Mother Jones: Blackwater Contractor Saw Killing Iraqis as 9/11 Payback

[laststeamtrain]

Justice Dept.: Blackwater Contractor Saw Killing Iraqis as 9/11 Payback
— By Daniel Schulman | Tue September 8, 2009 8:55 AM PST


For sport, they rolled through the streets of Baghdad hurling frozen oranges and water bottles at civilians and nearby vehicles, trying to smash windshields and injure bystanders. Convoying through the city in armored vehicles, the contractors fired their weapons indiscriminately. One member of the Blackwater security team known as Raven 23 regularly bragged about his body count and viewed killing Iraqis as "payback for 9/11."

These allegations are contained in court records filed on Monday by Justice Department lawyers prosecuting five Blackwater contractors for the September 2007 shooting frenzy in Baghdad's Nisour Square that killed 14 Iraqis and wounded 20 others. Anticipating that lawyers representing the contractors will argue that they were acting in self defense, the prosecution is seeking to introduce evidence that "several of the defendants had harbored a deep hostility toward Iraqi civilians which they demonstrated in words and deeds." The charges are similar to those that recently emerged in civil lawsuits against Blackwater, stemming from the Nisour Square episode.

According to the court filing:

"In addition to verbal expressions of hatred towards Iraqi civilians, the defendants engaged in unprovoked and aggressive behavior toward unarmed Iraqi civilians in Baghdad. In so doing, the defendants routinely acted in disregard of the use of force policies that they were required to follow as a condition of their employment as Blackwater guards."

...

" This evidence tends to establish that the defendants fired at innocent Iraqis not because they actually believed that they were in imminent danger of serious bodily injury and actually believed that they had no alternative to the use of deadly force, but rather that they fired at innocent Iraqi civilians because of their hostility toward Iraqis and their grave indifference to the harm that their actions would cause."

<snip>

Allegations of serious misconduct by security contractors—including the indiscriminate murder of Iraqi and Afghan civilians—are nothing new. But with the recently disclosed Animal House antics of ArmorGroup's embassy guards in Kabul, the government's reliance on (and oversight of) contractors has once again become a flashpoint of controversy. Like ArmorGroup's embassy guards, the Blackwater contractors accused or murdering innocent Iraqis in Nisour Square—and engaging in a pattern of aggressive and violent behavior, according to the Justice Department—were under the oversight of the State Department when these abuses allegedly occurred. When the Commission on Wartime Contracting convenes a hearing to examine State's contractor management and oversight next week, expect the agency to face some intense scrutiny not just about how lewd conduct and cruel hazing went on under its nose but about its monitoring of Blackwater's scandal-prone operators as well.

<more>

http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2009/09/justice-dept-blackwater-contractor-saw-killing-iraqis-911-payback

[Solly Mack]

1. K&R

[Skittles]

2. WTF does Iraq have to do with 9/11?

Blackwater = certified idiots

[Enthusiast]

3. Oh, it's a Muslim nation.

If this country is going to continue to employ Xe the administration should at least disabuse them of the notion that this country is at war with Islam.

[TankLV]

5. no - it's a "muslin" nation - the Repukes say so!!!

[tiny elvis]

4. 9/11 was an inside job

fired at innocent Iraqis

fired at innocent Iraqi civilians

murdering innocent Iraqis

from whom are they distinguishing innocent iraqis?
does shooting back at blackwater make them guilty of something?
http://www.citizeninvestigationteam.com/nsa.html

[Doctor_J]

6. Well, with Limpballs on AFN every day lying about the connection,

it would be easy for a soldier to make that mistake. One more reason the drug-addled pedophile should not be talking to our troops.