I Survived Blackwater - Janessa Gans

[cullen2382]

Editorial - LA Times

When the Iraqi government last month demanded the expulsion of Blackwater USA, the private security firm, I had one reaction: It's about time.

As a U.S. official in Baghdad for nearly two years, I was frequently the "beneficiary" of Blackwater's over-the-top zeal. "Just pretend it's a roller coaster," I used to tell myself during trips through downtown Baghdad.

We would careen around corners, jump road dividers, reach speeds in excess of 100 mph and often cross over to the wrong side of the street, oncoming traffic be damned.

But much more appalling than the ride was the deleterious effect each movement through town had on the already beleaguered people of Iraq. I began to wonder whether my meetings, intended to further U.S. policy goals and improve the lives of Iraqis, were doing more harm than good. With our drivers honking at, cutting off, pelting with water bottles (a favorite tactic) and menacing with weapons anyone in their way, how many enemies were we creating?

One particularly infuriating time, I was in the town of Irbil in northern Iraq, being driven to a meeting with a Kurdish political leader. We were on a narrow stretch of highway with no shoulders and foot-high barriers on both sides. The lead Suburban in our convoy loomed up behind an old, puttering sedan driven by an older man with a young woman and three children.

As we approached at typical breakneck speed, the Blackwater driver honked furiously and motioned to the side, as if they should pull over. The kids in the back seat looked back in horror, mouths agape at the sight of the heavily armored Suburbans driven by large, armed men in dark sunglasses. The poor Iraqi driver frantically searched for a means of escape, but there was none. So the lead Blackwater vehicle smashed heedlessly into the car, pushing it into the barrier. We zoomed by too quickly to notice if anyone was hurt.

Until that point I had never mentioned anything to my drivers about their tactics, but this time I could not contain myself.

"Where do you all expect them to go?" I shrieked. "It was an old guy and a family, for goodness' sake. Was it necessary for them to destroy their poor old car?"

My driver responded impassively: "Ma'am, we've been trained to view anyone as a potential threat. You don't know who they might use as decoys or what the risks are. Terrorists could be disguised as anyone."

More at:
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-gans6oct06,0,1155563.story?coll=la-opinion-center



These are the kind of people are government wants us to put our trust and blind faith in? Everyone's a threat, who cares if their little children. :sarcasm:

[daninthemoon]

1. These are eye the witness stories we need to get out in the open.

[babylonsister]

2. Rec'd. I've been waiting for accounts like this, and I'm horrified. I'm glad

she spoke up, and expect others will, too.

[Eric J in MN]

3. US officials were able to travel before the creation of Blackwater in 1997.

Let's stop funding Blackwater and similar companies, and pay public employees to transport diplomats.

Please email your Rep and Senators that you want public employees providing security and not Blackwater.

[Kagemusha]

4. Oh come on. Granted Blackwater's bad stuff but...

In 1997, the US was not engaged in the military occupation of a largely hostile country and trying to conduct diplomatic, intelligence and reconstruction operations in a better armed version of Mogadishu.

I shouldn't bother to repeat it but, had uniformed military troops been running these convoys, they would be doing the SAME THINGS. And, it has apparently been forgotten on DU, they HAVE BEEN. Just not for State Department employees.

[Eric J in MN]

6. Let's say uniformed military would have done the same things.

Why should we fund the building of a private army?

[Kagemusha]

10. Don't make me laugh. No such army lasts longer than the latest paycheck.

This isn't some kind of organization with enlisted terms of 8 years. Don't turn this on its head by speaking of "fund the building of". That's not how it works and it doesn't take rocket science to know that. The only reason the number of Blackwater employees in Iraq is so large is because the State Department contract is so large, giving Blackwater the money to hire the people qualified to fill it.

Then those people do convoy duties following the guidelines that US troops would also be following, which includes "spidering" windshields of cars that get too close (i.e. shooting through the windshield and maybe killing someone from the "warning shot" alone), and so on. Those guidelines are approved by the State Department because it keeps their people alive.

End the contract and the "private army" would dissolve into nothingness in days. I am happy to hear arguments that employing them at all is wrong and a waste. But we are not funding the "building" of a standing private army. Blackwater rents its soldiers. It does not own them.

