State Department Shuts Critical Military Out of Blackwater Probe

[babylonsister]

Blackwater and the State Department say one thing -- namely, that Blackwater guards were under attack by Iraqi insurgents at Nisour Square on September 16. The Iraqi government and the U.S. military say another: Blackwater didn't come under fire on that fateful day, and instead used deadly force against a misperceived threat. So as a joint U.S.-Iraqi investigation gets underway, maybe it shouldn't come as a surprise that the Iraqis and the U.S. military feel shunted aside by a hard-charging State Department and its FBI allies.

The New York Times reports that the joint inquiry, with the predominant U.S. component coming from the military, hasn't had access to initial State Department reports (at least one of which was written by Blackwater), nor has it had access to a separate investigation into the incident that State asked the FBI to lead. Furthermore, the military has neither been allowed to interview the four Blackwater guards at Nisour Square, nor been allowed to inspect the vehicle that they drove. That last point is crucial: examining the vehicle would easily determine whether any ballistic damage to it resulted from the kinds of weapons Iraqis typically fire or the sort that Blackwater is issued, which probably aren't the same. (There was another Blackwater convoy on the opposite end of the square.)

There's been a fair amount of friction over the past year between the Iraqi government and the U.S. military. But when it comes to the Blackwater investigation, they appear united in frustration.

“We haven’t received any information from the Americans about their own two investigations,” senior Iraqi investigator said. “F.B.I. investigators have asked us to help them and share our information, as they have started a third investigation.”

{A} senior American military officer said the State Department had also refused to provide details of its investigation. “We have asked questions,” the official said. “They have not responded back on those.” Both the Iraqi investigator and the American military officer spoke on condition of anonymity because neither was authorized to discuss the investigations publicly.

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack deflected criticism of State onto the FBI, saying that FBI agents are "going to exercise their prerogatives with respect to the integrity of the investigation." A Justice Department official cautioned that the FBI only arrived in Baghdad last week, and expected a more harmonious relationship with the Iraqis and the military to evolve.

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/004430.php

[flashl]

1. Its a game ...

DU post: U.S. Government=contractors

Private contractors play a huge role in basic government work—mostly out of public view

September 29, 2004

As war fighting came to dominate the news in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, names like Halliburton and Bechtel became as familiar to the average American as the names of any general, division or soldier in the field. Fallujah first attracted wide public attention when insurgents killed and crowds mutilated the remains of four employees of Blackwater Security Consulting. Employees of CACI International and Titan were accused of taking part in the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib. That the use of contractors on the battlefield and in nation building in Iraq and Afghanistan is front page news comes as a surprise to many, but it is a consequence of a decades-long policy to keep government smaller by relying on the private sector.

What the War on Terror has shown is the extent to which private contractors have become part and parcel of Pentagon operations. Where once contracts went to build ships, planes, tanks and missiles, today the majority of contract dollars buy services—the time of people—and information technology. Increasingly the private workforce works alongside officials, in Pentagon meeting rooms as well as on Iraqi battlefields, performing what citizens consider the stuff of government: planning, policy writing, budgeting, intelligence gathering, nation building.

In March 2002, a year before the start of the Iraq war, then-Secretary of the Army Thomas White told top Defense Department officials that reductions in Army civilian and military personnel, carried out over the previous 11 years, had been accompanied by an increased reliance on private contractors about whose very dimensions the Pentagon knew too little. "Currently," he wrote, "Army planners and programmers lack visibility at the Departmental level into the labor and costs associated with the contract work force and of the organizations and missions supported by them."

It is time for everyone to realize that when we complaint about government and officials NOT responding to OUR concerns, think about this, why would a contractor STOP what they are doing? If they STOP what they are doing they would not have a job.