Posted by Cockney Robin | Meanwhile, in Iraq, employees of an Australian-run security firm have accidentally though also completely intentionally shot and killed two women. That is to say, the shooting and killing part were intentional; that the targets turned out to be inoffensive ladies driving home from work (and also a small boy who fortunately wasn't killed) was the accidental part. "The firm was employed by RTI International, a nonprofit organization that does governance work in Iraq on a contract for the U.S. Agency for International Development, according to David Snider, a USAID spokesman in Washington." (The Washington Post Ah, the contracts within contracts with which the road to hell is paved.
THIS INCIDENT. Damozel wrote to ask me if I'd post on this incident. I don't really have the stomach to paraphrase this story so I'll let The Washington Post do the honours:
The violence broke out in the early afternoon, when four SUVs belonging to [the contractor] were heading east along a six-lane divided thoroughfare in Karrada, one of central Baghdad's most popular shopping districts. The white Oldsmobile Cutlass Ciera, carrying four people -- including at least three women -- drove toward the convoy from behind, witnesses said.
Iraqi police investigating the incident said the gunner in the last vehicle threw open a door and tossed what looked like a flare, then fired at least 19 rounds into the Oldsmobile.
According to [the contractor's] chief operating officer, Michael Priddin, the women drove up quickly and "failed to stop despite escalation of warnings" including "hand signals and a signal flare."
"Finally shots were fired at the vehicle and it stopped in close vicinity to the security team," Priddin said in a telephone interview. "We deeply regret the firing of shots." (The Washington Post).
Oh well, that's all right then, Michael Priddin! After all, the driver was warned to keep her distance via "hand signals and a signal flare" and was probably too busy gossiping about work as she drove through this popular shopping district to be as attentive as she should have been to the directives of the convoys guards. As an Iraqi citizen, she ought to have known that these contractor blokes don't mess about. It's regrettable that she "failed to stop despite escalation of warnings" so that these armed guards were compelled to fire 19 rounds into her car, but.... what was she thinking?
"A vehicle got close to them and they opened fire on it randomly as if they were in the middle of a confrontation," said Ahmed Kadhim Hussein, a policeman at the scene. "You won't find a head. The brain is scattered on the ground."
He added: "I am shaking as I am trying to describe to you what happened. We are not able to eat. These were innocent people. Is it so natural for them to shoot innocent people?" (The Washington Post).
And who exactly was this inattentive driver?
Marony Ohanis, born in 1958, and the front-seat passenger, Geneva Jalal Entranic, born in 1977, relatives said....After her husband died about two years ago from heart trouble, Ohanis, a college graduate with an agriculture degree, made money to support her three daughters by driving friends home from work, said Lida Sarkis, her niece. One of her daughters, a college student in engineering, sobbed as she walked around the broken car.
"She was very calm, she always prayed, she always went to church," Sarkis said. "They killed them. She was stopped. That's all." (The Washington Post).
There were others in the car as well. "A woman and a young boy were in the back seat, witnesses said. Police said the boy was shot in the arm. They were all friends who knew one another from the Armenian Orthodox church in Baghdad, relatives said."(The Washington Post). Let's hope the shot child learned a little lesson from this about the importance of driving defensively.
Though accounts differ as to whether the car stopped or continued driving after being signalled to stop, witnesses agree that there was nothing to indicate that it presented a threat. (The Washington Post).
The Oldsmobile was shot first in the radiator as it passed a plumbing supply shop, employees said. The shooting continued and the car came to rest about 50 yards away, next to a yellow and white median curb marked by broken glass and blood....The Oldsmobile, towed to a police station..., left little doubt how the women died. There were holes from at least 35 bullets that scarred the hood, punctured the windshield, popped tires and shattered three windows. Rivulets of blood ran down the driver's door. (The Washington Post).
And this isn't the first time these one of this Aussie outfit---typically hired to guard "premises and moving convoys"---has murdered an unarmed civilian. Last year, apparently one of their operatives shot dead an Australian resident of Baghdad who failed to stop at a security point. (The Washington Post)
THE BLACKWATER INCIDENT. The North Carolina Blackwater firm is, of course, also in a spot of trouble. Following a probe, the Iraqis seem inclined to hold them responsible for firing "without provocation into a Baghdad Square, killing 17 and injuring 27."(The Washington Post)
The Blackwater convoy that entered Nisoor Square, in response to a bomb attack near a State Department convoy a mile away, was not attacked, "not even by a stone," Ali al-Dabbagh, the spokesman, said in a statement.
The employees of the North Carolina-based company, he said, committed "an intentional murder that needed to be called to account according to the law." The casualty toll he gave was higher than the previous official tally of 14 dead and 18 injured based on hospital records."(The Washington Post)
This is not the way to win hearts and minds, people.
A report by US Representative to the 30th Congressional District Mr Henry Waxman revealed the following:
[I]n several incidents involving Iraqi casualties, in which Blackwater employees had fired first on 163 out of 195 occasions.
