What is a single life worth? In this nation great import is placed on the price of life, even though we are guilty of conveniently overlooking those that suffer mere feet from our doors. But what of our perception of the price of life in a war zone?

Ask yourself a question. Were you to arrive home to discover that your brother, sister, mother, father, or close friend had been killed by a drunk driver, what would your reaction be? Being that they were a part of your life, it would, quite obviously, be one of considerable dismay. Given the context, you would no doubt ask yourself why the person responsible got behind the wheel of that car intoxicated. Further, you would be overcome with anger and want to see them pay for their crime, and for robbing you of someone so dear.

Even as bystanders, we can place such an occurrence in context because we understand its nature. We’re all too aware of what happens when someone chooses to drink and drive, just as we all know that drunk driving causes a significant number of deaths across this country each year.

Now ask yourself another question. What if you arrived home to find out that your father, mother, and little sister had been gunned down in their car? Even more, that they were shot in cold blood by members of a foreign security company that possesses legal immunity?

Apply that to the example of the afore mentioned drunk driver. What if we lived in a nation in which those who were guilty of drinking and driving, and that caused the deaths of innocents, possessed legally immunity? Further, that they were handed a bottle of liquor and the keys to a new car the next day?

What would your reaction be then? Outrage? Utter astonishment?

There is no arguing that Iraq is replete with dangers and that in war zones tragic things occur. But what are we to make of murder at the hands of those that have unlimited access to both alcohol and automobiles, if you catch my drift?

Today, Geoff Morrell, a Pentagon spokesman, said that Secretary of Defense Robert Gates is…

“…looking for ways to make sure we… do a better job on that front.”

And what ‘front’ is Morrell referring to? Well, the oversight of private security companies in the employ of the United States in Iraq. The very same that the Iraqi government has been complaining about for some time…

“Senior Iraqi officials repeatedly complained to U.S. officials about Blackwater USA’s alleged involvement in the deaths of numerous Iraqis, but the Americans took little action to regulate the private security firm until 11 Iraqis were shot dead last Sunday, according to U.S. and Iraqi officials.

Before that episode, U.S. officials were made aware in high-level meetings and formal memorandums of Blackwater’s alleged transgressions. They included six violent incidents this year allegedly involving the North Carolina firm that left a total of 10 Iraqis dead, the officials said.

“There were no concrete results,” Lt. Gen. Hussein Kamal, the deputy interior minister who oversees the private security industry on behalf of the Iraqi government, said in an interview Saturday.

The lack of a U.S. response underscores the powerlessness of Iraqi officials to control the tens of thousands of security contractors who operate under U.S.-drafted Iraqi regulations that shield them from Iraqi laws. It also raises questions about how seriously the United States will seek to regulate Blackwater, now the subject of at least three investigations by Iraqi and U.S. authorities. Blackwater, which operates under State Department authority, protects nearly all senior U.S. politicians and civilian officials here.

U.S. Embassy officials did not respond to several requests to describe what action, if any, was taken in response to the six incidents involving Blackwater. Mirembe Nantongo, a U.S. Embassy spokeswoman, said the embassy always looks into anything “outside of normal operation procedures.”

Like most drunk drivers at the scene of their crime, if they’ve survived that is, Blackwater is still claiming that they were not in the wrong. And while the Iraqi government attempted to have them expelled, the State Department worked like an ambulance chasing lawyer to ensure that they wouldn’t be. And thus far, that is exactly what’s happened, they haven’t been. In fact, despite a federal investigation in the US as to whether Blackwater has been illegally trafficking arms in Iraq, no charges have been laid against any of the individuals involved in the Nisoor Square incident.

Of course, there is a joint Iraqi-American investigation underway, and who knows, it may yet bear fruit, but that doesn’t alter the fact that someone got behind the wheel drunk and took lives, now does it? Even worse, that the problem existed before hand and nothing was done about it.

Beneath all of this technical waste of words there is someone in Baghdad that is without a loved one, that has lost, that is filled with rage and sadness and confusion. On top of all that that person has had to deal with given Iraq’s reality, to be faced with such madness within a madness makes one wonder how it can be borne?

In life we all lose. Thus, in loss must come the realization that the sufferings of others provides a universal connectivity that compels us to better cherish the sanctity of life. And that no matter the circumstances, we are, all of us, bound by the thinnest of threads to this earth. And so must do what we can to ensure that those around us remained tethered.

Today the Iraqi government has, not surprisingly, softened their position on Blackwater Security, claiming that it won’t take immediate steps to expel the firm from the country following an incident last week which resulted in the deaths of 11 civilians. Despite the fact that Iraqi investigators have video evidence that Blackwater personnel fired first, the government has no doubt been pressured by the State Department to ease its condemnation, most probably to help ensure the safety of independent security contractors, fearing that attacks on them might increase – which is rather ironic given the conduct of Blackwater with regards to their unapologetic use of excessive force.

