By Rod Nordland and Mark Hosenball Newsweek Oct. 15, 2007 issue - The colonel was furious. "Can you believe it? They actually drew their weapons on U.S. soldiers." He was describing a 2006 car accident, in which an SUV full of Blackwater operatives had crashed into a U.S. Army Humvee on a street in Baghdad's Green Zone. The colonel, who was involved in a follow-up investigation and spoke on the condition he not be named, said the Blackwater guards disarmed the U.S. Army soldiers and made them lie on the ground at gunpoint until they could disentangle the SUV. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21163806/site/newsweek Blackwater Guards Fired at Fleeing Cars, Soldiers Say First U.S. Troops on Scene Found No Evidence of Shooting by Iraqis; Incident Called 'Criminal' By Sudarsan Raghavan and Josh White Washington Post Foreign Service Friday, October 12, 2007; A01 BAGHDAD, Oct. 11 -- Blackwater USA guards shot at Iraqi civilians as they tried to drive away from a Baghdad square on Sept. 16, according to a report compiled by the first U.S. soldiers to arrive at the scene, where they found no evidence that Iraqis had fired weapons. "It appeared to me they were fleeing the scene when they were engaged. It had every indication of an excessive shooting," said Lt. Col. Mike Tarsa, whose soldiers reached Nisoor Square 20 to 25 minutes after the gunfire subsided. His soldiers' report -- based upon their observations at the scene, eyewitness interviews and discussions with Iraqi police -- concluded that there was "no enemy activity involved" and described the shootings as a "criminal event." Their conclusions mirrored those reached by the Iraqi government, which has said the Blackwater guards killed 17 people http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/11/AR2007101101030_pf.html Blackwater has to go.
I think it's a good thing Bush looted our treasury to create an unaccountable mercinary army, that's your tax dollars at work.
If I'd have been in the HMMWV and those mercs had drawn up on me I'd have fragged their assess and gone straight to Hell with them. No wonder the Army is getting wasted in Iraq. With wimps like those I'm surprised the whole country hasn't been surrendered to the terrorists.
Who would you replace them with? What a hardass. No doubt your hefty experience playing Counterstrike would prove decisive.
Who knows? It isn't a noteworthy accomplishment to be able to pull a gun trigger and aim... maybe he could.
Our machismo-laden, kill-everything armchair military wannabes must be gnashing their teeth: I don't know whether to pull the "responsible gun owners" joke, or reconsider Desi's ill-stated point. Of the latter, and Counterstrike jokes aside, it is curious that we hear about how badassed our military is, yet they apparently surrender to mercenaries. Oh, right. They're not mercenaries. Mercenaries are what bad guys use. Well, even better: our military gave over to foreign insurgents. I don't want to hear about how tough our military is anymore. Or maybe I should suggest the insurgents won that encounter because the Americans didn't think them Arab enough to kill. Either way, the story is a huge embarrassment for the U.S. military, and even more so if it's true: Is it because they have guns that the macho armchair soldiers aren't upset that they've accused the U.S. military of lying? Or are the armchair soldiers going to throw in with the macho-looking insurgents who seem to be winning? Now isn't that an embarrassment to our military, too? That the mercenaries ... I mean, insurgents are preferred because they're better than soldiers and marines?
It all depends on the details. This was probably a surprise to the soldiers. I'm guessing they ended up with guns pointed at them before they knew what was going on, and after that it is sensible to surrender. When someone has a gun aimed at you it doesn't make them tough or you less tough to avoid getting shot.
If they thought they were on the same side it seems plausible to me that the soldiers are not at fault. But maybe they should know better by now, and treat Blackwater as dangerous unpredictable lunatics. There are also other possibilities, like Blackwater outnumbered them. I don't know what is the most probable scenario, so maybe they had no excuse.
Well, they should know better by now. I'm starting to think the orders surrounding how Blackwater is to be treated are even more frustrating to our troops than the orders given the SEALs when the first President Bush scheduled a photo-op landing in Somalia: "Okay, boys ... this one's different: Do not--I repeat, do not--shoot the first thing you see when you come ashore." Seriously, if our Iraqi allies had pulled this kind of stunt, what would people be saying? Should we treat Blackwater any differently? Question: Once the situation was over, why did the military not arrest the offending Blackwater personnel for taking up arms against the American military?
Ha. Yes it is. Anyway, I mostly just get annoyed when self-important, peripheral spectators jump to ridiculous conclusions about events halfway around the world when their sole experience with said events amounts to a few sentences they read on the internet. On the plus side, it is also a good way to weed out people who have no idea what the fuck they're talking about. Actually, we have detained contractors before. The lack of universal regulations governing PMC and military integration can sometimes result in conflict as the mission of the contractors is not always congruent with that of the military elements they are operating in proximity to. Which is yet another symptom of the way the operation in Iraq has lacked unity of effort and a cohesive chain of command, I'm afraid.