In the majority of cases, the guards fired their weapons from moving vehicles without stopping to count the dead or assist the wounded, the report said. (BBC News)
What interested me most was his framing of what he saw as the key question for the hearing. ""The question for this hearing is whether outsourcing to Blackwater is a good deal to the American taxpayer," he said." (BBC News) It might be, and then again it might not be---it depends on how you look at it. Regardless, America's use of mercenaries---the reasons for which are discussed below---clearly sucks for civilians who inadvertently stumble into their crosshairs.(BBC News
D Cupples (The Crux) has written several posts on the problem of privatised military forces and on some of the steps being taken by the US government..
- Justice Department Let Contractors in Iraq Misbehave?
- Novak Eye on Some other Ball re: Blackwater
- Blackwater to Blame for Shootings, State Dept. Plans to Start Monitoring Blackwater?
- House Passes Contractor-Accountability Bill
- Blackwater Hearings: Details, Odd Comments and Poor Media Coverage
- Hearing Today: New Evidence of Blackwater's Bad Behavior and Protection by Officials
- Have U.S. Officials Protected Blackwater?
P.W. SINGER ON "THE BLACKWATER HABIT." You might also want to read the transcript of The Washington Post "live discussion" between P.W. Singer of the Brookings Institute (Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatised Military Industry) According to this Singer, Washington's response isn't sufficient. " What we have here is a classic Washington response of announcing "action" when there is no real action."(The Washington Post)
The action or "action" in question evidently consists of the following:
(a) a State Department employee will do "ride-alongs" with Blackwater convoys.(The Washington Post) In other words, they'll be on hand as a "chaperone....odd aspects of this are that this State person will be essentially like a "chaperone" for the team, but not in operational command of it and not empowered to take any contractual or legal action." .(The Washington Post) The chaperonage applies only to Blackwater, which Mr Singer points out is one firm of 170. One can't help feeling for those state department functionaries who draw the assignment of overseeing (in the literal sense of seeing without being able to do much else) the activities of private contractors who---Mr Singer points out---make $300 to $500 less per day than the contractors they are overseeing. A civil servant's lot is a more chequered one than I had imagined.
(b) Also they'll put video cameras on the dashboard, which---Mr Singer points out---will work beautifully for any incidents that handle within sight of the camera. In addition, "even video footage of incidents doesn't mean much if the Department refuses to act on them. Here is some great video footage from two years ago (the Aegis trophy video)." Yes, enjoy!
SO WHY BLACKWATER? Singer also discusses the reasons why these private security forces hold such sway in Iraq. The main reason is that they're essential: there are not enough U.S. forces to carry out the operation and "the executive branch" was disinclined to make choices that would have eliminated or reduced the need for hired guns (The Washington Post).
If they'd sent in additional forces---I'm paraphrasing Singer, of course--- they'd have had to admit that Rumsfeld & Co. had been mistaken in their planning (duh) and Army General Eric Shinseki---who knew that 135,000 troops wouldn't be sufficient---was right. Furthermore, expanding the number would have created other sorts of problems I don't really understand, not being a military bloke.
If they'd called up all the National Guard and Reserves people would have noticed and there would have been a "massive outcry amongst the public (as now the war's effect would have been felt deeper at home)" and this was "the last thing leaders in the Executive branch or Congress wanted as they headed into what was a tight 2004 campaign."(The Washington Post)
If they'd gone with what some of us would have thought was the best option---getting their allies to send in troops, as in Bosnia and Kosovo, they'd have had to allow the UN or NATO to have a say in things, which the Bush Administration was not having. (The Washington Post)
Since the war was meant to "pay for itself," "to share in the operation was to share in the spoils" and besides, there was that little detail about the rest of the world being "vehemently opposed," to which I'd personally have given greater priority than Singer.
And there they were: "the private military industry," the answer to a problem that didn't have any good solutions. And---this is the part that surprised me and helped me to understand (well, better than I did before) why this lot are so trigger-happy that they'd fire into a car filled with women. I hadn't realised that they'd suffered so many losses among their own ranks: "more losses...than the rest of the coalition of allied nations combined." (The Washington Post) Not that this excuses the shootings, but it does sort of explain their behaviour.
It offered the potential backstop of additional forces, but with no one having to lose any political capital. Plus, the generals could avoid the career risk of asking for more troops. That is, there was no outcry whenever contractors were called up and deployed, or even lost. If the gradual death toll among American troops threatened to slowly wear down public support, contractor casualties were not counted in official death tolls and had no impact on these ratings. By one count, as of July 2007, over 1,000 contractors have been killed in Iraq, and another 13,000 wounded (again the data is patchy here, with the only reliable source being insurance claims made by contractors' employers and then reported to the U.S. Department of Labor). Since the 'surge' started in January 2007 (this was the second wave of increased troop deployments, focused on the civil war), these numbers have accelerated; contractors have been killed at a rate of 9 a week. These figures mean that the private military industry has suffered more losses in Iraq than the rest of the coalition of allied nations combined. The losses are also far more than any single U.S. Army division has experienced. The public usually didn't even hear about contractor losses, and when they did, they had far less blowback on our government. (The Washington Post)
LINKED
Guards Kill Two Women In Iraq (The Washington Post)
Iraqi Probe Faults Blackwater Guards (The Washington Post)
Outlook: Break the Blackwater Habit (The Washington Post)
Blackwater boss grilled over Iraq (BBC News)
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