But, as I said yesterday, little will become of it. The Iraqis will probably attempt to have legislation altered with regards to the immunity of foreign contractors, they’ll fail, and it will all be forgotten. Because that is the reality of a nation that is militarily occupied, no matter how the joys of democracy are spun an ocean away.

Just for fun, here some light reading from The Independent’s Daniel Howden and Leonard Doyle…

“Making a killing: how private armies became a $120bn global industry

In Nigeria, corporate commandos exchange fire with local rebels attacking an oil platform. In Afghanistan, private bodyguards help to foil yet another assassination attempt on President Hamid Karzai. In Colombia, a contracted pilot comes under fire from guerrillas while spraying coca fields with pesticides. On the border between Iraq and Iran, privately owned Apache helicopters deliver US special forces to a covert operation.

This is a snapshot of a working day in the burgeoning world of private military companies, arguably the fastest-growing industry in the global economy. The sector is now worth up to $120bn annually with operations in at least 50 countries, according to Peter Singer, a security analyst with the Brookings Institution in Washington.

“The rate of growth in the security industry has been phenomenal,” says Deborah Avant, a professor of political science at UCLA. The single largest spur to this boom is the conflict in Iraq.

The workings of this industry have come under intense scrutiny this week in the angry aftermath of the killing of Iraqi civilians by the US-owned Blackwater corporation in Baghdad. The Iraqi government has demanded the North Carolina-based company is withdrawn. But with Blackwater responsible for the protection of hundreds of senior US and Iraqi officials, from the US ambassador to visiting congressional delegations, there is certainty in diplomatic and military circles that this will not happen.

The origins of these shadow armies trace back to the early 1990s and the end of the Cold War, Bob Ayers, a security expert with Chatham House in London, explains: “In the good old days of the Cold War there were two superpowers who kept a lid on everything in their respective parts of the world.”

He likens the collapse of the Soviet Union to “taking the lid off a pressure cooker”. What we have seen since, he says, is the rise of international dissident groups, ultranationalists and multiple threats to global security.

The new era also saw a significant reduction in the size of the standing armies, at the same time as a rise in global insecurity which increased both the availability of military expertise and the demand for it. It was a business opportunity that could not be ignored.

Now the mercenary trade comes with its own business jargon. Guns for hire come under the umbrella term of privatised military firms, with their own acronym PMFs. The industry itself has done everything it can to shed the “mercenary” tag and most companies avoid the term “military” in preference for “security”. “The term mercenary is not accurate,” says Mr Ayers, who argues that military personnel in defensive roles should be distinguished from soldiers of fortune.

There is nothing new about soldiers for hire, the private companies simply represent the trade in a new form. “Organised as business entities and structured along corporate lines, they mark the corporate evolution of the mercenary trade,” according to Mr Singer, who was among the first to plot the worldwide explosion in the use of private military firms.

In many ways it mirrors broader trends in the world economy as countries switch from manufacturing to services and outsource functions once thought to be the preserve of the state. Iraq has become a testing ground for this burgeoning industry, creating staggering financial opportunities and equally immense ethical dilemmas.

None of the estimated 48,000 private military operatives in Iraq has been convicted of a crime and no one knows how many Iraqis have been killed by private military forces, because the US does not keep records.

According to some estimates, more than 800 private military employees have been killed in the war so far, and as many as 3,300 wounded.

These numbers are greater than the losses suffered by any single US army division and larger than the casualties suffered by the rest of the coalition put together.

A high-ranking US military commander in Iraq said: “These guys run loose in this country and do stupid stuff. There’s no authority over them, so you can’t come down on them hard when they escalate force. They shoot people.”

In Abu Ghraib, all of the translators and up to half of the interrogators were reportedly private contractors.

Private soldiers are involved in all stages of war, from training and war-gaming before the invasion to delivering supplies. Camp Doha in Kuwait, the launch-pad for the invasion, was built by private contractors.

It is not just the military that has turned to the private sector, humanitarian agencies are dependent on PMFs in almost every war zone from Bosnia to the Democratic Republic of Congo. Which raises the next market the industry would like to see opened: peacekeeping. And the lobbying has already begun.”

I don’t mean to beat this issue into the ground, but I think this article by the Independent’s Kim Sengupta is of import. (It is linked above and quoted in its entirety below).

“The real story of Baghdad’s Bloody Sunday

Six days ago, at least 28 civilians died in a shooting incident involving the US security company Blackwater. But what actually happened? Kim Sengupta reports from the scene of the massacre

The eruption of gunfire was sudden and ferocious, round after round mowing down terrified men women and children, slamming into cars as they collided and overturned with drivers frantically trying to escape. Some vehicles were set alight by exploding petrol tanks. A mother and her infant child died in one of them, trapped in the flames.

The shooting on Sunday, by the guards of the American private security company Blackwater, has sparked one of the most bitter and public disputes between the Iraqi government and its American patrons, and brings into sharp focus the often violent conduct of the Western private armies operating in Iraq since the 2003 invasion, immune from scrutiny or prosecution.

