FBI: Blackwater Killed 14 Iraqis 'Without Cause'

Via The NYT:

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.
 

Sanitizing War

In a weird, frightening way, we believe in violent death. We regard it as a policy option, as much to do with self-preservation on a national scale as punishment for named and individual wrongdoers. We believe in war. For what is aggression – the invasion of Iraq in 2003, for example – except capital punishment on a mass scale? We "civilised" nations – like the dark armies we believe we are fighting – are convinced that the infliction of death on an awesome scale can be morally justified.

And that's the problem, I'm afraid. When we go to war, we are all putting on hoods and pulling the hangman's lever. And as long as we send our armies on the rampage – whatever the justification – we will go on stringing up and shooting and chopping off the heads of our "criminals" and "murderers" with the same enthusiasm as the Romans cheered on the men of blood in the Colosseum 2,000 years ago.

- Robert Fisk, In the Colosseum, thoughts turn to death

It struck me this past week, listening to the testimony of General Petraeus and the speech given by George Bush, that they both seem endeared with using the term "cleared" when it comes to describing killing the so-called "enemy" (and who knows how many civilians at the same time?) - as if slaughter during war time amounts to no more than Bush's hobby at his ranch: "clearing brush". In Iraq and Afghanistan however, it's people who are being rooted out, gathered up - either in body bags or to be stashed away in detention somewhere until they're proven innocent - not just bothersome twigs or branches.

And then there are the "barbarians", as Petraeus and Bush like to refer to al Qaeda and the other insurgents. Are they "barbarians" because their methods of slaughter are more primitive? Because they don't possess the laser-guided missiles or bombs that can be dropped on an entire village in an area that must be "cleared" according to their war strategy? Does it make a difference if a child's head is blown away by an American gun or one of al Qaeda's? Aren't those both barbaric acts?

And what of the victims of US military barbarity? Major news networks and TV talk shows love featuring stories of select children who were horrendously disfigured by the "enemy's" actions - trotting them out to the American public while praising whichever hospital has agreed to do the reconstructive surgery for free - as if those doctors are doing penance on behalf of all citizens - most of whom couldn't be bothered to left a finger to try to do anything to end both wars and the rest of the violence the US inflicts upon the rest of the world year after year, decade after decade. Somehow, fixing one child's face is supposed to be enough. It's not.

If the public was able to view the total, cumulative effects of its military "campaigns" (another word that sanitizes mass killings), it might actually understand the true horror of the military-industrial complex that it's still so willing to support via the country's two major political parties - both of which are just as guilty of enabling war profiteers and the twisted ideal of "clearing" the world of its enemies. And there is a never-ending supply of enemies who must be "cleared".

When Bush spoke of "return on success" during Thursday nite's speech, he acted as nothing more than the CEO of a major corporation trying to guarantee investors a good ROI - Return On their Investment. That was exactly the same business-like stance that Ryan Crocker used during his testimony earlier this week - a dry, passionless, dehumanized summary of what the war profiteers can expect out of the White House until the end of Bush's term. The frustration with al Maliki's government not yet passing the oil law is ever present for those who are growing impatient with not being able to realize their dreams of cashing in on the riches underneath Iraq's desert sands.

Bush and Petraeus were selling a product this week: a future Iraq that will be secure enough for profiteers to operate without fear for their lives. Everything else - the "freedom", the "democracy", the "liberation" - is just a smokescreen. And if the Democrats decide to try to pull out troops before there is some sense of that security, they'll have big-moneyed corporate lobbyists to answer to. They won't defund the war. That's political suicide. And they are just as invested in the so-called "glory" of war that enables far too many Americans to not realistically look at the nightmarish damage their country's military might actually causes.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates told reporters on Friday at a Pentagon briefing that he couldn't predict how long U.S. forces would be in Iraq, how many, or even what their mission would be. ``We are in a very early stage in this,'' Gates said.
link

Meanwhile, Civilian toll in Iraq may top 1 Million

1 Million

And what of the displaced?

