Blackwater Exposed

Duncan Black points to this NY Times article about Blackwater's alleged reckless, shoot-first employees whose exploits were covered over by the State Department. We can also thank the State Dept for saving taxpayer money by insisting on death payments of $15,000 instead of $100,000 to $150,000. That puts the market value of an Iraqi civilian life at, what, about 18 to that of one U.S. soldier?

USA Today has this article noting how the State Dept stayed out of Blackwater's way:

State Department officials did little to rein in private security guards who frequently shot at and sometimes killed innocent civilians in Iraq, according to a congressional report released Monday.

In two incidents in which guards from Blackwater USA killed Iraqis, State Department officials suggested paying the victims' families to mollify them "rather than … to investigate Blackwater for potential criminal liability," a report from the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee concluded.

The report, which relies on 437 internal Blackwater incident reports as well as State Department documents and e-mails, says Blackwater has fired 122 of its employees — more than half for mishandling weapons, drug or alcohol violations, violent behavior and lying.

State Department spokesman Tom Casey told the Associated Press he has not read the report and could not comment.

But I know that this can't be true, because the Wall Street Journal published this editorial by a Triple Canopy employee swearing that all the PMC shooters are good, decent men. And we know that the Wall Street Journal is a Very Serious Paper.

With conflicting reports, condemnations should not be made until the joint Iraqi-U.S. investigation is completed. The media, however, has accepted the Ministry of Interior's version of events, all but writing off the accounts of both Blackwater and the State Department.

This follows a long-established pattern of unfounded claims in the press about security contractors. For instance, numerous reports reference contractors making over $1,000 a day--far more than active-duty soldiers. Some point to the more than $700 million Blackwater has received in State Department contracts in order to denounce security firms as war profiteers.

The truth, however, is that contractors are cost-effective. Blackwater contractors, for example, are generally paid $450-$650 a day. More important, unlike U.S. servicemen, they usually receive no benefits and are paid only for the days they work. Security contractors at the better firms have typically retired from active duty or left the military on their own accord after extended service. They are honorable veterans who have chosen to risk their lives to protect American diplomats in a war zone.

I'm sure that a good deal of the American contractors at Triple Canopy and Blackwater are decent people. But let's be clear, we are talking about a great deal of money. In fact, as the Washington Post notes, the head of a 34-man security team makes more in a year than four-star General Petraeus does. For these kind of fees, we ought to be getting a bit more service than "protect the principal at all costs." Some of those costs are coming back to bite us in the ass. It scares me when I find myself agreeing with Ralph Peters, but maybe that's good - he can be clearheaded about the U.S. military.

Comments

[NVH]

"Like soldiers, security contractors are sometimes forced to make split-second decisions with enormous consequences. They must be--and are--accountable to our government for their actions."
--from the WSJ article J sites above. The bottom line, investigation is NOT finished yet, I think it highly UNLIKELY that Prince goes before Waxman and says basically, you're wrong about my outfit w/o some intel on the ground over there about it, which I'm positive he has. And in the end, when the investigation is done, the Blackwater Team that gets held liable for whatever it gets held liable for, well just replace it with a Marine / Army / Spec Ops protection detail and you've got the same thing, covered by the same laws. Shit happens, it sucks, justice will be served. Just like the Abu Ghraib, just like this past sniper incident, just like the Marines that killed 24 Iraqis in cold blood according to Murtha. Let the process work, work the process, etc..don't get caught up in the god damn rhetoric. Plus, on the bright side, it DOES save us money. Personnally I would be fine financing a few more soldiers and Marines with my tax dollars, but talk to Bill Clinton and the Joint Chiefs circa '93 on that one.

[Grandjester]

And there it is folks! I know, I know, you thought that there was no way in hell that out esteemed NVH would be able to drag Clinton into a discussion about Blackwater (Whose BSC Divison being discussed here didn't even exist before 2001), but he has done it! Irregardless of the facts (namely, Richard B. Cheney SecDef, set forth the cuts you mention), NVH pulls YET ANOTHER "Blame Clinton" outta his ass! Remarkable, and with a high degree of difficulty (a quadruple Rush, with a Hannity half-twist!).

[NVH]

It's not like I mean to throw him under the bus, but I also don't care. The guy presided over the largest DoD cuts in the last two decades, he was president, enough said. OBVIOUSLY we needed cuts after the Cold War, it just didn't make sense financially ( thank god we had time to sit down and think about the DoD budget at the time...and sit down and think we did, for 10 years, training UBL and KSM to come bomb the WTC ).