Blackwater’s security men are accused of going on an unprovoked killing spree. Hassan Jabar Salman, a lawyer, was shot four times in the back, his car riddled with eight more bullets, as he attempted to get away from their convoy. Yesterday, sitting swathed in bandages at Baghdad’s Yarmukh Hospital, he recalled scenes of horror. “I saw women and children jump out of their cars and start to crawl on the road to escape being shot,” said Mr Salman. “But still the firing kept coming and many of them were killed. I saw a boy of about 10 leaping in fear from a minibus, he was shot in the head. His mother was crying out for him, she jumped out after him, and she was killed. People were afraid.”

At the end of the prolonged hail of bullets Nisoor Square was a scene of carnage with bodies strewn around smouldering wreckage. Ambulances trying to pick up the wounded found their path blocked by crowds fleeing the gunfire.

Yesterday, the death toll from the incident, according to Iraqi authorities, stood at 28. And it could rise higher, say doctors, as some of the injured, hit by high-velocity bullets at close quarter, are unlikely to survive.

With public anger among Iraqis showing no sign of abating, the US administration has suspended all land movement by officials outside the heavily fortified Green Zone.

The Iraqi government has revoked Blackwater’s licence to operate but it still remains employed by the US government. The Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, has, however, promised a “transparent” inquiry into what happened.

Blackwater and the US State Department maintain that the guards opened fire in self-defence as they reacted to a bomb blast and then sniper fire. Amid continuing accusations and recriminations, The Independent has tried to piece together events on that day.

The reports we got from members of the public, Iraqi security personnel and government officials, as well as our own research, leads to a markedly different scenario than the American version. There was a bomb blast. But it was too far away to pose any danger to the Blackwater guards, and their State Department charges. We have found no Iraqi present at the scene who saw or heard sniper fire.

Witnesses say the first victims of the shootings were a couple with their child, the mother and infant meeting horrific deaths, their bodies fused together by heat after their car caught fire. The contractors, according to this account, also shot Iraqi soldiers and police and Blackwater then called in an attack helicopter from its private air force which inflicted further casualties.

Blackwater disputes most of this. In a statement the company declared that those killed were “armed insurgents and our personnel acted lawfully and appropriately in a war zone protecting American lives”.

The day after the killings, Mirenbe Nantongo, a spokeswoman for the US embassy, said the Blackwater team had ” reacted to a car bombing”. The embassy’s information officer, Johann Schmonsees, stressed ” the car bomb was in proximity to the place where State Department personnel were meeting, and that was the reason why Blackwater responded to the incident” .

Those on the receiving end tell another story. Mr Salman said he had turned into Nisoor Square behind the Blackwater convoy when the shooting began. He recalled: “There were eight foreigners in four utility vehicles, I heard an explosion in the distance and then the foreigners started shouting and signalling for us to go back. I turned the car around and must have driven about a hundred feet when they started shooting. My car was hit with 12 bullets it turned over. Four bullets hit me in the back and another in the arm. Why they opened fire? I do not know. No one, I repeat no one, had fired at them. The foreigners had asked us to go back and I was going back in my car, so there was no reason for them to shoot.”

Muhammed Hussein, whose brother was killed in the shooting, said: “My brother was driving and we saw a black convoy ahead of us. Then I saw my brother suddenly slump in the car. I dragged him out of the car and saw he had been shot in the chest. I tried to hide us both from the firing, but then I realised he was already dead.”

Jawad Karim Ali was on his way to pick up his aunt from Yarmukh Hospital when shooting started and the windscreen exploded cutting his face. ” Then I was hit on my left shoulder by bullets, two of them another one went past my face. Now my aunt is out of hospital and I am sitting here. There was a big bang further away but no shots before the security people fired, and they just kept firing.”

Baghdad’s “Bloody Sunday” has become a test of sovereignty between the powers of the Iraqi government and the US. The Iraqi Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, said: “We will not tolerate the killing of our citizens in cold blood.” The shooting was, he said, the seventh of its kind involving Blackwater.

The company, which has its headquarters in North Carolina, is one of the largest beneficiaries of the lucrative occupation dividend, holding the contract to provide security for top-level American officials.

Its reputation in Iraq is particularly controversial. It was the lynching of four of the company’s employees in 2004 which led to the bloody confrontation in Fallujah. The men’s bodies were set on fire, dragged through the streets and then hung from a bridge. Blackwater personnel are recognisable from their “uniform” of wraparound sunglasses and body armour over dark coloured sweatshirts and helmets. Employees are thought to earn about $600 (£300) per day.

Sunday’s shooting happened at Mansour, once one of the most fashionable districts of Baghdad, with roads flanked by shops selling expensive goods, restaurants and art galleries. In the height of the sectarian bloodletting between Shias and Sunnis earlier this year dead bodies would be regularly strewn in the streets. A semblance of safety has returned since, and Mansour was held up as an example of how the US military “surge” was cutting the violence.

