American Mercenaries Are Trigger Happy Thugs Running Wild In Iraq [ 20
December 2011 ]
QUOTE
‘Gentlemen, We Shot a Judge’ and Other Tales of
Blackwater, DynCorp, and Triple Canopy’s Rampage Through Iraq
Every time a Blackwater centurion discharged his weapon in Iraq, the company
filed a written report with the U.S. State Department. Blackwater shot Iraq to
shit. Here are the reports.
Blackwater, the private mercenary firm that became synonymous with Bush-era war profiteering and reckless combat-tourism, announced yesterday that it has changed its name to Academi (after a previous incarnation as Xe Services) in a bid to distance itself from its history of wanton lawlessness. We've obtained a 4,500-page record of that history in the form of State Department incident reports documenting every time a Blackwater guard [ admitted that he ] shot at an Iraqi between 2005 and 2007........ the reports are dominated by Blackwater, which was paid roughly $1 billion between 2004 and 2009 to provide "worldwide protective services" for State Department personnel. (It continues to surreptitiously weave its tentacles into various government contracts; hence the name changes.)
In Iraq, Blackwater's "protective services" consisted in large part of preemptively shooting any car that drove near its convoys. Page after page of the reports feature drivers (and occasionally boat pilots) who were fired upon simply because they drove "aggressively," attempted to pass, or didn't heed warnings to keep their distance. There was no routine mechanism for following up with the drivers to determine if they were injured or were actually hostile. Blackwater (and DynCorp and Triple Canopy) guards roamed Iraqi cities and highways, ignoring traffic rules and shooting at other drivers literally at will, and driving on.
Shot at for Using a Cell Phone
On February 19, 2007, a Blackwater motorcade carrying a dignitary to a
local juvenile prison was attempting to make a left turn when a parked white
four-door sedan entered oncoming traffic...... The same Blackwater
team fired on cars three other times that day.
"Any Disciplinary Actions Would Be Seen as Lowering Morale"
In February 2005, a Blackwater team
fired hundreds of rounds at two different "aggressive" cars during an
operation in Baghdad. Team members subsequently told State Department
investigators that 1) one of the cars' occupants fired on them, striking a
vehicle in the motorcade, and 2) one of the cars was on a Be on the Lookout
(BOLO) list as a suspected insurgent vehicle. Both were lies. Investigators
later found that bullet holes in the Blackwater vehicle had been caused by
friendly fire and that none of the Blackwater guards involved could recall the
make or model of the car that was allegedly on the BOLO list, making it
impossible for them to have known such a car was on the list. (The team's
leader told one investigator that he always claimed that cars he
fired on were on the BOLO list, whether they were or not. Indeed, the vast
majority of shooting reports claim that the target vehicles were on the BOLO
list.)......... RSO informed the investigators that any
disciplinary actions would be deemed as lowering the morale of the entire
[personal security detail] entity." No one knows if the occupants of the
targeted cars were injured of killed. USA Today
has previously reported the incident and lack of disciplinary action.
"Well Gentlemen, We Shot a Judge"
On July 16, 2007, a DynCorp (not Blackwater, but still) convoy traveling
near Erbil
fired five shots at a red Isuzu because it was driving "at a fast pace"
toward the caravan and failed to heed warnings to keep back. According to an
after-action report filed by one of the shooters, the driver pulled over, "got
out of the car," and "appeared to be OK."
UNQUOTE
A lot of Englishmen who had reason to know said Americans were
trigger happy. This just confirms it. Nothing has changed.
