Blackwater Iraq contract renewed.

Iraqi public opinion is just irrelevant it seems. Although the contractors are now liable under U.S. military law there doesn't seem to be much movement yet to make them subject to Iraqi law. A contractor has already been charged by the U.S. military. This contract was renewed while a criminal probe by the FBI is ongoing against the firm. So much for accountability.



Iraqis angered by renewal of Blackwater contract


Khalid Al-Ansary
Reuters North American News Service

Apr 05, 2008 09:47 EST

BAGHDAD, April 5 (Reuters) - Iraqis expressed anger on Saturday at news the United States had renewed the contract of Blackwater, a private security firm blamed for killing up to 17 people in a shooting incident last year.

"Renewing this contract means we will see this sort of thing again in the streets," Abbas Hasoun, a grocer, said. "I wish we could turn the page on this, but keeping this company here means bloodshed will continue."

A traffic policeman who said he was questioned in Turkey by the FBI about the shooting was patrolling on Saturday the same busy traffic circle where the incident took place.

"I went to Turkey and testified about what I saw, but all my efforts were in vain when I heard the news," said the policeman who asked that his name not be published for security reasons.

The FBI is investigating whether Blackwater employees broke the law during the shooting last September when Blackwater staff, apparently believing they were under attack, fired into cars in heavy traffic, killing civilians.

In spite of the criminal probe, the State Department announced on Friday the firm's contract to protect U.S. personnel in Baghdad would be renewed.

The State Department says Blackwater's tactics have been changed to prevent further incidents like last year's shooting.

Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said the government believed its requests for tighter controls over Blackwater's activities had been met.

"The demands of the Iraqi government have been taken into consideration and Blackwater will follow the Iraqi government's laws. We were never against Blackwater's work in Iraq, but the company has committed a mistake," he said. Ordinary Iraqis were less tolerant.

"These companies should be removed from the country. They don't deserve to stay here a moment. They committed massacres and killed innocent people," said Naseer Kahdim, a soldier checking cars a few hundred metres from the site of the shooting.

The government's political opponents accused it of failing to enact measures that would control foreign security firms.

"So far we haven't passed laws governing the work of foreign companies. The government should have shown its influence and authority by taking the initiative," said Saleem al-Jubouri, spokesman for the mainly Sunni Arab Accordance Front bloc.

"But the Americans want to show that Iraq is under their control. It's a violation of the Iraqi judicial system." (Additional reporting by Wisam Mohammed; Editing by Robert Woodward)

Source: Reuters North American News Service

FBI ignores key evidence in Blackwater shooting

This is from Rawstory.
Note that the employees involved in the shooting are long gone back to the US and out of reach of Iraqi authorities. The new law to make employees accountable under US law will not apply to these employees. Murder in the service of the US empire is no crime. Well it wasn't in the past. It may be in the future.

CBS: Three weeks after Blackwater shooting, FBI ignores key evidence David Edwards and Muriel Kane
Published: Wednesday October 10, 2007





CBS News reported on Tuesday that the FBI's investigation of last month's Blackwater shooting incident in Baghdad appears to be ignoring evidence that might support the Iraqi government's version of events and hold Blackwater at fault.

"The FBI investigation is supposed to wrap up in days, not weeks, but there's still a lot of work to do," reports CBS. "Our investigation turned up many witnesses who haven't yet been interviewed, not to mention vehicles that are key evidence still driving around the streets of Baghdad."

According to the CBS reconstruction of events, based on "remarkably consistent" eyewitness accounts, the September 16 incident began when a four-vehicle Blackwater convoy heading around a traffic circle found its way blocked by a barrier protecting a maintenance crew. The convoy tried to warn nearby cars to stop but also opened fire on one car that continued to inch forward, instantly killing the driver. The Blackwater vehicles then pushed the barrier aside and moved ahead, firing on other cars and a city bus as they went.

CBS found that not only is the bus, on which at least one woman was killed, continuing to follow its regular route -- with a driver who is happy to show off the bullet-holes and smashed-out windows -- but "astonishingly, that car [that was first to be shot at], full of forensic clues, is still sitting by the side of the road three weeks later."

Military analyst Col. (ret.) Steve Lyons told CBS that with relations between the United States and the Iraqi government in a delicate state, much hinges on a successful resolution of the incident. However, he indicated the best hope was for the US to "show that there was either an anomaly, in that it was an accident that shouldn't have happened, or that perhaps the evidence does show that they were defensive in nature and that there was more firepower that was at that location."

Lyons said there is little chance the US government will meet Iraqi demands either by severing all ties with Blackwater, which is by far the largest and most competent of the many security contractors in Iraq, or by turning over the gunmen responsible for the shooting. Even the Iraqi demand of $8 million in compensation for each of the victims is uncertain.

"These contractors are long gone," Lyons stated. "They're back in the United States. They've scattered, really, to the four winds. ... They're not going to get any money from those individuals."

Lyons explained that Blackwater employees in Iraq are protected from arrest or demands for restitution by an order known as CPA 17 -- put in place by the Coalition Provisional Authority just days before its authority expired in June 2004 -- which exempts US solders, consultants, and contractors from all Iraqi legal processes.

He said the order crucially lacks a "flip side," which is common in such arrangements, whereby Americans who commit crimes in Iraq could be subject to prosecution under US law. The House of Representatives has now approved a bill that would do just that, but it would not apply retroactively.

Lyon's statements suggest that the US is hoping for a positive, or at least inconclusive, outcome to the FBI investigations. "A lot of that evidence has been destroyed," he noted. "It's been on the ground for a few days, so from a forensic perspective, they won't be able to really go back and recreate certain things. ... It's going to be difficult for them to be exact with enough evidence to prove that either we did something wrong or not."

When the FBI team set off for Baghdad last week, Senator Patrick Leahy made a special request that they not be guarded by Blackwater, writing to Secretary of State Rice, “This step would help alleviate the appearance of a conflict of interest and hopefully contribute to the credibility of this investigation in the eyes of the people of Iraq."