The Iraqi government’s reaction to the Blackwater USA convoy protection incident in downtown Baghdad has received an enormous amount of attention in the last 24 hours. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki must be pleased, because that was presumably the whole — pardon me — goddamned point.

The conventional wisdom has been that security contractors are outside the purview of Iraqi law:

The Coalition Provisional Authority — the now-defunct occupational government — issued a decree in 2004 (pdf) immunizing security contractors from Iraqi prosecution and placing their operations under the jurisdiction of U.S. authorities.

The Iraqi government opted not to tackle that issue head-on, choosing instead the brilliant strategy of threatening to expel Blackwater from Iraq. Much harder to argue that a sovereign nation has no authority to decide who is persona non grata on their sovereign territory. And this certainly got the American government’s attention (as they knew it would). For the simple reason that Blackwater seems to have become Simply Indispensable when it comes to protecting all manner of Very Important and Very Serious Personages. As The Times (London) put it:

The move would be resisted strenuously by the US Government, whose security arrangements will be thrown into chaos if Blackwater can no longer operate in Iraq. The company has lucrative State Department contracts to protect hundreds of US government officials and dignitaries, including Ryan Crocker, the US Ambassador.

Or perhaps you prefer how Time expressed it?

Last week U.S. ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker testified to the Senate that the State Department is overwhelmingly dependent on contractors like Blackwater for its security. As he put it, “There is simply no way at all that the State Department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security could ever have enough full-time personnel to staff the security function in Iraq. There is no alternative except through contracts.”

There is no choice but security contractors, and Blackwater is their name-o?

Now that push has come to shove, suddenly everyone is not so sure, after all, whether security contractors are immune from Iraqi prosecution. The Times (London) again:

It was unclear last night whether private security contractors get the same immunity from prosecution as coalition soldiers. Iraqi officials insisted they did not, but orders issued by the Coalition Provisional Authority say they can only be prosecuted with the permission of their own Government.

That’s not quite the same as being immune from Iraqi prosecution, and puts the U.S. government squarely between the proverbial rock and a hard place, politically. However, it must be stressed that the view of The Times (London) is by no means a consensus view. For instance, here’s Salon‘s Alex Koppelman and Mark Benjamin:

Should any Iraqis ever seek redress for the deaths of the civilians in a criminal court, they will be out of luck. Because of an order promulgated by the Coalition Provisional Authority, the now-defunct American occupation government, there appears to be almost no chance that the contractors involved would be, or could be, successfully prosecuted in any court in Iraq. CPA Order 17 says private contractors working for the U.S. or coalition governments in Iraq are not subject to Iraqi law. Should any attempt be made to prosecute Blackwater in the United States, meanwhile, it’s not clear what law, if any, applies.

“Blackwater and all these other contractors are beyond the reach of the justice process in Iraq. They can not be held to account,” says Scott Horton, who chairs the International Law Committee at the New York City Bar Association.

In any case, the Iraqi government’s brilliant strategy has already started to generate dividends. Here’s something that’s never happened before in previous incidents when security contractors were alleged to have killed civilians without justification:

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and apologized over the shooting and they agreed to run a “fair and transparent investigation,” Maliki’s office said.

“She has expressed her personal apologies and the apologies of the government of the United States. She confirmed that the United Sates will take immediate actions to prevent such actions from happening again,” a statement from Maliki’s office said.

Of course, the U.S. embassy hasn’t exactly bolstered confidence in our ability to run a fair and transparent investigation by already publicly putting out two different stories:

Initially, the US embassy said the contractors, who were providing security for State Department officials at a meeting, had reacted after coming under small arms fire. Later, however, it said they had “reacted to the bombing”.

No wonder Sean McCormack put on the truly incredible “I’m here to assure you that I don’t know anything about anything” performance that he did yesterday. Best not to say anything at all till the people in charge have figured out what the official version of events is supposed to be. His opening statement was: “Good afternoon, everybody. I don’t have anything to start off with, so I can get right to your questions.” And 36 minutes later it was clear that he had nothing, period. (Please tread the transcript; it’ll totally make your day.)

One can only assume that it was all the unnecessary confusion surrounding the incident that moved Blackwater to issue the following clarification:

The Blackwater official declared that, contrary to some reports from Iraq, “the convoy was violently attacked by armed insurgents, not civilians…”

That will one day come to be recognized as a classic in its own right, drawing as it does on the rightly famous Bush tactic (strategy?) known as “Some have said …”. For the record, no one was sufficiently out of their minds to have alleged that the convoy was violently attacked by civilians (unless it was the U.S. embassy itself, in a “report” yet to be made public?). Why does Condi Rice or Ryan Crocker feel safe entrusting security to such dementedly delusional people? Why do they expect anything other than this kind of garbage to result from it?

Can’t anyone in the Bush administration who’s entrusted with making decisions about Iraq come up with decisions that manage to sound halfway sane?

Then there’s all the confusion about whether Blackwater needs a license to operate in Iraq, whether it has a license, and whether it matters. TPM‘s Spencer Ackerman set the ball rolling with:

However, it’s unclear how the Interior Ministry would expel Blackwater. Unlike other private U.S. security firms in Iraq, as of May, Blackwater hadn’t registered with the Iraqi government to operate in Iraq.

All kinds of people jumped in to assert that Blackwater doesn’t, in fact, have or need a license, including Larry Johnson, who is normally more reliable than this, but who does, after all, labor under the handicap of having achieved pundit status:

First problem. Blackwater does not have a license to operate in Iraq and does not need one.

The truth of the matter — thanks to Joshua Partlow and Walter Pincus of WaPo — seems to be:

Blackwater obtained a one-year operating license from the Interior Ministry in 2005, according to a scanned copy of the document provided by the company. After The Washington Post reported in June that the company was effectively operating outside of Iraqi law, Blackwater approached the Private Security Company Association of Iraq to request assistance to obtain a license, according to the trade group. “We have a license renewal in process with the Ministry of Interior,” Mr. Strong said.

In any case, it’s not at all clear why the Iraqi government’s ability to expel Blackwater has anything to do with whether they need/have a license to operate. Surely a sovereign government always has the right to expel individuals or companies for probable cause? And surely “is prone to mow down innocent civilians” qualifies as sufficient probable cause?

And just the fact that Blackwater used to have a license, and is in the process of renewing it seems to establish that security contractors do need a license. That being the case, if you have a license, it can be revoked, and you can be put out of business, and told to leave the country. And if you don’t have a license, presumably that just makes it all the easier to shut you down and expel you. So it’s really not clear how or why “they don’t even have a license to revoke” can constitute any kind of impediment to expulsion.

On Monday, I made a snarky reference to the fact that Blackwater has their own combat helicopters. Little did I know:

For starters, Blackwater has a bigger air force and more armored vehicles then (sic) the Iraqi Army and police put together.

Bloody freaking wow! Maybe Iraq can’t expel them after all?

Finally, in conclusion, and in the interests of fairness, we offer equal time to the much maligned and much misunderstood company at the heart of the whole imbroglio, and allow them to put their best corporate foot forward:

Blackwater has recently emphasized its humanitarian efforts and vision for “a safer world” on its Web site and in company literature.

Always a pleasure to be able to end on a nice, warm, fuzzy note.