..........But the White House hopes the outrage will once again blow over.

[rodeodance]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/uc/20070919/cm_uc_crrscx/op_173877;_ylt=Au31N7oXWcLkboD3qjWEvEWcts8F

..........But the White House hopes the outrage will once again blow over. As The Associated Press reported on Monday: "The U.S. clearly hoped the Iraqis would be satisfied with an investigation, a finding of responsibility and compensation to the victim's families — and not insist on expelling a company that the Americans cannot operate here without." Or, as Ambassador Ryan Crocker testified to the U.S. Senate last week: "There is simply no way at all that the State Department Bureau of Diplomatic Security could ever have enough full-time personnel to staff the security function in Iraq. There is no alternative except through contracts."

Consider the irony of that last statement — that the U.S. experiment in building democracy in Iraq is dependent upon the same garrisons of foreign mercenaries that drove the founders of our own country to launch the American Revolution. As George Washington warned in his Farewell Address, once the American government enters into these "foreign entanglements," we lose the Republic, because public accountability is sacrificed to the necessities of war for empire.

Despite the fact that Blackwater USA gets almost all of its revenue from the U.S. government — much of it in no-bid contracts aided, no doubt, by the lavish contributions to the Republican Party made by company founder Erik Prince and his billionaire parents — its operations remain largely beyond public scrutiny. Blackwater and others in this international security racket operate as independent states of their own, subject neither to the rules of Iraq nor the ones that the U.S. government applies to its own uniformed forces.

"We are not simply a 'private security company,'" Blackwater boasts on its corporate Website. "We are a professional military, law enforcement, security, peacekeeping and stability operations firm. ... We have become the most responsive, cost-effective means of affecting the strategic balance in support of security and peace, and freedom and democracy everywhere." .......

[Tesla]

1. We need a candidate who will call these guys OUT!!

Not say we need to stay!!

[Robson]

4. WANTED: Mavericks

We need true mavericks that are willing to AGGRESSIVELY shake the rotten apples from the tree, and sadly I don't see the Congressional leaders nor Democratic candidates, save for Kucinich that I feel would do this. Hopefully Edwards. There are far too many willing to go along to get along in a corrupted system, that is influenced by only special interests. I truly hope some of the second/third tier candidates of both parties run on independent tickets.

edited to add: We have to get this country back to sensibility where we, the unpropagandized people run it, and not the neocons and war mongers.

[Solly Mack]

2. Shameful

k/r

[tblue37]

3. K&R

[Lugnut]

5. K&R n/t

[hootinholler]

6. Hessians n/t

[farmbo]

7. Any guesses WHO will be compensating the victims of Blackwater's massacre?

You...the US taxpayer.

:grr:

[Imagevision]

8. Cheney will get Bush to appropriate funds to cover the Blackwater blunder...

[Tesla]

9. God forbid the"Parent" Co. pay

I mean that would take away profits for all those executive bonuses!!