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Blackwater in IRAQ - 6/30/2014 7:49:42 PM

cloudboy

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I found this story to be a jaw dropper.

Just weeks before Blackwater guards fatally shot 17 civilians at Baghdad’s Nisour Square in 2007, the State Department began investigating the security contractor’s operations in Iraq. But the inquiry was abandoned after Blackwater’s top manager there issued a threat: “that he could kill” the government’s chief investigator and “no one could or would do anything about it as we were in Iraq,” according to department reports.

American Embassy officials in Baghdad sided with Blackwater rather than the State Department investigators as a dispute over the probe escalated in August 2007, the previously undisclosed documents show. The officials told the investigators that they had disrupted the embassy’s relationship with the security contractor and ordered them to leave the country, according to the reports.

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Side note: The fact that the US had to hide all its personnel in a GREEN ZONE during the IRAQ occupation foreshadowed the inevitable chaos we are seeing there now.

< Message edited by cloudboy -- 6/30/2014 7:51:35 PM >

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RE: Blackwater in IRAQ - 7/1/2014 5:41:45 AM

Zonie63

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quote:

ORIGINAL: cloudboy

I found this story to be a jaw dropper.

Just weeks before Blackwater guards fatally shot 17 civilians at Baghdad’s Nisour Square in 2007, the State Department began investigating the security contractor’s operations in Iraq. But the inquiry was abandoned after Blackwater’s top manager there issued a threat: “that he could kill” the government’s chief investigator and “no one could or would do anything about it as we were in Iraq,” according to department reports.

American Embassy officials in Baghdad sided with Blackwater rather than the State Department investigators as a dispute over the probe escalated in August 2007, the previously undisclosed documents show. The officials told the investigators that they had disrupted the embassy’s relationship with the security contractor and ordered them to leave the country, according to the reports.

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Side note: The fact that the US had to hide all its personnel in a GREEN ZONE during the IRAQ occupation foreshadowed the inevitable chaos we are seeing there now.

Apart from the obvious, this does seem to be quite revealing about the culture and inner workings of our government. They outsourced key national security functions to the lowest bidder, since they're ostensibly cheaper than using government employees for the same tasks.

What's even more revealing is that our government personnel, the people whom we pay to safeguard our interests, chickened out so quickly after some blowhard businessman uttered a threat.

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RE: Blackwater in IRAQ - 7/1/2014 6:12:35 AM

DomKen

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quote:

ORIGINAL: Zonie63
Apart from the obvious, this does seem to be quite revealing about the culture and inner workings of our government. They outsourced key national security functions to the lowest bidder, since they're ostensibly cheaper than using government employees for the same tasks.

This is factually incorrect. It is much more expensive to use private contractors to protect diplomats than to use the military.

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RE: Blackwater in IRAQ - 7/1/2014 6:46:46 AM

cloudboy

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Ken,

From what I've read, you're 100% correct. It always amazes me how the right-wing, small government types focus on shit like NEA and welfare benefits while completely ignoring $1 Trillion pissed away in IRAQ.

You have to love it, start a war in IRAQ and thereafter complain about budget deficits when Obama takes office.

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Zonie,

quote:

What's even more revealing is that our government personnel, the people whom we pay to safeguard our interests, chickened out so quickly after some blowhard businessman uttered a threat.

From my reading of the article, the Blackwater threat was real and not "blowhardy." They had impunity status in IRAQ and a Billion Dollar Contract at stake.

What struck me was how the Embassy staff sided AGAINST the US Department of State in favor of BLACKWATER.

< Message edited by cloudboy -- 7/1/2014 6:47:23 AM >

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RE: Blackwater in IRAQ - 7/1/2014 6:52:44 AM

cloudboy

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Another point to gleam from the article is:

How can you nation build in IRAQ with group of Americans who hate IRAQIs, don't speak the language, and simply want want to make $$$, play with guns, drink booze, and fuck girls?

At least Begadi in Afghanistan cared about the locals and expressed an interest to help them in a peace-corps kind of fashion.

The article also cites how the Blackwater incident (17 murdered civilians) led Maliki to demand a total withdraw of US troops.