We were in Mansour on Sunday when we heard the sound of a deafening explosion just after midday. Black plumes of smoke rose from a half-blasted National Guard (army) post near a mosque. Five or six minutes afterwards there was the sound of prolonged shooting towards the south.

Police Captain Ali Ibrahim, who was on duty near Nisoor Square, said: ” We heard the bomb go off, it was very loud, but it wasn’t at the square. The police were, in fact, trying to clear the way for the contractors when they became agitated, they opened fire. No one was shooting at them.”

Asked about the witness accounts, Ali al-Dabbagh, an Iraqi government spokesman, confirmed: “The traffic policemen were trying to open the road for them. It was a crowded square and one small car did not stop, it was moving very slowly. They started shooting randomly, there was a couple and their child inside the car and they were hit.”

Four days after the incident that caused the Iraqi government to demand their suspension, and one that caused the deaths of innocent civilians, Blackwater has resumed ‘limited, pre-approved’ missions.

The Iraqi government’s reaction to the incident has been damning, claiming that Blackwater security personnel were not provoked and employed reckless and excessive force. Blackwater has claimed that they were attacked by insurgents and were simply defending themselves and their client, while American authorities have taken a ‘wait and see’ approach based on their own investigation into the incident.

Also of interest are claims being leveled today that the Iraqi government is rife with corruption and that the conclusions of the Interior Ministry are baseless being that it is an entity that has been infiltrated by militias and criminal elements.

While I’ll certainly not disagree that corruption is rampant in Iraq - take the Kuwaiti firm hired to build the the US Embassy, for example - at what point does that completely nullify the power of the Iraqi government? And if that point has been reached, what then is the purpose of the government at all?

As I asserted recently, I firmly believe that Blackwater will walk away from this unscathed. Further, that this incident will simply be another in a long line of injustices that will never be truly addressed. It will, as others have, be forgotten soon enough, and those innocents that perished will become statistics – and even then, argued over.

From today’s New York Times…

“A preliminary Iraqi report on a shooting involving an American diplomatic motorcade said Tuesday that Blackwater security guards were not ambushed, as the company reported, but instead fired at a car when it did not heed a policeman’s call to stop, killing a couple and their infant.

The report, by the Ministry of Interior, was presented to the Iraqi cabinet and, though unverified, seemed to contradict an account offered by Blackwater USA that the guards were responding to gunfire by militants. The report said Blackwater helicopters had also fired. The Ministry of Defense said 20 Iraqis had been killed, a far higher number than had been reported before.

In a sign of the seriousness of the standoff, the American Embassy here suspended diplomatic missions outside the Green Zone and throughout Iraq on Tuesday.

“There was not shooting against the convoy,” said Ali al-Dabbagh, the Iraqi government’s spokesman. “There was no fire from anyone in the square.”

A State Department spokesman, Edgar Vasquez, said he had not heard of the report and repeated that the department was conducting an investigation supported by the American military. A spokeswoman for Blackwater did not respond to an e-mail request for comment.”

[…]

“American Embassy officials had said Monday that the Blackwater guards had been responding to a car bomb, but Mr. Dabbagh said the bomb was so far away that it could not possibly have been a reason for the convoy to begin shooting.

Instead, he said, the convoy had initiated the shooting when a car did not heed a police officer and moved into an intersection.

“The traffic policeman was trying to open the road for them,” he said. “It was a crowded square. But one small car did not stop. It was moving very slowly. They shot against the couple and their child. They started shooting randomly.”

In video shot shortly after the episode, the child appeared to have burned to the mother’s body after the car caught fire, according to an official who saw it.

In interviews on Tuesday, six Iraqis who had been in the area at the time of the shooting, including a man who was wounded and an Iraqi Army soldier who helped rescue people, offered roughly similar versions.

The Iraqi soldier, who said he was standing at a checkpoint on the edge of the square, said he thought the convoy believed the small car was a suicide bomber and opened fire. According to the wounded man, recuperating in Yarmouk Hospital, the car with the family was driving on the wrong side of the road.

The convoy began throwing nonlethal sound bombs, several witnesses said, to keep people in the area away. That drew fire from Iraqi Army soldiers manning watchtowers that are part of an Iraqi Army base on the square. Iraqi police officers, witnesses said, also appeared to be shooting.

The Iraqi soldier, who did not give his name but said he was from a company of Iraqi commandos, said he saw another soldier trying to motion to the convoy to move on, but he was shot as well.

Sean McCormack, the spokesman for the State Department, said in a briefing that contractors “are subject to Department of State rules of engagement.”

“These are defensive in nature,” he said. When contractors and employees are attacked, he added, they “will respond with graduated use of force, proportionate to the kind of fire and attack that they’re coming under.”

