1115.org

A civil lawsuit filed this week in U.S. District Court in Washington provides some new details of the Blackwater rampage in Nisoor Square in Baghdad on September 16:

Before the shootings in Baghdad last September, the three teams of an estimated dozen Blackwater bodyguards had already dropped off the State Department official they were tasked with protecting when they headed to Nisoor Square, according to the lawsuit filed by lawyers working with the Center for Constitutional Rights.

Blackwater and State Department personnel staffing a tactical operations center “expressly directed the Blackwater shooters to stay with the official and refrain from leaving the secure area,” the complaint says. “Reasonable discovery will establish that the Blackwater shooters ignored those directives.”
[…]
The lawsuit also accuses Blackwater of routinely sending its guards into Baghdad despite knowing that at least 25 percent of them were using steroids or other “judgment-altering substances.” Attorneys estimated that Blackwater employs about 600 guards in Iraq. The company “did not conduct drug-testing of any of its shooters before sending them equipped with heavy weapons into the streets of Baghdad,” the lawsuit states.

In an inspired moment of comic excess, a “senior U.S. law enforcement official confirmed Tuesday that government investigators are looking at whether the Blackwater guards were authorized to be in the square at the time of the shooting.”

Look no further, guys. I hereby do solemnly confirm that the State Dept. had issued a blanket authorization permitting Blackwater guards to be anywhere they liked, and to do anything to anyone anytime. Including what used to be called “termination with extreme prejudice”, but is now apparently “extermination of prejudiced extremists”. Prejudiced extremist suspects, that is.