< Message edited by cloudboy -- 7/1/2014 6:53:41 AM >

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RE: Blackwater in IRAQ - 7/1/2014 6:59:14 AM

Zonie63

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quote:

ORIGINAL: DomKen

quote:

ORIGINAL: Zonie63
Apart from the obvious, this does seem to be quite revealing about the culture and inner workings of our government. They outsourced key national security functions to the lowest bidder, since they're ostensibly cheaper than using government employees for the same tasks.

This is factually incorrect. It is much more expensive to use private contractors to protect diplomats than to use the military.

I don't doubt that for a second, which is why I qualified it with "ostensibly." The central argument justifying privatizing and outsourcing is that it's supposedly more efficient and cost effective. But I never really bought that argument. Some people say it's cheaper to privatize, but obviously not.

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RE: Blackwater in IRAQ - 7/1/2014 7:03:22 AM

MrRodgers

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This is just more of the fascism coming to where we go and soon...to America.

The very idea of of private forces like this reminds of what could be a private Gestapo...soon right here.

Now you also know just what our own govt, can and does get away privately with using such actual and implied threats and soon as already, with govt. like...the CIA & FBI.

You ready ? Are your kids ready ? Many kids are getting ready, playing all of those shoot-em-up, blow-em-up video games.

Of course the majority of Americans are just too stupid to see this coming, it being very gradual and under the cover of conditioning. But it IS coming and we will have a culture of acceptance just like Hitler an Mussolini created.

< Message edited by MrRodgers -- 7/1/2014 7:04:25 AM >

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RE: Blackwater in IRAQ - 7/1/2014 7:49:42 AM

cloudboy

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The argument in favor on contractors is that the contract expires, whereas an expansion of a gov't sector stays in place.

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RE: Blackwater in IRAQ - 7/1/2014 12:26:07 PM

thompsonx

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But the inquiry was abandoned after Blackwater’s top manager there issued a threat: “that he could kill” the government’s chief investigator and “no one could or would do anything about it as we were in Iraq,”

It is at this point that the ambasador shoots this punkassmotherfucker in the head. He then tells the marine guard to round up all the b/w punks and shoot them in the head...That is how one deals with gangsters.

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RE: Blackwater in IRAQ - 7/1/2014 1:28:34 PM

joether

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Then, Gov. George W. Bush, stating we, the United States of America, should not conduct NATION BUILDING. And what was the nation doing three years later?

quote:

ORIGINAL: cloudboy
From what I've read, you're 100% correct. It always amazes me how the right-wing, small government types focus on shit like NEA and welfare benefits while completely ignoring $1 Trillion pissed away in IRAQ.

There have been many discussions on just the financial cost of the Iraq War (including the majority of the GWB Administration) to arrive at a figure of between $1.1 to over $4 Trillion dollars! But one part that is not argued, as it seems most agree on, is it was paid with borrowed money. Source 1, Source 2, Source 3.

quote:

ORIGINAL: cloudboy

quote:

ORIGINAL: thompsonx
But the inquiry was abandoned after Blackwater’s top manager there issued a threat: “that he could kill” the government’s chief investigator and “no one could or would do anything about it as we were in Iraq,”

It is at this point that the ambasador shoots this punkassmotherfucker in the head. He then tells the marine guard to round up all the b/w punks and shoot them in the head...That is how one deals with gangsters.

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RE: Blackwater in IRAQ - 7/1/2014 7:00:38 PM

thompsonx

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I'd go one further. After the US Ambassador shoots the businessman dead, and the military rounds up these 'contractors'; they are shackled and sent to the United States on charges of conspiracy, racketeering and worst of all....TREASON!

The head of the gangsters threatened to murder the investigator. Shoot the punkassmotherfucker in the head and shoot all of his punkassmotherfucking posse in the head. I heard tell that the marines get their ammo wholesale and since they are pretty well known for being good shots (lee harvey oswald,charles whitman) so it would be way cheaper to solve the problem in situ. Film it and play it on the networks...this is how to deal with gangsters.

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