1115.org

When does Condi Rice get her lying ass handed to her?

The bombshell AP exploded yesterday evening totally takes the cake, as far as I’m concerned:

The State Department promised Blackwater USA bodyguards immunity from prosecution in its investigation of last month’s deadly shooting of 17 Iraqi civilians, The Associated Press has learned.
[…]
Three senior law enforcement officials said all the Blackwater bodyguards involved — both in the vehicle convoy and in at least two helicopters above — were given the legal protections as investigators from the Bureau of Diplomatic Security sought to find out what happened. The bureau is an arm of the State Department.

All I have is a whole bunch of angry questions. Very angry questions.

• Whose fucking idea was this? You start an investigation into whether wrongful deaths have occurred by indemnifying everyone suspected of possibly having caused the wrongful deaths? What are they officially calling this? Proactive immunity? (AP says with studied understatement: “It’s not clear why the Diplomatic Security investigators agreed to give immunity to the bodyguards, or who authorized doing so.”*)
• When were they going to fucking tell us?
• Condi went to Capitol Hill on October 25, testified before Waxman’s committee, fielded all kinds of questions about Blackwater, and never once mentioned this? I’m sure even Condi doesn’t have the balls to claim she didn’t know. So what’s her snooty excuse for lying by omission going to be?
• The State Dept. has the authority to confer immunity for murder most foul? Shouldn’t that be done by somebody with a … you know … legal background? (As opposed to a Ph.D. from the University of Denver.) What else are they allowed to do that we would never have suspected? Print their own currency? Levy their own private taxes? (All the better to finance their private standing army.) Declare and wage war? On U.S. citizens, if necessary? Conduct enhanced interrogations with no bloody rules, because nobody thought to frame anti-torture rules for the fucking State Dept.?
• Who the fuck is going to stop this fucking nonsense? * *
• Why aren’t Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John Edwards, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid all demanding Rice’s immediate resignation, or dismissal, or testimony by enhanced interrogation technique, at the very least? (Oh, Arlen Specter too, of course.)
• What does she have to do to get her ass handed to her?

I’m trying to cling to the belief that it’s not the end of the world. Although AP said:

“Once you give immunity, you can’t take it away,” said a senior law enforcement official familiar with the investigation.

to the best of my knowledge and belief, an immunity deal is always canceled out if you lie after receiving immunity.

But AP goes on and on about the government’s efforts to build a case without utilizing the statements made by the immunized Blackwater guards:

The FBI took over the case early this month, officials said, after prosecutors in the Justice Department’s criminal division realized it could not bring charges against Blackwater guards based on their statements to the Diplomatic Security investigators.

Officials said the Blackwater bodyguards spoke only after receiving so-called “Garrity” protections, requiring that their statements only be used internally — and not for criminal prosecutions.

At that point, the Justice Department shifted the investigation to prosecutors in its national security division, sealing the guards’ statements and attempting to build a case based on other evidence from a crime scene that was then already two weeks old.
[..]
Prosecutors will have to prove that any evidence they use in bringing charges against Blackwater employees was uncovered without using the guards’ statements to State Department investigators. They “have to show we got the information independently,” one official said.

Which leads me to believe that the Blackwater guards may have pretty much confessed to unjustified killings. That’s the only way the AP story makes sense.

If this is true, how fucking unbelievable is it that the State Dept. (and the Justice Dept, which clearly knew) have kept this under wraps for more than a month? That they have concealed it not just from you and me (who the hell are we anyway, what do we count for in the scheme of things?), but from Congress (who the hell are they anyway, what do they count for in the scheme of things?)?

The more I think about this, the more loudly I find myself going: “I don’t fucking believe it!” Excuse me while I curl up somewhere and just let my head explode.

* I have (if you’ll pardon the phrase) my dark suspicions on both counts: a) money, lots of it, either now, under the table, or later, via superlucrative employment; b) Erik Prince, CEO, Blackwater USA.

* * This one I know. Nobody. Who’ll come riding out of the desert on a horse with no name.