The Iraqis’ accounts have not been verified, but the anger in their telling served to reinforce the feeling among Iraqis here that private security companies care little for Iraqi lives. In a war where perceptions are paramount, the effect is poisonous.

“They are more powerful than the government,” the Iraqi soldier said. “No one can try them. Where is the government in this?”

For Safaa Rabee, an engineer in Newcastle, England, whose 75-year-old father was shot dead while driving home from grocery shopping on Aug. 13 in Hilla in southern Iraq, the immunity was particularly galling. Mr. Rabee said his father had pulled over and waited as a convoy of sport utility vehicles zoomed past, lights and sirens flashing, a familiar routine for Iraqis, but when he pulled back out, guards in the last car of the convoy opened fire.

Mr. Rabee and his brother discussed it with the Hilla police chief, who said the convoy was an American diplomatic one from Najaf, another southern city, and also with a sympathetic American colonel, who offered small financial compensation.

The police chief said the security guards in the convoy were Blackwater, Mr. Rabee said, though he does not know for sure if that was the case.

“I said to him that I’ll follow the killer anywhere in the world, even in American law,” Mr. Rabee said by telephone from England. “He said: ‘I understand you are angry but you can’t do anything. They’re under our protection.’ I said, ‘Do you think that’s fair?’ ” For the family, Mr. Rabee said, the killing felt no different from that of Mr. Rabee’s brother, the owner of a fish farm, who was executed by militants just south of Baghdad in 2005. The family pursued the case against his father’s killers in court, but the case was closed.

In the clubby atmosphere of private security firms in Iraq, senior members of rival companies are often reluctant to criticize Blackwater.

But among the rank and file of security contractors, Blackwater guards are regularly ridiculed as cowboys who are relentlessly and pointlessly aggressive, carry excessive weaponry and do not appear to have top-of-the-line training.

Passing Blackwater convoys sometimes intimidates even Westerners, who fear coming under attack if they make a wrong move.”

Read that. Read it 100 times. And then read it another 100 times.

If this information is at all correct, Blackwater, not to mention the State Department, has the blood of child on their hands – and that of other civilians. If this account is at all accurate, the Iraqi Army, the same one being trained by the United States military, opened fire on them in response - in their own country.

I truly believe that many people are completely unaware of the massively dangerous precedent that has been set in Iraq with regards to the employ of private military contracting firms and their ability to act without impunity. I believe that many people do not really understand the jurisdictional complexities as they pertain to such firms. Therefore, let me make it crystal clear:

No private security company can be held accountable for their actions by the government of Iraq or any of its authoritative bodies. They are not subject to the laws of Iraq whatsoever. They fall under the jurisdiction of the Department of Justice and the FBI – who do not represent any Iraqi authoritative body. This reality is, in effect, a license to shoot first and ask questions later when it comes to the safety of those that security companies, such as Blackwater, are being paid to protect. Their primary consideration is protecting their contractual status, not the well being of anyone, or anything, else.

Now begins the discussion – do we dare believe what the Iraqis are saying with regards to what occurred? Or do we adhere to the version of events presented by Blackwater and, to some extent, the ambiguities being currently employed by the United States government? Do we deem the Interior Ministry to be so corrupted that it’s not to be trusted? Do we view their version of events as an attempt at anti-American propaganda? And if we do that, how should we view the eye witness accounts of those that were there whose stories contradict that of Blackater?

It would seem, from this account, that ‘terrorists’ weren’t involved. Thus, for those of you out there that sent me emails calling me a ‘terrorist sympathizer’ with regards to my entries concerning this incident, I would expect a retraction and not cowardly silence.

And as for the terror plot uncovered in Germany some time ago, the one I have been repeatedly attacked for not mentioning, the German authorities are still working on building a case against the suspects, but at the moment lack ‘sufficient evidence’ in some cases. It is also worth mentioning that the US Director of National Intelligence, Mike McConnell, lied about the role that FISA wiretaps played in the uncovering of the plot.

“Mr. McConnell made his remarks to the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. When asked by the chairman, Joseph I. Lieberman, independent of Connecticut, whether the new law that Congress adopted last month facilitated the German arrests, Mr. McConnell said, “Yes, sir, it did.” - RawStory September 11th, 2007

In truth, McConnell’s statement had absolutely no basis whatsoever, and was merely an attempt to promote the extension of the FISA law that expires next year.

And let me state, for the record, as it pertains to the derailment of any terror plot - I am 150% for it. To accuse me of anything else is utterly offensive.

It has been learned that Blackwater security contractors that came under fire yesterday were protecting a US State Department official. According to US and Iraqi sources, their convoy was hit first by an IED and then small arms fire, after which a gun battle ensued with some 8 to 10 individuals, some in Iraqi police uniforms. It is obvious that Blackwater contractors acted in self defense, their roll being to protect their principle, and given the circumstances, one can’t begrudge them that. What I do have a very serious problem with is the murder of Iraqi civilians in that gun battle, and the wounding of others. That fact points to something very serious, the wanton use of force without regard for civilians trapped amidst such an incident.

