Rhinocrisy

So, as you’re surely aware, the Iraqi government is apparently following up on my complaints about mercenaries. They’ve banned Blackwater, an American security company, from operating in Iraq, after they killed somewhere between 8 and 20 people. Blackwater insists that they were attacked and were merely returning fire. The US embassy more softly suggested that the Blackwater mercs were spooked by a car bomb and started shooting as a result (at what, I’m not sure). Iraqi officials, meanwhile, insist that none of these stories are true, and the Blackwater people simply opened fire on a crowd of unarmed civilians. The New York Times has the gory details on what sounds like Blackwater transgression followed by a firefight with confused Iraqi cops:

[Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh] said the convoy had initiated the shooting when a car did not heed a police officer and moved into an intersection.

“The traffic policeman was trying to open the road for them,” he said. “It was a crowded square. But one small car did not stop. It was moving very slowly. They shot against the couple and their child. They started shooting randomly.”

In video shot shortly after the episode, the child appeared to have burned to the mother’s body after the car caught fire, according to an official who saw it.

In interviews on Tuesday, six Iraqis who had been in the area at the time of the shooting, including a man who was wounded and an Iraqi Army soldier who helped rescue people, offered roughly similar versions.

The Iraqi soldier, who said he was standing at a checkpoint on the edge of the square, said he thought the convoy believed the small car was a suicide bomber and opened fire. According to the wounded man, recuperating in Yarmouk Hospital, the car with the family was driving on the wrong side of the road.

The convoy began throwing nonlethal sound bombs, several witnesses said, to keep people in the area away. That drew fire from Iraqi Army soldiers manning watchtowers that are part of an Iraqi Army base on the square. Iraqi police officers, witnesses said, also appeared to be shooting.

The Iraqi soldier, who did not give his name but said he was from a company of Iraqi commandos, said he saw another soldier trying to motion to the convoy to move on, but he was shot as well.

The Blackwater attitude, based on their statements, seems to be “we will kill pretty much whoever we have to in order to keep our clients safe.” Mercs are ostensibly subject to State Department rules of engagement, but there’s no oversight governing them, and per a CPA order from a few years back, they are completely immune from Iraqi law. Unsurprising that Iraqis have had enough of this kind of permitted lawlessness. The FUD from Blackwater that’s being passed around is that this is merely a shakedown for bribes from the Interior Ministry, but it seems readily clear, given the seriousness of the steps taken by the Iraqi government (including statements by al-Maliki) and the response on the part of the State Department, that the anger is genuine and something will have to change.

Posted on Wednesday, September 19th, 2007 at 7:44 am | Iraq, War! | feed | reply | trackback