Blackwater ‘No Better Than al-Qaeda’: Le Quotidien d’Oran of Algeria
Jan 5th, 2010 | 11 responses
Here’s a story that has gone under the radar screens of most Americans, but which almost uniformly angers and confuses Muslims around the world.
Days ago, a U.S. federal court judge threw out charges against five former Blackwater security guards implicated in the shooting deaths of 17 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad’s Nisour Square in 2007.
This article by K. Selim of Algeria’s Le Quotidien d’Oran provides a good sense of the general mood.
For Le Quotidien d’Oran, K. Selim writes in part:
Apparently for procedural reasons, an American judge simply decided to absolve the murderers employed by Blackwater, who had fired on peaceful Iraqis for fun, killing 17. This is an imperial message on behalf of the law; American law, of course.
The “blunders” and “collateral damage” inflicted by Americans are so numerous that they’ve become part of the routine for a militarized civilization. Humanitarian organizations are indignant, the American military is content offering a laconic, “the investigation is in progress,” and the local Karzai laments the electoral consequences. The script is extremely well known.
The fact remains that the judge’s ruling to absolve the Blackwater murderers is one of stunning violence. … Blackwater, which changed its name to “Xe Services” after its massacre of innocents, is in fact an organization similar to al-Qaeda, but one under the full protection of American law. We should perhaps consider this January 1, 2010, “Blackwater Day,” or “Ricardo Urbina Day,” after the judge who granted these gangsters the right to kill in broad daylight. The “Urbina Doctrine” endorses the right of mercenaries to kill without being held accountable. The gun-toting enterprises that accompany the regular army of the United States have just been issued the most satisfying assurance. They can continue to use their weapons indiscriminately against Arabs and Muslims, all of whom, of course, are subversives of al-Qaeda – that enemy which is so useful to the Empire.
By K. Selim
Translated By Sandrine Ageorges
January 3, 2010
Algeria – Le Quotidien d’Oran – Original Article (French)
The year of Obama is over! Now is the year of Bush, only with Barack Hussein in the White House. The news at the end of one year and the beginning of another is like a road map. In recent days, we’ve suddenly been returned to the great confrontation of the Bush era: al-Qaeda, which is everywhere, against the Empire, which preemptively, is similarly everywhere. The Republicans, who’ve already won by imposing Bush’s war agenda, are committed to erasing the “aberrations” of the Obama presidency in 2009.
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11 Responses to “Blackwater ‘No Better Than al-Qaeda’: Le Quotidien d’Oran of Algeria”
I don't get it. Everybody is concerned about Guantanamo Bay detention facility and must shut it down because of the black mark it places upon the reputation of the United States, but Blackwater is allowed to continue unscathed?
Rather bizarre if you ask me.
I don't get it either. Blackwater has shown this whole privatize parts of the military experiment to be a unmitigated disaster. This has to stop.
Obama's DOJ blew it…..either out of intention to get it dismissed or sheer legal incompetence. To repeatedly base their prosecution on inadmissable testimony gave Bill Clinton's federal bench appointee little reason to consider their charges.
Algerians need to understand. It isn't that we are evil. It is not that we do not believe in justice. We are just incompetent. If that is how you spell the word.
And we wonder why terrorist spring up everywhere like mushrooms committed to right what they see as US-born injustice.
If we spent a tiny fraction of the time and money we do on military strikes “against terrorism” instead on THINKING and cutting off the source of foreign frustrations with us we'd be a respected and truly free nation again. Now we are prisoners within our own borders.
Thanks Cheney for the “freedom” and “liberation” you slime have brought us all..
No. Blackwater and the GB Detention Facility is a wholly owned Republican creation. It’s a dubya screw-up and BTW your false propaganda disinformation effort failed.
Why? It's so profitable… Besides which it's good right-wing welfare…
And you never know when you'll need them to maintain order in CONUS
“Obama's DOJ blew it…..either out of intention to get it dismissed or sheer legal incompetence.”
Team Obama's record is such that its distinctive nature is clearly apparent and it can be explained, even predicted, now.
The only thing that we haven't heard yet is Thom Hartmann use Blackwater to mischaracterize even more the “Third Way” concession-to-reality among the Democratic leadership (posing as more safe and sane Democrats) in the 1990s that he has referred to recently (the only far lefty on the air to do so).
“Why? It's so profitable… Besides which it's good right-wing welfare…”
The Dems and the unions never had the chance to exploit it in full during the 1990s — because they were inept or never honest about what they intended (not that smarter people ever believed them, anyway).
Do some still believe everything ObamaCo tells them now? (Or Reid & Pelosi?)
I wish AR was online as I think he could explain exactly the meaning of ruling in terms of inadmissible evidence. The little I have been able to glean says that witnesses were given immunity for testimony, but that's done all the time. If anybody can give a non-political explanation, I'd be grateful.
Interesting that those who have been so demanding that the system respect every jot and tittle of the “rights” of terrorists are so upset when we respect the clearly established rights of our own private security personnel.