Now that might seem ridiculous to some of you – to suggest that in such a situation they should have known better than to fire on individuals that they could not determine the intent of. But were that precedent to stand, then it would justify the killing of civilians in any such action, which simply cannot be tolerated.

Obviously the circumstances in Iraq, especially in populated areas, is confused. But this incident speaks to the unchecked force that private security companies have the ability to employ. Being that companies, such as Blackwater, cannot be held accountable for their actions by Iraqi authorities, nor Iraqi law, the use of excessive force in such situations becomes a very real option. In this instance, not only were innocent people killed and wounded, but the incident itself has caused significant outrage.

The severity of the situation can be measured by the fact that it was soon after the cause of a direct conversation between US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Iraqi Prime Minister al-Maliki, whose government has now somewhat relented and only placed a temporary ban on Blackwater rather than their full expulsion – something that should come as no surprise to anyone. To be honest, being that they are the largest security firm in the country and responsible for guarding US personnel, it wouldn’t come as a shock to discover that they were back to work within a week.

There has, of course, been pledges made that a full scale investigation will take place. While the number of civilians killed has been placed at 8, the Iraqi Defense Ministry initially put the total of those killed at 20 with the Interior Ministry putting the total at 11. So at this point it remains confused.

A Blackwater spokesman said in a statement regarding the incident…

“Blackwater regrets any loss of life but this convoy was violently attacked by armed insurgents, not civilians, and our people did their job to defend human life.” - Blackwater’s spokeswoman, Anne E. Tyrrell

In defending human life, employees of Blackwater took the lives of innocent people, yet claimed to have done so because they were defending “human life”. Funny how we perceive the worth of certain lives, isn’t it. Also of import is the extent to which this statement goes to downplay the deaths of civilians – slyly placing the onus on “armed insurgents” and completely downplaying the fact that innocent people were, in fact, killed.

The most damning of all of the claims made thus far about the incident is that, according to Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh, helicopters opened fire on the crowd. Blackwater has claimed that no aircraft were used in the operation, though they are the only private contractor in Iraq with their own helicopters which are primarily used to provide aerial coverage of transport routes.

I believe that Blackwater will walk away from this unscathed. They are far too important with regards to supplying security for various US personnel and locations for the US government to simply allow the Iraqis to ban them, especially given the fact that when the surge comes to a end, if ever, they will be relied upon more heavily.

After the murder of eight Iraqi civilians, I’ll not call them deaths when perpetrated at the hands of a private security firm that basically has the ability to treat the streets of Iraq as if it were the wild west and can do so without impunity, the Iraqi Interior Ministry is reportedly revoking the license of Blackwater USA, the largest security contractor in Iraq who have received some $800 million dollars in contracts thus far from the US government – despite the fact that US officials are claiming that they have received no official word that it’s being done.

Various reports about the decision, which prompted Condoleezza Rice to call Prime Minister Maliki about the incident (in which 14 others were also wounded), are claiming that Blackwater, and perhaps even the US government, will challenge the decision.

The incident began when a convoy of SUV’s, typically used by private contractors, came under fire near Nusoor Square in Baghdad. The inhabitants of the SUV’s returned fire and, according to witnesses, a twenty minute gun battle ensued. The US military eventually arrived and stabilized the situation.

For those of you that haven’t delved into the reality of what private security firms can get away with in Iraq, let’s just say that it’s best represented by the words – just about anything. In the case of engaging gunmen, for example, we’re not talking about US military personnel who are typically held accountable for acting in a murderous fashion in such situations. We’re talking about gung-ho mercenaries who shoot first and ask questions later – and if you happen to get in the way then too bad. In the case of Blackwater, they even have their own helicopters, from which they have the ability to target people from above. They are, in a sense, their own military force.

The kicker, of course, is that they possess legal immunity. The Iraqis have absolutely no legal recourse in their own country, as contractors can only be investigated and prosecuted by the Justice Department and the FBI – two foreign bodies in a nation on the other side of the world. Welcome to the most outsourced war in US history.

As is always the case, Blackwater couldn’t be reached for comment.

Last night, after months of searching and then finally having to special order it, I finally got a copy of Ghosts Of Abu Ghraib. Before commenting, let me first say that this documentary should be shown in every classroom in the United States. I believe it to be that important.

The fact that it was so hard to come by says something. Having gone to numerous ‘mega-stores’ that are home to thousands of DVD titles, both in Canada and the US, I was never able to find it after its release on DVD. It aired on HBO on the 22nd of February of this year, but being that I don’t have a television, I was unable to watch it.

Directed by Rory Kennedy, the daughter of late Senator Robert Kennedy, the documentary examines what occurred at the prison and the fact that while 11 low ranking MP’s and MI Corpsmen were made scapegoats for the abuses that took place there, neither military interrogators, private contractors operating at the prison, nor The Department of Defense were ever singled out for their roles in the abuses.

