From the Washington Post:

Blackwater USA guards shot at Iraqi civilians as they tried to drive away from a Baghdad square Sept. 16, according to a report compiled by the first U.S. soldiers to arrive at the scene, where they found no evidence that Iraqis had fired weapons.

"It appeared to me they were fleeing the scene when they were engaged. It had every indication of an excessive shooting," said Lt. Col. Mike Tarsa, whose soldiers reached Nisoor Square about 20 to 25 minutes after the gunfire subsided.

His soldiers' report - based on their observations at the scene, eyewitness interviews and discussions with Iraqi police - concluded there was no enemy activity involved and described the shootings as a "criminal event." Their conclusions mirrored those reached by the Iraqi government, which has said the Blackwater guards killed 17 people.

The soldiers' accounts contradict Blackwater's assertion that its guards were defending themselves after being fired on by Iraqi police and gunmen.

Tarsa said they found no evidence to indicate the Blackwater guards were provoked or entered into a confrontation.

"I did not see anything that indicated they were fired upon," said Tarsa, 42, commander of the 3rd Battalion, 82nd Field Artillery Regiment of the 2nd Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division.

He also said it appeared that several drivers had made U-turns and were driving away from Nisoor Square when their vehicles were hit by gunfire from Blackwater guards.

But will anything be done? Doubtful.

Labels: Blackwater USA, Iraqi Deaths, Occupation of Iraq, Private Security Contractors, Sadomasochism

Why is it that private security contractors seem to be drawn to killing women and children?

A company statement said the shooting occurred after a car failed to heed warnings to stop while approaching a Unity convoy.

"The first information that we have is that our security team was approached at speed by a vehicle which failed to stop despite an escalation of warnings which included hand signals and a signal flare. Finally, shots were fired at the vehicle and it stopped," the company said in a statement.

Unity Resources, which is run by former Australian army personnel, was investigated last year in connection with the shooting of a 72-year-old agriculture professor at the University of Baghdad, according to Australian media. The Australian Foreign Ministry at the time said the professor, Kays Juma, was shot because his vehicle failed to stop at a checkpoint in the capital.

Some witnesses confirmed that a flare was fired, but at least two said guards fired into the vehicle after it had been partially disabled by warning shots. One witness said the vehicle, which carried at least three women and one child, had rolled to a halt when the women inside were shot.

. . Tuesday's incident was seen by residents as another case of Iraqis paying the price for the foreign presence in their country.

"I saw two foreigners step out of their SUVs just 10 meters away from the victims' vehicle after it had come to a stop, and then they opened fire," said the owner of a plumbing supply store near the scene. He asked that his name not be used for security reasons.

He and others interviewed about two hours after the 1:40 p.m. shooting described a chaotic chain of events that began when a convoy of four SUVs came down a street at high speed, zigzagging among cars.

The convoy overtook a white 1990 Oldsmobile driven by a woman. Witnesses said a younger woman sat in the passenger seat. Another woman and a child were in the back.

A 27-year-old laborer who would not give his name said one guard fired at the Oldsmobile's radiator in an apparent attempt to force it to stop after it had come within a few yards of the convoy. The car continued moving, dragging the radiator along the ground, he said.

"Then, two guys came out, approached the vehicle and shot for almost 10 seconds before returning to their SUVs and fleeing," he said. "The woman in the back started screaming. She had two kids with her, I think."

The plumbing shop owner estimated the car was about 30 feet from the SUVs when the guards fired the fatal shots.

Witnesses said the driver was shot in the face and head and that she and the front-seat passenger were killed.

Labels: Blackwater USA, Iraqi Deaths, Occupation of Iraq, Private Security Contractors, Sadomasochism

From the New York Times:

The events in the square began with a short burst of bullets that witnesses described as unprovoked. A traffic policeman standing at the edge of the square, Sarhan Thiab, saw that a young man in a car had been hit. In the line of traffic, that car was the third vehicle from the intersection where the convoy had positioned itself.

“We tried to help him,” Mr. Thiab said. “I saw the left side of his head was destroyed and his mother was crying out: ‘My son, my son. Help me, help me.’”