[pokercat999]

13. Just a comment.

"approved by the State Department because it keeps their people alive."

Really just too bad, too fucking bad, I hope every state department employee in Iraq is trapped there and made to pay the price for their treatment of the Iraqi people along with the dogs of war.

i love he smell of justice in the aftermath.

[Kagemusha]

15. I do not share that level of bloodthirst.

Not interested in starting to either.

[TheMadMonk]

28. But perpetuating it?

I hate ruddy "patriots" like you. Who gives a fuck who dies, in the name of saving American lives.

[Kagemusha]

33. Ok fine. Hate me. Hate me with all your being, because I care about US lives too.

Hate me because I actually mourn when I see American lives lost in Iraq, not just Iraqi. Hate me because I actually do not wish for more American diplomats and soldiers to die because of changed rules of engagement while still stuck in a stupidly run war. Hate me because I don't want to see US personnel dying because because a bunch of people on a message board have a problem with their continued sucking in of oxygen on a daily basis.

I'm happy to be hated by you for that. Good hating bye.

[Eric J in MN]

16. Do you approve of Americans shooting at the cars of Iraqis for driving nearby? NT

NT

[Kagemusha]

19. I have mixed feelings about it. There are real suicide bombers out there.

The results of such an official policy, ruthlessly enforced by the troops and contractors on the ground, has led to the deaths of many innocents. It has also surely saved many American lives from real live bad people. I see it more as an exceptionally dirty cost of doing business, and Blackwater or not, this is the cost that the US would be paying, so the whole Blackwater outrage is largely - not completely, but largely - a red herring. The US has to pull out completely and stop the entire ground war if it wants to not have this problem in the future.

Obviously, Bush and Rice aren't prepared to go there, so Blackwater or no Blackwater, these shootings will continue, because we are NOT going to get contractors and troops to lower their defenses at this point. Iraq is far too dangerous, and we could yell 'til we're blue in the face, they won't kill less Iraqis and die in greater numbers instead. We ought not bother to try. Getting US forces pulled out completely is much saner.

[Eric J in MN]

20. They have no moral right to shoot at drivers for being nearby,

...and if China were occupying the US, the Chinese would have no moral right to shoot at us as we drive to work.

[Kagemusha]

21. Survival trumps morality in a war zone. That's the nature of war.

If we don't like it, we shouldn't be there. I don't want us to be there. But I have a hard time spitting at people for the crime of trying to keep all their body parts attached.

[Eric J in MN]

22. So if the US were an occupied country...

...and you were driving to work when a truck carrying people from another country shot at your car, would your attitude be that while you want the occupiers to leave, you don't blame them for shooting at your car while they're here?

[Kagemusha]

23. There's a little flaw in your fantasy hypothetical.

It sort of matters whether other Americans would be trying to destroy their convoys with car bombs on a frequent basis. If that's what was going on, no, I couldn't particularly blame them for shooting at my car if I was suicidal, stupid, or unlucky enough to get too close. I'd just try not to be any of the three.

But that's a forgivable omission for a fantasy hypothetical. Leaving out the fact that there are real, actual suicide bombers targeting US convoys in real, actual life seems to be quite a massive omission in your view of the Blackwater situation and the convoy rules of engagement in general. You seem to think it's all in their heads or something.

[Eric J in MN]

24. There is a real problem of drunk driving in the US.

But I don't want police to set up checkpoints and force every driver to breathe into a breathalyzer. Do you?

It's one answer to an actual problem.

There is a real problem of car bombs in Iraq. But I don't want Americans shooting at cars for being nearby, just because it's a solution.

Some solutions are worse than the problem.

[Kagemusha]

25. There isn't another solution except not being there.

That is my point. I'm not being flippant. There simply isn't another solution that enables a kinder, gentler military occupation in a war zone.

[pokercat999]

36. I think that you need to rethink your position or I will

KNOW YOU ARE OUT OF YOUR FUCKING MIND YOU FREEPER.

I feel much better now.

"I couldn't particularly blame them for shooting at my car if I was suicidal, stupid, or unlucky enough to get too close" no doubt in my mind which you would be. Stupid is as stupid does.