The premise is very simple, and one that, when confronted by it, will make sense to those who languish under the belief that what occurred was the work of a few ‘troubled’ individuals. That following General Geoffrey D. Miller’s visit to the prison at the behest of the Department of Defense in August of 2003, and his suggestion that ‘Gitmo-iszing’ the approach taken by interrogators there would result in the production of better intelligence, the methods employed were significantly altered.

At the time, approximately 300 US soldiers, most of them with absolutely no experience in detention, were in charge of some 6,000 prisoners. The prison itself operated in two capacities. Many considered to be of low priority were housed outside the prison proper in a makeshift camp surrounded by wire. Those that were considered actionable were held in two tiers of the prison, one for men, the other for women and children.

Women and children were held at the prison as bargaining chips, used by interrogators as a way to threaten those being questioned or entice those that had not been captured to surface. In some cases, male children as young as 9 years old were held in the facility entirely naked.

In the male tier of the prison, nudity became the norm. Prisoners were often held in stress positions for hours on end with women’s underwear placed over their heads, some chained to the metal frames of bed racks, some to the bars of cell doors, others to the bars of cell windows. One of the most important aspects of the documentary is that those MP’s that were assigned to these two tiers were placed under the command of military intelligence, and, as previously stated, had no experience, nor training, regarding detention. Ultimately, they were instructed to help ‘soften up’ those that were to be interrogated, which involved the use of numerous techniques, among them - sexual humiliation, sleep deprivation, sensory deprivation, the employment of extreme, prolonged stress positions, and the threat of the use of unleashing guard dogs. And yet, when the scandal broke, the photographs taken by those individuals were used to seal their fate while those above them, that had encouraged such behaviour, were never held responsible.

There is, of course, no excuse for the actions of those that followed such orders without questioning them, though as numerous personal interviews in the documentary demonstrate, some of those involved did, though typically only in private conversation, usually too afraid to actually address the issue with those who either knew nothing of what was actually transpiring or their immediate superiors.

The fundamental purpose of the film is to demonstrate that what took place at Abu Ghraib was not merely the result of a few ‘bad apples’, as then Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld suggested. But that the United States, following the invasion of Afghanistan, purposely set about challenging the application of the Geneva Conventions and the UN Convention Against Torture with regards to detainees, and how such legal manipulations led to a much wider application of internationally illegal intelligence gathering methods.

As some of you are aware, the worst of what occurred at Abu Ghraib was never widely exposed. While the pictures that surfaced caused outrage around the world, the reality that US personnel had raped a female inmate and made a father and son perform sexual acts on one another was not disclosed until some time afterwards, and then only by a handful of media sources that are by no means considered mainstream.

This documentary is a black hole. It shows what human beings are capable of when placed in a position of having to follow orders, having been inundated by highly disingenuous information regarding those being detained. As is pointed out in the film, the vast majority of those that were at Abu Ghraib had no significant information with regards to the insurgency or other groups.

One of Kennedy’s truly brilliant inclusions in the film is what he uses to bookmark the entire documentary. From the film’s opening…

“In 1961, an experiment was conducted by Dr. Stanly Milgram a psychologist at Yale University. Participants responded to a newspaper advertisement. The purpose of their ‘obedience study” was to observe an individual’s willingness to inflict pain when ordered to do so. The participants did not know that the “victim” was an actor and that the shocks were not real.

Research Subject #2: …who’s going to take responsibility if anything happens to him?

Researcher: I’m going to take responsibility. Please continue.

Victim: [screams off camera]

All of the subjects administered shocks. The majority did so at the maximum level: 450 volts.”

Kennedy returns to footage from the study at the end of the documentary in which the commentator interjects a profound assertion. That if, in a setting such as that, under the guidance of individuals with no real authority, people are willing to complete the test and employ the maximum level of electricity to the victim, then what is the government capable of, being that they possess far greater powers of authoritative persuasion and indoctrination?

Decades after that question was put forth, what occurred at Abu Ghraib serves as an example.

I came across this on Facebook and thought that I would give it a go. Someone sent me a list of questions that I guess you’re supposed to answer, so here goes…

The perennial 80’s classic Better Off Dead in which a young John Cusack tackles the K12 and wins the heart of a French foreign exchange student.

The last full book I read was Robert Fisk’s The Great War For Civilization, but the most recent was a number of my favourite pages from The Collected Poems of Czeslaw Milosz.

Right now I would have to say it’s South Park. While I’m a fan of numerous animated shows, such as Family Guy, I don’t think anyone pushes the envelope anywhere near as much as Trey Parker and Matt Stone. In fact, Season 10 of the show probably contains some of their best work – the World Of Warcraft episode, for example, or the Season’s opener in which they confront the fact that Isaac Hayes left the show’s cast because he was offended by the now infamous Scientology episode.

