nothing about. The Blackwater guards know
their job all too well, which is to guard top U.S. officials by
any means necessary—including the casual extermination of
innocent Iraqis.
Clearly, paid contractors are better for this task than American
military personnel, since contractors operate outside of the
restraints imposed on ordinary troops by law and by their own
consciences. Many Blackwater contractors have been recruited
from the U.S. military at much higher pay than direct service to
their country afforded them. Whereas a top Army sergeant is paid
$51,100 to $69,350 a year in salary, housing and other benefits,
a Blackwater contractor (often a retired sergeant) receives six
to nine times as much. The U.S. government pays Blackwater
$1,222 per day for one Blackwater “Protective Security
Specialist,” which, the congressional report notes, “amounts to
$445,891 per contractor” per year. In an unusual display of
disapproval aimed at Blackwater from the right side of the
aisle, Rep. John J. Duncan Jr., R-Tenn., noted Tuesday that Army
Gen. David H. Petraeus’ annual salary amounts to less than half
of what some high-ranking Blackwater security officials in Iraq
earn.
Of course they’re worth it, along with the Iraqi deaths they
cause, if your own life is on the line and that’s all that
matters. This is clearly the position of the State Department
employees in Iraq and their bosses in Washington who have
covered up for Blackwater for years. As the House committee
majority staff states: “There is no evidence in the documents
that the Committee has reviewed that the State Department sought
to restrain Blackwater’s actions, raised concerns about the
number of shooting incidents involving Blackwater or the
company’s high rate of shooting first, or detained contractors
for investigation.”
No better evidence that the Iraqis are the Indians, attempting
as imperfectly as they may to protect their ancestral terrain.
But this time the imperial majesty of the United States,
represented by American Ambassador Ryan Crocker, is established
not by the U.S. cavalry but by a band of hired gunslingers.
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