[Heywood J]

29. Little problem there.

"War zone" and "nature of war". If you want to call this war, you have to abide by the rules. One of them is not to kill civilians. Blackwater seems to be going out of their way to kill civilians - that makes them war criminals. Spit at them for that. The Geneva Conventions say who you can and cannot target. The DOD needs to control its dogs.

It's funny how everyone else seems to make due with keeping casualties lower than Blackwater.

[Kagemusha]

32. ....I give up, this is completely ridiculous.

The DOD needs to control its dogs? Do you have any idea of how many civilians the DOD's own uniformed soldiers have killed? Do you have any idea how many uniformed US soldiers are war criminals under your own definition?

As for the State Department, "everyone else" constitutes the remainder of 1150 security contractors who are not part of Blackwater's 850. Given that ratio, it's not surprising Blackwater's total of incidents is twice that of the other companies. And I just plain don't believe that the US Army has created lower casualties than Blackwater, but the Army claims not to keep such statistics, so how would we even know.

[roody]

30. Are you against the illegal invasion and occupation

of Iraq?

[Kagemusha]

31. Yeah, I am.

Was that so hard to ascertain?

[provis99]

35. wait a minute. Who said the invasion was illegal?

Congress said it was a legal invasion, by authorizing the use of force to remove Saddam Hussein. And don't give me a moral argument, or a UN legal argument, because that stuff doesn't mean jack squat to the US government.

[Fridays Child]

5. So, to Blackwater employees, all Iraqis are enemies? Do American troops view Iraqis the same way?

We didn't have enemies in Iraq before March 2003. Bush has created a self-perpetuating conflict. A Möbius strip war.

[Kagemusha]

11. Yes, American troops who prefer to keep breathing view Iraqis that way.

And if we're talking treating them as potentially hostile, at least, that presumption would be proper and wise.

[Joanne98]

7. Pigs

[Yael]

8. This kind of thing just makes my blood boil

and I suspect that this is just the beginning of hearing account after account after account of what these monsters are doing.

:grr:

[Amonester]

9. K&R

I just sent the link to K.O.

This other scandal needs to be made public at large ASAP.

ENOUGH!

[Gregorian]

12. I can hardly wait until they get back home.

Can't we just leave them there?

You know, I hate to sound like a whiner, but everybody should ride a bicycle around for a while. The experience is astoundingly similar to what the Iraqis must feel when encountering Blackwater vehicles. In fact, in the bike forum I belong to, there are regular posts about who was killed and where.

It's just so American in it's form, if but exaggerated.

[tom_paine]

14. More confirmation of what we already knew. Blackwater are some out of control mercs

unanswerable to any law.

And one day, it is most likely that they will be trained on US.

Do not kid yourselves, that is one of the Bushie objectives, to make the institutions of the Old American Republic melt, and seemlessly replace them with institutions that are loyal only to Bushies and will cement their control over the nation that is their captured prize, America.

Why else do you think they are purging and murdering and destroying our military? So, eventually, Blackwater WILL BE OUR MILITARY.

Why else do you think they are neturalizing and bankrupting the Treasury and Congress? To replace it with their directly-answerable-to-the-Emperor Bushies Citizen Corps Councils...(get it? the KKK became the CCC, Conservative Kitizens Kouncil, in the 80s, now this is a Bushie Signal that all people with KKK morality in their hearts need to apply and they will be running things)

Meet your eventual "privatized" legislative arm, Imperial Subjects of Amerika.

http://www.citizencorps.gov/cc/index.do

[Doctor_J]

27. You are correct Tom

As soon as the electorate/world will no longer tolerate Mr. Prince's decimation of Iraq, Blackwater will return home and our tax dollars will fund the occupation of ourselves. Is this a great country or what?

[RamboLiberal]

17. K&R

[Cha]

18. I've trained myself to view anyone who

works for the bushits as a REAL THREAT and Karma's a BI-ATCH.

[Vidar]

26. K&R.

[codjh9]

34. I also hope some top Dems (duh, our candidates?) are trying to point out to the public that

the same party that talks about 'government spending' is spending a shitload more money on these 'private contractors' than if the military numbers were increased by the same amount. In other words, instead of paying a soldier a typical salary, we're paying these 'private security firms' insane hourly amounts. Yes, Lies & Deception, brought to you by the people who always DO (bring us lies & deception).