The podcast that I did with Jeremy Taggart for Taggart’s Take. And man, when all three episodes air, are we in for it.

The World Of Warcraft episode in the 10th season of South Park.

There are, of course, a lot more questions, but I just became suddenly disinterested in doing this.

President Bush is set to request a further $50 billion dollars for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. If granted, and using my trusty Dashboard calculator – that’s a $50bn supplemental on top of the original $460bn 2008 fiscal defense budget and the $147bn supplemental for the wars that is current pending – that’s a grand total $657 billion dollars for the fiscal year 2008.

Today the President marked the second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, saying…

“Hurricane Katrina broke the levees, it broke a lot of hearts, it destroyed buildings, but it didn’t affect the spirit of this community”

He also claimed that ‘better days were ahead’. I would hope so, being that it’s been two years. The government has pledged $114bn to help in ongoing relief and reconstruction efforts. Using my trusty Dashboard calculator, that’s $543 billion dollars less than the fiscal defense budget for a single year – and $83 billion dollars less than the supplementals requested for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Of course, there were those that weren’t too pleased that the President showed up to mark the somber occasion, being that two years after the fact federal efforts to help address the issue have taken a back seat to, for example, lucrative arms agreements with foreign nations.

Hmm, let’s see.

Israel has received a 25% increase in yearly military aid, numerous Middle Eastern nations, all of which are primarily Sunni, are due some $20 billion dollars over the next decade (most of which will be pumped back into the US defense industry – good for business), the US is now funding Sunni insurgent factions in Iraq, gifting them millions of dollars, the Pentagon paid almost a million dollars to ship two 19-cent washers to an Army base in Texas and has spent some $20.5 million over the last six years in fraudulent shipping costs (that’s what we like to refer to as the ‘reallocation of funds’ to programs that are off the books), the US Embassy in Baghdad will come in at a whopping $592 million dollars - and that’s just off the top of my head.

There is, of course, a lot more – aid to Latin American, African, Eastern European, and Asian countries, not to mention aid funneled through the USAID program to a variety of groups in different locales.

It’s a shame that New Orleans isn’t in Israel, in need of an embassy, or, for that matter, a few washers.

No End In Sight is a new documentary by Magnolia Pictures that critically examines the Iraq war with one of the most impressive and knowledgeable casts ever assembled.

Faisal al-Istrabadi Iraqi Ambassador to the United Nations
Chris Allbritton Journalist, Time Magazine
Richard Armitage Deputy Secretary of State, 2001-2005
James Bamford Author, The Puzzle Palace and A Pretext for War
Amazia Baram Professor of Middle East History, Former Advisor to Bush Admin
Jamal Benomar Special Advisor, UN Development Program
Linda Bilmes Budgeting Specialist, Professor, Kennedy School of Government Harvard University
Amb. Barbara Bodine In Charge of Baghdad for the U.S. Occupation
Gerald Burke Advisor to Iraq Ministry of Interior for the U.S. Occupation (CPA)
Ashton Carter Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy, Clinton Admin
Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton In charge of training New Iraqi Army, 2003-2004
Ali Fadhil Iraqi Journalist, Emigrated to U.S., 2006
James Fallows National Editor, The Atlantic Monthly, Author, Blind into Baghdad
Marc Garlasco Senior Iraq Analyst. 1997-2003, Defense Intelligence Agency
Gen. Jay Garner Administrator, ORHA, Feb-May 2003
Ann Gildroy 1st Lieutenant, U.S. Marines
Hugo Gonzalez Field Artillery Gunner, U.S. Army
Joost Hiltermann Mideast Director, International Crisis Group
Colonel Paul Hughes Director of Strategic Policy for the U.S. Occupation, 2003
Robert Hutchings Chairman (2003-2005), National Intelligence Council
Ray Jennings NGO Manager and Lecturer, Georgetown University
Seth Moulton Lieutenant, U.S. Marines
Mahmoud Othman Member of Iraqi Parliament
George Packer Journalist and Author, The Assassins’ Gate
Robert Perito Director, Office of International Criminal Justice,1995-2002, Department of Justice
Paul Pillar National Intelligence Officer for the Mideast (2000-2005), National Intelligence Council
Barry Posen Professor and Director, National Security Program, MIT
Samantha Power Author, A Problem From Hell, Professor, Harvard University Kennedy School of Government
Nir Rosen Journalist, Author: In the Belly of the Green Bird
Matt Sherman CPA Deputy Security Advisor to Iraqi Ministry of Interior
Walter Slocombe Senior Advisor for National Security and Defense, CPA
Yaroslav Trofimov Journalist, The Wall Street Journal, Author, Faith at War
Aida Ussayran Deputy Minister, Iraq Human Rights Ministry
Col. Lawrence Wilkerson Chief of Staff for Secretary of State Colin Powell, 2002-2005
David Yancey Specialist, Military, U.S. Army