Refugees International has been sounding the alarm for almost a year that Iraqi refugee flows throughout the Middle East are overwhelming the region. More than 2.2 million persons are now displaced inside the country, and an additional 2.5 million have fled to neighboring countries. These numbers continue to grow with as many as 100,000 per month newly displaced within Iraq and 40,000 to 60,000 fleeing to Syria on a monthly basis. With Jordan and Syria now imposing entry requirements on Iraqis, it is becoming increasingly hard to leave the country. Many “safer” governorates inside Iraq have also closed their internal borders, unable to cope with the large influxes of displaced persons.

"Refugees International is extremely concerned by the growing numbers of displaced Iraqis, as well as by the few options that are available to them," continued Ms. Younes. "Whether or not U.S. troops stay or leave Iraq, it is clear that we must respond to the millions of people who cannot access housing, food, medical care and education for their children. Regardless of our future course in Iraq, these people are not going home soon."

Refugees International also addressed Ambassador Crocker's concern for Iraqis who have helped the U.S. and expressed disappointment that only 719 refugees have been resettled in the U.S. this year.
link

So who are the "barbarians"? Those who chose to invade a country that was not an imminent threat or those who choose to fight back/and or take advantage of the occupation? It was Bush, after all, who said, "Bring 'em on". He got exactly what he wanted, didn't he?

And, long after he finally retires to his ranch to once again clear his brush, US military troops and contractors (whose presence was mysteriously absent in the public testimony this past week) will be "clearing" Iraq - of insurgents and civilians. What kind of "return on success" is that for the Iraqi people? And why don't they get to decide what "success" means?

Related: America's Deadly Shock Doctrine in Iraq by Naomi Klein and Henry Holt
 

Video: Olbermann - Surge Protectors & The Great Conflation

All of the buzz leading up to the surge report to be given by Petraeus next week has been like watching movie trailers in which the major action shots released show, for all intents and purposes, the entire content of the movie.

There won't be any surprises.

Olbermann has a look at how "insurgent" numbers have been fixed around the surge policy and Jonathan Alter of Newsweek discusses 'The Great Conflation" ie. the continual, nauseating linking of the Iraq war with 9/11.



The situation in Iraq is such a farce that an independent report this week called for disbanding Iraq's national police force which is rife with sectarian Shiite bias. The Democrats, meanwhile, couldn't put a coherent policy plan together about how to deal with the Iraq war if their lives depended on it. Maybe that's the problem: their lives don't depend on it. They might be singing a different tune if they were all forced to live in the middle of Baghdad for a month or so. In the meantime, they just cobble together whatever they think might make their base happy while blaming those nasty Republicans for not being able to get anything done. (And those Republicans are nasty, but at least they know how to put up a real fight when they go after something they want.)

Dana Milbank, in what is perhaps a precursor to what will surely be the reactions from both parties to the WH/Petraeus report next week, shows how Democrats and Republicans are using the independent commission's report to try and sell the same old schtick about the war. No one, it seems, has any new ideas.

Madeleine Albright seems to think that if only Bush would admit his mistakes, some major corner would be turned for US allies to come in and save the day. It's long past time for that to mean anything and Bush won't do it anyway, so what's the point?

As for what Olbermann and Alter were talking about, here is the WaPo story about how the surge numbers have been manipulated.

The intelligence community has its own problems with military calculations. Intelligence analysts computing aggregate levels of violence against civilians for the NIE puzzled over how the military designated attacks as combat, sectarian or criminal, according to one senior intelligence official in Washington. "If a bullet went through the back of the head, it's sectarian," the official said. "If it went through the front, it's criminal."

"Depending on which numbers you pick," he said, "you get a different outcome." Analysts found "trend lines . . . going in different directions" compared with previous years, when numbers in different categories varied widely but trended in the same direction. "It began to look like spaghetti."

"spaghetti".

There you have it.

I'm sorry, but aren't we talking about dead people here?

Related:
Most of world wants U.S. out of Iraq in a year: poll

New Twist In Saga Over ‘Petraeus Report’: There Will Be No Report
 

The Nation Exposes 'The Other War': Civilian Killings by the US Military in Iraq

Via The Nation, this one is a must read. Be prepared. It's lengthy. Here's the intro:

The Other War: Iraq Vets Bear Witness

Chris Hedges & Laila Al-Arian

Over the past several months The Nation has interviewed fifty combat veterans of the Iraq War from around the United States in an effort to investigate the effects of the four-year-old occupation on average Iraqi civilians. These combat veterans, some of whom bear deep emotional and physical scars, and many of whom have come to oppose the occupation, gave vivid, on-the-record accounts. They described a brutal side of the war rarely seen on television screens or chronicled in newspaper accounts.