Another traffic policeman rushed to the driver’s side to try to get her son out of the car, but the car was still rolling forward because her son had lost control, according to a taxi driver close by who gave his name as Abu Mariam (“father of Mariam”).

Then Blackwater guards opened fire with a barrage of bullets, according to the police and numerous witnesses. Mr. Ahmed’s father later counted 40 bullet holes in the car. His mother, Mohassin Kadhim, appears to have been shot to death as she cradled her son in her arms. Moments later the car caught fire after the Blackwater guards fired a type of grenade into the vehicle.

The taxi driver was a few feet ahead of Mrs. Kadhim’s car when he heard the first gunshots. He was aware of cars behind him trying to back out of the street or turn around and drive away from the square. He tried frantically to turn his car, but ran into the curb.

Unable to escape, he pulled himself over to the passenger side, which was the one not facing the square, opened the door and crawled out, flattening his body to the ground.

“The dust from the street was coming in my mouth and as I pulled myself out of the area, my left leg was shot by a bullet,” he said.

Accounts in the initial days after the event described Mrs. Kadhim as holding a baby in her arms. It now appears that those accounts were based on assumptions that the charred remains of Mrs. Kadhim’s son were mistaken for an infant.

By then cars were struggling to get out of the line of fire, and many people were abandoning their vehicles altogether. The scene turned hellish.

“The shooting started like rain; everyone escaped his car,” said Fareed Walid Hassan, a truck driver who hauls goods in his Hyundai minibus.

He saw a woman dragging her child. “He was around 10 or 11,” he said. “He was dead. She was pulling him by one hand to get him away. She hoped that he was still alive.”

Someday, the Iraqi resistance will prevail, and bring this brutality to an end. We can only hope that they don't replace it with equally reprehensible violence. Conditions in Basra, after the departure of British troops, might justify a feeling of cautious optimism.

Labels: Blackwater USA, Iraqi Deaths, Occupation of Iraq, Private Security Contractors, Sadomasochism

From today's New York Times:

Guards working in Iraq for Blackwater USA have shot innocent Iraqi civilians and have sought to cover up the incidents, sometimes with the help of the State Department, a report to a Congressional committee said today.

The report, based largely on internal Blackwater e-mail messages and State Department documents, depicts the security contractor as being staffed with reckless, shoot-first guards who were not always sober and did not always stop to see who or what was hit by their bullets.

In one incident, the State Department and Blackwater agreed to pay $15,000 to the family of a man killed by “a drunken Blackwater contractor,” the report said. As a State Department official wrote, “We would like to help them resolve this so we can continue with our protective mission."

It is important to note several things about this. First, the report was primarily based upon internal Blackwater e-mail messages and State Department documents. As usual, the experiences of the Iraqis themselves were treated as irrelevant, another instance of erasing the personal experiences of the victims themselves.

Accordingly, the report did not describe episodes like this one described by Laila Fadel of McClatchy last week:

The following Sunday, Blackwater guards opened fire as the State Department convoy they were escorting crossed in front of stopped traffic at the al Nisour traffic circle.

While U.S. officials have offered no explanation of what occurred that day, witnesses and Iraqi investigators agree that the guards' first target was a white car that either hadn't quite stopped or was trying to nudge its way to the front of traffic.

In the car were a man whose name is uncertain; Mahasin Muhsin, a mother and doctor; and Muhsin's young son. The guards first shot the man, who was driving. As Muhsin screamed, a Blackwater guard shot her. The car exploded, and Muhsin and the child burned, witnesses said.

Afrah Sattar, 27, was on a bus approaching the square when she saw the guards fire on the white car. She and her mother, Ghania Hussein, were headed to the Certificate of Identification Office in Baghdad to pick up proof of Sattar's Iraqi citizenship for an upcoming trip to a religious shrine in Iran.

When she saw the gunmen turn toward the bus, Sattar looked at her mother in fear. "They're going to shoot at us, Mama," she said. Her mother hugged her close. Moments later, a bullet pierced her mother's skull and another struck her shoulder, Sattar recalled.

