1115.org

Under Condoleeza Rice, Ph.D. (even if that degree is only from the University of Denver, a lesser institution of higher learning), the State Department has probably established itself as the high-water-mark for moral bankruptcy, exceeding even the mark previously set by Ken Lay’s Enron.

The Prince of Blackness, aka Erik Prince, the “multi-millionaire right-wing fundamentalist Christian from a powerful Michigan Republican family” who founded Blackwater USA and has become even more unbelievably wealthy thanks to the Iraq war, will testify today before Henry Waxman’s Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. In celebration, committee staff have prepared a report “based largely on internal Blackwater e-mail messages and State Department documents”. It’s pretty hair-raising stuff. What it makes clear is that, between them, Condi’s State Dept. and Blackwater USA have managed to give a whole new meaning to the term “protection racket”.

Some highlights:
• Blackwater operatives fired the first shot in 80 percent of (the 195 “escalation of force” incidents it has been involved in since 2005), though its contract with the State Department only permits the use of “defensive” force. (Apparently, if you look at me funny, I am entitled to regard that as an act of aggression, to fear for my life and therefore to bring gunpowder-based munitions into play.)
• A single Blackwater security contractor costs the government $1,222 every day to guard U.S. civilian personnel, or $445,000 per year. That’s six times the cost of getting a U.S. Army soldier to perform the same function.
• The State Department’s attitude to Blackwater shootings is most often a directive to compensate the victim’s family, “rather than to insist upon accountability or to investigate Blackwater personnel for potential criminal liability.” (More below. A senior U.S. embassy official is caught red-handed. Because they think so little of responding this way that they discuss it on the record in official emails.) (Did Condi ever get to see a copy of such email traffic? Wouldn’t that be interesting? The State Dept. and Blackwater USA have turned over some documents and emails to Waxman’s committee. I predict several more rounds of document dumps to come.)
• On at least two other occasions, Blackwater guards were found to have covered up improper or dubious uses of force. Among those: after a Blackwater-guarded convoy struck 18 (!) different Iraqi vehicles, one of the contractors in the motorcade said his boss “openly admitted giving clear direction to the primary driver to conduct these acts of random negligence for no apparent reason.” (Officially sanctioned real-life bumper cars–with impunity, thanks to the generous folks at the State Dept. I’m sure that’s a big recruiting tool for Blackwater.)

Some more juicy excerpts can be found here. (There’s a nice little check-mark graph that you will probably find esthetically pleasing.)

It has, of course, been widely known for some time now that the State Dept. is in bed with Blackwater USA, which has aggressively provided security to State Dept. employees in Iraq under multi-million dollar contracts (several of them no-bid, naturally). We now learn that their roles in bed may have been defined by a numerical position rather than a missionary one. It seems the State Dept. has been equally aggressive in returning the favor, and providing protection to Blackwater USA for acts of commission against Iraqi civilians ranging from manslaughter to murder most foul. The only difference is that the State Dept. provides this protection free of charge, in sheer gratitude as it were (Assuming, of course, that there were no under-the-table money transactions that we haven’t yet learned about. Career diplomats in the State Dept. who rise to the rank of acting ambassador aren’t stupid, right? Would they really cover up murder just for love and not money?) (Yes, I know what you’re thinking. And, no, the really sad part is that we have senior officials of our government acting in ways that turn yellow-journalism questions like these into reasonable speculation.)

Here’s the startling new light the committee report sheds on a previously known case of Blackwater misconduct:

After an infamous December incident wherein a drunken Blackwater contractor shot and killed a bodyguard for Iraqi Vice President Adel Abdul Mehdi, one U.S. embassy official wrote to another:

Will you be following in up Blackwater [sic] to do all possible to ensure that a sizable compensation is forthcoming? If we are to avoid this whole thing becoming even worse, I think a prompt pledge and apology — even if they want to claim it was accidental — would be the best way to assure the Iraqis don’t take steps, such as telling Blackwater that they are no longer allowed to work in Iraq.

In State’s defense, an embassy cable from Secretary Condoleezza Rice argued “strongly” that “justice had to be done.” But justice is a relative thing. When embassy officials proposed the price for the guard’s life be pegged at either $100,000 or $250,000, a State diplomatic-security official countered with $15,000. The figure needed to be lower, the diplomatic-security official contended, so Iraqis wouldn’t “try to get killed to set up their family financially.” Two days after the shooting, Blackwater and State agreed that the guard’s family should receive $15,000. Ultimately, Blackwater got the shooter out of Iraq and back to the U.S., with the assistance of State’s diplomatic security service.

A drunken mercenary shoots and kills a bodyguard for the Iraqi Vice President. The U.S. government’s only concern is to quickly buy off the family of the deceased, and then help smuggle the killer out of the country?

And how about that “even if they want to claim it was accidental”? No matter how you look at it, that’s one U.S. embassy official admitting to another that the shooting wasn’t accidental. So we cheerfully connived to cover up what we regarded as murder? Our only concern was that Blackwater should continue to be allowed to work in Iraq? Who exactly was working for whom?

The NYT provides some additional details on the drunken murder:
• “A Blackwater USA employee under investigation in the killing last December of an Iraqi bodyguard in an off-duty confrontation was so drunk after fleeing the shooting that another group of guards took away the loaded pistol he was fumbling with in front of them…”
• The email quoted above was from the “acting ambassador at the United States Embassy in Baghdad”. “The report did not identify the acting ambassador, but a State Department spokesman, Karl Duckworth, said it was Margaret Scobey.” I hope she’s ready for her 15 minutes of fame.

Here’s Bloomberg’s version of the let’s-buy-them-off-but-cheaply operation:

The U.S. Embassy charge d’affaires recommended that Blackwater compensate the victim’s family, proposing a $250,000 payment at first. That amount prompted one State Department official to say that such “crazy sums” might cause Iraqis to “try to get killed so as to set up their family financially.”

I think it captures the flavor of the State Dept.’s underlying thinking a little better. This is the attitude the State Dept. brings to its dealings with Iraqis — the perfect contemptuousness of the colonial power that’s secure in the knowledge of its own superiority, moral and otherwise. When you read or see all those media reports and polls about how the Iraqis hate the U.S. presence in their country and want us to just get the hell out, they are not just reacting abstractly to the idea of a foreign occupying force. They are also reacting emotionally to how they are routinely perceived and treated by the ugly Americans they encounter in Iraq. That’s not to say that every American is an ugly American, or even that they constitute the majority. But there are enough of them that they condition the Iraqi attitude to the U.S.

Once this attitude has entered into and defined the U.S.-Iraqi relationship, there is, quite frankly, no way we can ever bring peace to Iraq. Too much of what we would need to pull off involves persuasion. In addition to all the reasons why it would be difficult for anyone to persuade the Iraqis to take the steps that are necessary, there is the added factor that human nature simply does not allow us to be persuaded by those we have reason to hate.

However, coming back to Blackwater, at some point this whole thing may start getting better, but I don’t think it has finished getting worse yet.