Waxman: Why Did Drunken Blackwater Shooter Get More Work?

[babylonsister]

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/004398.php

Drunken Blackwater Shooter Went Quickly Back to Work
By Spencer Ackerman - October 5, 2007, 4:46PM

The Blackwater guard who drunkenly shot a bodyguard for Iraqi Vice President Adel Abdul Mehdi in December 2006 was back working for a Department of Defense contractor by February, CNN reported this morning.

And in a letter House oversight committee Chair Henry Waxman (D-CA) sent to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice today, he asks why. He suggests that the reason it was so easy for the guard, Andrew J. Moonen, to get back to work, was because the State Department didn't inform the Defense Department about what the ex-Blackwater employee did to get initially expelled from Iraq. Moonen returned to Kuwait in February, CNN reported, working for Defense Department contractor Combat Support Associates (CSA).

During this week's Congressional hearing on Blackwater, a State official refused to tell Waxman anything about the incident -- including whether State had helped Moonen flee Iraq after the shooting.

"It is hard to reconcile this development with the State Department’s claim that 'We are scrupulous in terms of oversight and scrutiny not only of Blackwater but all of our contractors,'" Waxman writes.

Waxman requested all of the Departments documents concerning Moonen and the Christmas Eve, 2006 shooting.

Waxman's full letter is at link~

[Hydra]

1. Gee, and we pay $445,000 per year for these people

:puke:

[monktonman]

2. but...but...he served his manditory 30 day suspension.

Whats the problem?

[soothsayer]

3. Well, he only shoots people on holidays. No biggie.

[L. Coyote]

4. He also went home to Seattle and bought a big house. New T-shirt idea:

    Join Blackwater USA
travel to exotic, distant lands
 meet exciting, unusual people

        KILL THEM
  and buy a big new house.

[L. Coyote]

5. The CNN story: Army did not call him up because he was a mercenary!

Are the military services making exceptions to their call-up rules for mercenaries?

======================
(CNN) = http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/10/04/blackwater.contractor/

A Blackwater USA employee who was fired after he allegedly shot and killed an Iraqi security guard on Christmas Eve last year was hired by another private contractor to work in the region less than two months later.

Congress has been taking a closer look at the government's use of private security contractors.

Andrew J. Moonen returned to the United States within a few days of the incident, his attorney said, but in February he returned to Kuwait, working for Defense Department contractor Combat Support Associates (CSA), a company spokesman said.

Mooney worked for CSA from February to August of this year, spokesman Paul Gennaro said.

Because the State Department and Blackwater kept the incident quiet and out of Moonen's personnel records, CSA was unaware of the December incident when it hired Moonen.

According to Moonen's personnel record, the U.S. Army tried to call him back to service in April 2007, but canceled the request when they were notified he was overseas.

[lonestarnot]

6. That's Bongwater. Didn't you read Borowitz?