As her mother's body went limp, blood dripped onto Sattar's head, still cradled in her mother's arms.

"Mother, mother," she called out. No answer. She hugged her mother's body and kissed her lips and began to pray, "We belong to God and we return to God." The bus emptied, and Sattar sat alone at the back, with her mother's bleeding body.

"I'm lost now, I'm lost," she said days later in her simple two-bedroom home. Ten people lived there; now there are nine.

"They are killers," she said of the Blackwater guards. "I swear to God, not one bullet was shot at them. Why did they shoot us? My mother didn't carry a weapon."

Downstairs, her father, Sattar Ghafil Slom al Kaabi, 67, sat beneath a smiling picture of his wife and recalled their 40-year love story and how they raised eight children together. On the way to the holy city of Najaf to bury her, he'd stopped his car, with her coffin strapped to the top. He got out and stood beside the coffin. He wanted to be with her a little longer.

"I loved her more than anything," he said, his voice wavering. "Now that she is dead, I love her more."

Second, nothing is going to be done as a result of the hearings, nothing, even if Jane Hamsher is, quite admirably, blogging them live over at firedoglake. Just another political masturbatory opportunity for people to act as if something is being done, when it isn't, although, strictly speaking, that's a bit of an exaggeration, they will, after all, be used by Democrats for partisan purposes.

But, do something more, like cutting off funding for private military contractors like Blackwater? Forget about it. Don't you understand? Congressional Democrats are helpless until a Democrat becomes President. Fortunately, the Iraqis have this tendency to take matters into their own hands without waiting for the Democrats to help them.

Lastly, people may be much too sanguine about Blackwater and the political consequences of allowing the company to survive. After all, what is to prevent Blackwater operatives from being deployed domestically? Nothing. They were brought into New Orleans after Katrina, and Blackwater, as part of a consortium of military contractors, just obtained a contract with the Department of Homeland Security for global counter narcotics operations, potentially even within the US, and seeks others as well.

Jeremy Scahill described Blackwater as the Praetorian Guard of the Bush Administration's war on terror. We shouldn't ignore the possibility, however, that it could become a Praetorian Guard of a more familiar, disturbing political kind.

Labels: Blackwater USA, Democrats, Iraqi Deaths, Occupation of Iraq, Private Security Contractors, Sadomasochism

From a McClatchy article:

On Sept. 9, the day before Army Gen. David Petraeus, the U.S. military commander in Iraq, and U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker told Congress that things were getting better, Batoul Mohammed Ali Hussein came to Baghdad for the day.

A clerk in the Iraqi customs office in Diyala province, she was in the capital to drop off and pick up paperwork at the central office near busy al Khilani Square, not far from the fortified Green Zone, where top U.S. and Iraqi officials live and work. U.S. officials often pass through the square in heavily guarded convoys on their way to other parts of Baghdad.

As Hussein walked out of the customs building, an embassy convoy of sport-utility vehicles drove through the intersection. Blackwater security guards, charged with protecting the diplomats, yelled at construction workers at an unfinished building to move back. Instead, the workers threw rocks. The guards, witnesses said, responded with gunfire, spraying the intersection with bullets.

Hussein, who was on the opposite side of the street from the construction site, fell to the ground, shot in the leg. As she struggled to her feet and took a step, eyewitnesses said, a Blackwater security guard trained his weapon on her and shot her multiple times. She died on the spot, and the customs documents she'd held in her arms fluttered down the street.

Before the shooting stopped, four other people were killed in what would be the beginning of eight days of violence that Iraqi officials say bolster their argument that Blackwater should be banned from working in Iraq.

During the ensuing week, as Crocker and Petraeus told Congress that the surge of more U.S. troops to Iraq was beginning to work and President Bush gave a televised address in which he said "ordinary life was beginning to return" to Baghdad, Blackwater security guards shot at least 43 people on crowded Baghdad streets. At least 16 of those people died.

Labels: Blackwater USA, Iraqi Deaths, Occupation of Iraq, Private Security Contractors, Sadomasochism