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By Keith Gessen
$16.47
By David E. Sanger
$17.79
$23
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Flickr / The National Guard
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President Obama will be able to say that he kept one of his promises from the ’08 campaign trail come Dec. 31 of this year, when all but 160 American troops will leave Iraq after more than eight years of heavy military involvement (read: war) in the Middle Eastern nation. (more)
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Flickr / trekkyandy
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A study conducted by the Project for Government Oversight (POGO) found that on average the U.S. government pays private contractors more than twice what it pays federal workers for a number of public services. (more)
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AP / Hamza Ahmed, File
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Lucky for him. Raymond Davis, the CIA contractor who was nabbed in January after shooting and killing two men in Pakistan (the news of which wasn’t released until February), has been freed from detainment after the payment of “blood money” to the victims’ families.
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AP / Gerry Broome
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The mercenary firm formerly known as Blackwater has argued in court that the company’s private contractors who killed 17 Iraqis in Baghdad in 2007 should not be held accountable. Why? It’s Washington’s fault, they claim, as Blackwater fighters were acting as employees of the U.S. government at the time.
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Much fanfare was made about the so-called withdrawal of U.S. combat troops from Iraq this month, but as this Al-Jazeera report explores, we might want to read the fine print on this one.
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U.S. Government via nytimes.com
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David H. Brooks did well enough selling body armor to the military to hire 50 Cent and Aerosmith to play at his daughter’s bat mitzvah. He wore a gem- and diamond-encrusted American flag belt buckle, lest his patriotism come under suspicion. Now he’s on trial for allegedly improperly putting millions on his expense account, for fraud and for insider trading.
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Wikimedia Commons / jamesdale10
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A federal judge let five Blackwater Worldwide security contractors off the hook Thursday, dropping all charges against them in a 2007 case in which 14 Iraqi civilians were killed and 20 wounded during a Baghdad shooting. The Justice Department wasn’t thrilled with this outcome, and a DoJ spokesman told The Washington Post that his colleagues are “still in the process of reviewing the opinion and considering our options.”
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eyeball-series.org
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Saying that he’s “taking on new challenges,” Blackwater Worldwide founder and CEO Erik Prince announced Monday that he’s resigning from his long-held position at the top of the security company, which has now changed its name to the spooky and sci-fi-tinged Xe.
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dailykos.com
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First Dude Todd Palin has said he and some “buddies” built his lakefront home in Wasilla, Alaska, but an investigation by the Village Voice connects the home’s construction, if circumstantially, to the beneficiaries of a local boondoggle championed by his wife.
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breitbart.tv
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On Thursday, a group of U.S. soldiers spoke before members of Congress about the failings of the Iraq war and the immeasurable toll it has taken on Iraqis and American troops. Afterward, Sgt. Matthis Chiroux announced that he is refusing to serve in Iraq.
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flickr.com
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Over the last year, Blackwater Worldwide has been under fire from critics at home and abroad, but that hasn’t stopped the private security firm. In fact, the State Department has just re-upped Blackwater’s Iraq contract, thanks in part to the magic of lobbying. Also, State Department officials don’t seem to think they have much choice.
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MCT / Hussein Ali
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Nothing says permanent U.S. occupation of Iraq more than the construction of the largest embassy in the world, a $474-million compound with 27 different buildings, 619 apartments and an Olympic-size swimming pool—all, of course, for a country with 26.7 million people and 115 billion barrels of proven oil reserves.
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The questionable actions of Blackwater Worldwide are coming back to haunt the private security contractor once again, this time regarding an incident in May 2005. In that incident Blackwater teams on the ground and in the air near a busy Green Zone checkpoint released CS gas, which is used by the U.S. military only sparingly and only in strictly controlled circumstances. The gas temporarily compromised American troops’ ability to maintain security in the area.
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Texas Rep. Ted Poe, pushing for a probe into the case of former Halliburton/KBR employee Jamie Leigh Jones, who says she was gang-raped by co-workers in Iraq and then intimidated into keeping silent, urged other possible victims of crimes against U.S. contract employees working abroad to come forward, saying he believes Jones’ case is not unique.
