Blackwater & The Bush Moral Vacuum

CAR DAMAGED IN DISPUTED BLACKWATER SHOOTOUT

It has become grimly obvious as details emerge about an incident in which Blackwater USA bodyguards shot and killed at least eight Iraqis in Baghdad's Nisour Square that trigger-happy private contractors have no business doing jobs that should be filled by the military.

War, of course, can be a terribly messy thing.

But once combatants such as for-profit Blackwater mercenaries are relieved of having to take responsibility for improper actions and know that every time they open fire they face no serious consequences for acting badly, which time and again has been the case in Iraq, the rules of war are for all intents and purposes null and void.

There is now widespread agreement that the scene at the Nisour Square traffic circle about midday on Sunday, September 16 was chaotic, that the Blackwater employees involved did not act with restraint and that there was an altercation among them over whether to stop the hail of weapons fire against Iraqi civilians caught in the melee.

Accounts from Iraqi sources are incomplete or disingenous and minimize the role that Iraqi policemen apparently played in exacerbating a deadly situation. But based on accounts in The New York Times, Washington Post and elsewhere, this appears to be what happened:

Three Blackwater units were protecting officials from the U.S. Agency for International Development meeting at a secure financial compound about a mile north of the square when a bomb exploded on the median of a road a few hundred yards from the meeting.

Although no one was injured or was directly in harm's way, in a move questionable in and of itself, two of the Blackwater units evacuated a bigshot -- an unidentified ranking official referred to in one American account as a "principal" -- and sped south to the relative safety of the Green Zone.

The third unit was ambushed by Iraqis firing small arms near the traffic circle and returned fire, killing the driver of a passing car and a woman passenger and the infant she was holding. A grenade or flare was fired into the car by the Blackwater bodyguards, who then unleashed a barrage of fire on fleeing Iraqis. There also are reports that shots were fired from Blackwater helicopters hovering overhead.

Iraqi police units then surrounded the Blackwater unit and threatened to open fire. The situation was defused when a U.S. Army quick-response force arrived.

Depending on who is doing the counting, between eight and 20 Iraqis were killed (11 is the most frequently cited number) and dozens wounded or injured. No Americans were hurt.

An official who was briefed on an American investigation into the incident and spoke to two of the bodyguards tells the Times that the accounts are consistent:

"At some point during the shooting, one or more Blackwater guards called for a cease-fire, according to the American official.

"The word cease-fire 'was supposedly called out several times,' the official said. 'They had an on-site difference of opinion,' he said.

"In the end, a Blackwater guard 'got on another one about the situation and supposedly pointed a weapon,' the official said."

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It is true that those aforementioned rules of war are frangible. That certainly is the case in Iraq where the people trying to kill you seldom wear uniforms and blend in easily with the locals because they often are locals.

But it also is the case that the Bush administration has thumbed its nose at international convenants such as the Geneva Conventions and Hague laws in waging war by its own rules.

The lack of fallout of consequence stateside, let alone in Congress over the Abu Ghraib prison scandal in Iraq and the farflung Rumsfeld Gulag shows that the administration has largely succeeded in waging the war in a moral vacuum. This is an environment tailor made for Blackwater's shadow army.

The North Carolina-based company has gained an outsized presence because of:

* The close contacts that Erik Prince, Blackwater's founder has with White House and Pentagon officials. Like many of his hired guns, this messianic right winger is a former Navy SEAL.

* The post-Cold War drawdown of the American military and ongoing growth of the already immense military-industrial complex.

* The twin realities that there never have been enough U.S. troops to do the job in Iraq and if there were enough, they could do the jobs tasked to Blackwater better and cheaper.

* The Bush administration's drive to outsource and privatize government services, including post-9/11 national security duties at home and commercializing warfare aborad.

Once in Iraq, where Blackwater has been awarded contracts totalling about $1 billion since 2004 and its employees are paid more on a per-day basis than even American generals, it was given carte blanche to run riot by L. Paul Bremer, the head of the Coalition Provisional Authority, in the form of an order stating that it and other security companies were not subject to Iraqi laws or regulations.

The firms also apparently are not subject to U.S. and international law, as is evident from the story of the Blackwater guard who got drunk at a party in the Green Zone last Christmas.

The guard reportedly boasted to friends that he was going to kill someone, got into an argument with an Iraqi guard, then shot him once in the chest and three times in the back. The next day Blackwater put him on a private plane and flew him out of the country.

Meanwhile, in responding to a lawsuit filed by the widows of four Blackwater contract employees killed by a mob in Fallujah in 2004, the firm borrowed a page from the Dick Cheney playbook and argued in legal filings that it is above the law and accountable to no one.

Which as the Iraqis have learned, is a license to kill indiscriminately and without sanction.

And as the U.S. has learned, is a public-relations disaster that puts the lie to the assertion that everything is copacetic in Baghdad.

Photograph by Khalid Mohammed/The Associated Press