Blackwater: When Things Go Wrong

[RedEarth]

The U.S. Marines, who had military responsibility for the Sunni Arab heartland in and around Fallujah, knew it was a tinderbox and had been trying hard not to set it aflame. “Patient, persistent presence” was their motto. The attack on the Blackwater convoy changed everything.

The convoy had entered the city by bypassing a Marine checkpoint without the Marines’ knowledge. The Marines learned of the ambush the same way the rest of the world did: from the grisly pictures on TV

President Bush, enraged by the attack, ordered a major assault on the city. Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, a Pentagon spokesman, said of the coming U.S. response: “It will be deliberate, it will be precise and it will be overwhelming. … We will pacify that city.”

A key objective of the assault, U.S. leaders said, was to capture the killers of the Blackwater contractors and bring them to justice. The Blackwater incident was a tragic error that provoked a violent chain of events, according to Bing West, a former Marine and Reagan-era assistant defense secretary who wrote “No True Glory,” a book about the battle for Fallujah.

“Ultimately, Fallujah was a decision by our top leadership against the advice of the Marines,” West said in an interview. “They were not going to change their entire strategy because of a tactical error. They were overruled.”

http://home.hamptonroads.com/stories/story.cfm?story=108115&ran=53748

[seemslikeadream]

1. the company should enjoy same immunity from liability as the government

http://home.hamptonroads.com/stories/story.cfm?story=108115&ran=53748

[CrispyQ]

2. ...

"Blackwater says the government’s unprecedented reliance on private contractors on the battlefield has made them so indistinguishable from uniformed personnel that the company should enjoy the same immunity from liability as the government.

"'You can’t separate the contractors from the troops anymore,' Joseph Schmitz, general counsel of Blackwater’s parent company, said..."

Then the soldiers should enjoy the same level of pay as Blackwater employees do.


This is what is really disturbing, though:

"President Bush, enraged by the attack, ordered a major assault on the city."

We have a man running the country who reacts like a 3-year old.