$934,892,570 and Counting
That’s the amount that you and I have spent since 2004 to create a public-relations disaster in Iraq that threatens to eclipse the Abu Ghraib scandal.
That disaster is run-amok Blackwater USA contractors, some of whom happen to be outright mercenaries who have transformed duties guarding diplomats and senior U.S. civilians, escorting convoys, protecting military bases and conducting security overflights into a series of bloody embarrassments that have further exacerbated tensions between occupiers and occupied at a time when the White House claims that real progress is being made in the Forever War.
The State Department, which spent the lion’s share of that nearly $1 billion, and the Pentagon had turned a blind eye and deaf ear to incidents involving Blackwater until bodyguards accompanying a speeding State Department convoy in Baghdad on September 16 iced at least 11 Iraqis (see photo of aftermath) in an apparently unprovoked attack.
Now that State has been forced to acknowledge the . . . er, problems, it is going through the motions of investigating Blackwater on the one hand while trying to keep Congress from investigating Blackwater on the other, a familiar tactic of the secrecy-obsessed Bush administration.
With Blackwater founder Erik Prince, a right-wing Born Again Christian with close ties to the White House and Pentagon scheduled to testify before Representative Henry Waxman’s House Government Affairs Subcommittee next week, State has informed the California Democrat that no one from Blackwater will be permitted to talk without White House approval. That, of course, is shorthand for “drop dead.”
Waxman calls the move “extraordinary” and “unusual.” I call it business as usual.
As for State officials themselves, Condi Rice is not even allowing them to testifying unless it’s behind closed doors. Ditto on business as usual.
Blackwater’s lucrative contracts and convenient immunity from Iraqi and U.S. laws are a consequence of the administration’s radical vision of outsourcing all kinds of government work, up to and including waging war. Much of what Blackwater does was once the domain of Military Police units. (Think about all those M*A*S*H episodes when Hawkeye and Trapper were pounced on by MPs.)
After considerable chest thumping, the government of Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki has backed away from calls for Blackwater to exit Iraq posthaste. The reason is (choose one): U.S. forces would have to be drawn from important surge-related duties or Iraqi security forces would have to cover and they’re not prepared to do so.
The Washington Post quotes one of those ubiquitous unnamed officials who populate so many stories about the war these days as saying there is considerable acrimony between State and the Pentagon over the unfolding scandal. He adds:
“This is a nightmare. We had guys who saw the aftermath (of the September 16 incident) and it was very bad. This is going to hurt us badly. It may be worse than Abu Ghraib, and it comes at a time when we’re trying to have an impact for the long term. . . .
“This is a big mess that I don’t think anyone has their hands around yet. It’s not necessarily a bad thing these guys are being held accountable. Iraqis hate them, the troops don’t particularly care for them, and they tend to have a know-it-all attitude, which means they rarely listen to anyone — even the folks that patrol the ground on a daily basis.”
The mess got a little bigger today when The New York Times reported that Blackwater has a reputation for shooting first and asking questions later, which is not all that surprising when your job is to protect diplomats and not being school crossing guards.
But, the Times said, Blackwater’s associates (most are independent contractors, not employees) have been involved in twice as many violent incidents than DynCorp International and Triple Canopy, the two other U.S.-based security firms that have been contracted by State.
The Times quoted another unnamed official as saying:
“You can find any number of people, particularly in uniform, who will tell you that they do see Blackwater as a company that promotes a much more aggressive response to things than other main contractors do.”
By the way, the Pentagon and Iraqi governments also are investigating Blackwater, but like the Abu Ghraib probes, don’t expect them to amount to a hill of beans. Like the U.S. itself, Blackwater is above the law and in its messianic zeal answerable to no one, apparently not even The Big Guy.
The U.S. death toll in Iraq has passed 3,800. Click here to read the story of one recently fallen warrior.
7 Responses to “$934,892,570 and Counting”
Blackwater has the capacity to turn into a private “army” though I am sure US law prohibits this- which they can of course bypass by working under the banner of “security”. I could see how this could turn badly- not saying it will, but these things never really turn over a leaf into the Peace Corps, now do they.
Now how does executive privigle(sp)carry over to private companies. The KIA and monies spent on private contractors is being ignored, I’ve heard that 1000 contractors have died in Iraq. But this goes under reported.
Rudi:
Those unreported/underreported deaths may be because the majority of contractors are foreign nationals who work Haliburton, Bechtel, et al for menial wages.
This whole business reads to be a pissing contest between State, Defense and Al-Maliki.
The NYT article actually offers a reasonable explanation for the higher number of violent incidents – of all the contractors, Blackwater is operating in the most violent areas of Iraq.
Plus, as the chap over at Monkey Tennis Centre noted in breaking down the incidents, it amounts to Blackwater’s use of weapons once in every 60 missions.
This is a surprising figure, given the MSM’s depiction of Iraq as being in constant Mad Max anarchy levels. And Blackwater is operating in the most dangerous regions of the country, transporting highly valuable targets.
No real surprise that State is telling Waxman to take a leap. Waxman is like Ahab in his pursuit of Bush…and his interest in Blackwater is solely as a means of attacking Bush. State is interested in keeping its staff alive.
Shaun makes an excellent point here:
“Those unreported/underreported deaths may be because the majority of contractors are foreign nationals who work Haliburton, Bechtel, et al for menial wages.”
Occasionally, these stories are reported…brown-skinned contractors working for almost no money…whose lives are expendable as they are not Westerners and not American.
One of the most evil aspects of the Bush policy of contracting out. One of the most succesful too. The MSM clearly doesn’t care too much when brown-skinned workers from the Philippines get their throats slit in the Iraqi desert.
marlowe -
This:
“Waxman is like Ahab in his pursuit of Bush…and his interest in Blackwater is solely as a means of attacking Bush. State is interested in keeping its staff alive”… is way over the top!
Oversight is a dury, not a choice. It may seem extraordinary now only because it was a dury completely neglected during the Rep. reign in Congress.
The Statie’s interest in keeping staff alive is in no way impeded by explaining HOW it is keeping them alive
Much like fighting terrorism does nto need to involve torture, not every means here should get an automatic pass.
Your assigment of nefarious motives to Waxman leaves you open to questions about the motives for opposing a more transparent governemtn, BtW.
Let’s not go there, please.
I don’t know that anything useful will come of all the investigations, but I hope that at least some clearer rules of managing them would emerge
There is some siniping going on between The DOD and State and I hope that behind-the-scenes details about that emerge. There sould be coordination between managing DOD Blackwater and State Blackwater, I would think. Or is common sense off limits, here?