Fortune article re: Blackwater

[Lone_Star_Dem]

Iraqi civilian deaths unlikely to hurt Blackwater

NEW YORK (Fortune) -- In Baghdad, you can always pick out the Blackwater security guys. They're the burly Americans wearing dark green fatigues, wrap-around Oakleys and enough weaponry to take over a small country. They keep to themselves, throw big parties and are universally despised - and sometimes genuinely feared - by their rival security contractors.

So it didn't surprise many in Baghdad yesterday when Blackwater guards were accused of shooting to death at least eight Iraqi civilians Sunday while protecting a U.S. State Department motorcade. "It's just business as usual for them," says one rival security contractor. "They always shoot first and ask questions later. When we're out in country, we often fear Blackwater more than the Iraqis."

That's why the Iraqi government has moved so quickly to condemn the attacks and cancel Blackwater's license, as well as announce a review of all local and foreign security firms. "They've made many mistakes resulting in other deaths, but this is the last and the biggest mistake," says Brig. Gen. Abdul-Karim Khalaf, a spokesman for the Iraqi Interior Ministry. "Security contracts do not allow them to shoot people randomly. They are here to protect personnel, not shoot people without reason." (Blackwater, for its part, says its guards responded appropriately to an ambush.)

But few believe much will happen to them - or rival private security companies - as they are so ingrained into the U.S. mission in Iraq that it's difficult to imagine operating without them. The war effort in Iraq relies heavily on private security companies; at least 28 U.S. firms have received government contracts to work in the region, worth a total of at least $4 billion. Blackwater, based in North Carolina, is one of the largest U.S. firms, along with Triple Canopy and DynCorp (Charts).

More at link: http://money.cnn.com/2007/09/18/magazines/fortune/gimbel_blackwater.fortune/index.htm?postversion=2007091813

This article covers more on Blackwater and their worth, not just in money, but to the US in Iraq than any other one I've seen yet in the MSM.

There's little doubt among anyone that they're going to be staying put.

I found it appropriate that it comes from a finance publication.

[YOY]

1. Monsters

Folks like them need to be put in sanitariums and not given money to kill.

[Lone_Star_Dem]

2. Killers with blanket immunity

And our taxes are paying their considerable salaries.

[ThomWV]

5. Monsters that we created in our schools->military training->at taxpayer expense

These are not homicidal maniacs created out of the dust of their own perversions; we trained these kids. They come from our schools and their were raised right here in the middle of us - of all places, right here in our own bigoted Carolinas, and rust-belt remnants of the great trade and manufacturing region that used to be the Great Lakes, and the straw-haired boys from family farms lost to mechanized agriculture pulled from the the dross of poverty left behind. From us, a failed culture filled with the sorts of hatreds and and aura of the adventure of death promoted day and night by media of all forms.

These aren't some monsters in the night, these are our own sons and daughters become what we raised them, educated them, and trained them to be.

[soothsayer]

3. Sovereign Iraq just needs to send a couple to the gallows and the rest will cool

their trigger fingers a bit

[Vidar]

4. We should do the same with their executives.

[11 Bravo]

6. The Blackwater boys need to put on a green suit and submit to the UCMJ.

Otherwise, they are just hired killers.

[Lone_Star_Dem]

7. I agree, but it will never happen

One of the things that makes them of such value in Iraq is that they possess immunity that our soldiers do not.

Neither the US, nor these killers, are going to be held accountable in any real fashion for what they do there.