WASHINGTON, Nov. 13 — Federal agents investigating the Sept. 16 episode in which Blackwater security personnel shot and killed 17 Iraqi civilians have found that at least 14 of the shootings were unjustified and violated deadly-force rules in effect for security contractors in Iraq, according to civilian and military officials briefed on the case.
The F.B.I. investigation into the shootings in Baghdad is still under way, but the findings, which indicate that the company’s employees recklessly used lethal force, are already under review by the Justice Department.
Huge news, right? Blackwater's going to get what's coming to it, you say?
Read the fine print:
Prosecutors have yet to decide whether to seek indictments, and some officials have expressed pessimism that adequate criminal laws exist to enable them to charge any Blackwater employee with criminal wrongdoing. Spokesmen for the Justice Department and the F.B.I. declined to discuss the matter.
And what kind of bullshit is this? The State Department covering up the crimes of Blackwater?
In addition, investigators did not have access to statements taken from Blackwater employees, who had given statements to State Department investigators on the condition that their statements would not be used in any criminal investigation like the one being conducted by the F.B.I.
As the article states, this will be the first big case that newly confirmed Michael (who wouldn't say that waterboarding is torture) Mukasey will have to deal with. I guess Blackwater's Eric Prince should be sending a gold-plated thank you card to J Paul Bremer for ensuring that US contractors can't be prosecuted under Iraqi law. And, considering how this misadministration operates, he'll have another one to send out once Mukasey comes up with some obscure Bushco-style reasoning that will let these murderers get away with their crimes in the US too.
Like Smedley Butler said: "War is a racket". And with the Bush administration, that racket resembles organized crime to an amazing degree. It's all about who you know - not what you do.
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