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abcnews.com
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Over two years ago, Jamie Leigh Jones was working for Halliburton/KBR in Baghdad’s Green Zone when she was gang-raped, allegedly by several co-workers. According to Jones, instead of attending to her injuries and bringing her assailants to justice, KBR officials held her for 24 hours in a shipping container without food or water and then told her she would lose her job if she left Iraq. Now, it’s unclear whether the case will go to trial, and her attackers may escape punishment due to a legal loophole regarding U.S. contractors working abroad.
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Blackwater USA founder and chairman Erik Prince stubbornly defended his company Tuesday while members of the House Oversight Committee grilled him with questions such as “Why are we privatizing our military to an organization that has been aggressive and in some cases reckless in the handling of their duties?”
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unitedcats.wordpress.com
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Any lingering question as to whether Blackwater USA security contractors were to blame in the Sept. 16 shootout in Baghdad that left 11 Iraqis dead and 12 wounded may be cleared up by a videotape of the incident, which was reportedly filmed from a nearby police station.
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By Marie Cocco — There is no set piece more emblematic of the tragic farce that is the American involvement in Iraq than the grotesque episode of Blackwater USA and the killing of civilians in Baghdad—at least nine and as many as 28—on Sunday.
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iraqfact.com
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By Robert Scheer — The latest Blackwater USA scandal, in which privately contracted American security troops gunned down innocent bystanders in Baghdad, might cause the Iraqi government to finally give firms like Blackwater their marching orders—if only it could command the power to order these mercenary operations out of the country.
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The Iraqi government is taking a close look at all private security firms still involved in the ongoing conflict there following Sunday’s shootout in Baghdad, after which several contractors from Blackwater USA were accused of killing innocent bystanders while guarding U.S. officials.
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change-links.org
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The Iraqi government has ordered employees of the North Carolina-based security firm Blackwater USA to leave the country and is opening a criminal investigation following Sunday’s deadly shootout in Baghdad, during which a group of Blackwater contractors escorting a convoy of U.S. officials opened fire on nearby civilians.
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AP Photo / Dusan Vranic
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By Anonymous — A self-confessed “overpaid Department of Defense contractor” writes about his experiences living and working in Baghdad and the suffering of his Iraqi friends, who risk life and limb every day to get by in the “sinking ship” of Iraq.
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AP Photo/Pat Sullivan
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By Robert Scheer — War profiteering is hardly a new phenomenon, but it’s happening on unprecedented levels in Iraq, thanks to hefty contracts between the U.S. government and companies like Halliburton and its former subsidiary KBR. KBR’s bookkeeping has recently come under scrutiny as American taxpayers continue to subsidize its wartime projects.
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AP Photo / Andrew Gray, pool
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It’s now five months into the U.S. troop “surge” in Iraq, and although Defense Secretary Robert Gates (center) claimed during his visit to Baghdad this weekend that it’s still too early to tell if the surge is working, one U.S. military higher-up, Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno, admitted that only 40 percent of Iraq’s capital city is consistently safe.
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inhs.info
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ITT, the premier night vision equipment supplier to the U.S. military, will pay $100 million in fines for violating the Arms Exports Control Act by sending sensitive information to China, Singapore and Britain without permission. The U.S. attorney in charge of the case said American soldiers were the “principal victims of ITT’s crimes.”
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Senate Republicans shot down a measure that would have enacted oversight on the practices of private contractors in Iraq. As a result, companies like Halliburton are free to continue doing things like exposing U.S. soldiers in Iraq to water contaminated with fecal matter. The Nation has the details.
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Michael Berg, father of the young contractor whose brutal death at the hands of Al Qaeda was videotaped and broadcast to the world, speaks out against the war in Iraq and violence as retribution, and condemns George W. Bush in an interview with a stunned Soledad O’Brien. Berg said that Zarqawi’s death brings him no joy and will only perpetuate the cycle of revenge. Watch the interview.
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The same Pentagon contractor that paid Iraqi newspapers to print pro-U.S. stories written by American soldiers masquerading as indepenent journalists has also been “compensating Sunni religious scholars in Iraq in return for assistance with its propaganda work,” according to the New York Times.
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Truthdigger of the Week: Sen. Angus King
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