Their stories, recorded and typed into thousands of pages of transcripts, reveal disturbing patterns of behavior by American troops in Iraq. Dozens of those interviewed witnessed Iraqi civilians, including children, dying from American firepower. Some participated in such killings; others treated or investigated civilian casualties after the fact. Many also heard such stories, in detail, from members of their unit. The soldiers, sailors and marines emphasized that not all troops took part in indiscriminate killings. Many said that these acts were perpetrated by a minority. But they nevertheless described such acts as common and said they often go unreported--and almost always go unpunished.

Court cases, such as the ones surrounding the massacre in Haditha and the rape and murder of a 14-year-old in Mah­mudiya, and news stories in the Washington Post, Time, the London Independent and elsewhere based on Iraqi accounts have begun to hint at the wide extent of the attacks on civilians. Human rights groups have issued reports, such as Human Rights Watch's Hearts and Minds: Post-war Civilian Deaths in Baghdad Caused by U.S. Forces, packed with detailed incidents that suggest that the killing of Iraqi civilians by occupation forces is more common than has been acknowledged by military authorities.

This Nation investigation marks the first time so many on-the-record, named eyewitnesses from within the US military have been assembled in one place to openly corroborate these assertions.

I've done a lot of writing about civilian deaths in the wars that have raged on the last few years - always wondering what we didn't know about. Now, finally, at least some of this will be brought to light by the efforts of these courageous journalists and veterans. I think we all have a responsibility to closely examine what our countries' militaries are doing in our names and to hold those responsible accountable.

Excerpt:

"I'll tell you the point where I really turned," said Spc. Michael Harmon, 24, a medic from Brooklyn. He served a thirteen-month tour beginning in April 2003 with the 167th Armor Regiment, Fourth Infantry Division, in Al-Rashidiya, a small town near Baghdad. "I go out to the scene and [there was] this little, you know, pudgy little 2-year-old child with the cute little pudgy legs, and I look and she has a bullet through her leg.... An IED [improvised explosive device] went off, the gun-happy soldiers just started shooting anywhere and the baby got hit. And this baby looked at me, wasn't crying, wasn't anything, it just looked at me like--I know she couldn't speak. It might sound crazy, but she was like asking me why. You know, Why do I have a bullet in my leg?... I was just like, This is--this is it. This is ridiculous."

Michael Moore Blasts Blitzer and CNN

If you didn't get the chance to see Monday's Situation Room, you missed Michael Moore blasting Wolf Blitzer and CNN.

Crooks & Liars has the video and here's the transcript.

Before Moore appeared, CNN ran a video segment by Dr Sanjay Gupta disputing some of the facts in Moore's film "Sicko":

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN SR. MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): "Sicko" throws hard punches at the United States healthcare system, and it seems just about everyone has something to say.

(SOUNDS)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Moore was spot on.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The facts, I think, support what I believe.

GUPTA: And Moore presents a lot of facts throughout the movie. But do they all check out? Keeping them honest, we did some digging and we started with the biggie. The United States slipped to number 37 in the world's healthcare systems.

It's true, 37 is the ranking, according to the World Health Organization's latest data on 191 countries. It's based on general health level, patient satisfaction, access and how it's paid for. France tops the list. Italy and Spain make it into the top 10. The United Kingdom is 18.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hello!

GUPTA: Moore brings a group of patients, including 9/11 workers to Cuba, and marvels at their free treatment and quality of care. But hold on. That WHO list puts Cuba's healthcare system even lower than the United States, coming in at number 39. Moore asserts that the American healthcare system spends $7,000 per person on health, whereas Cuba spends $25 per person.

Not true, but not too far off. The United States spends $6,096 a year per person versus $229 a year in Cuba. And astronomically more money doesn't mean far better outcomes. In fact, Americans live just a little bit longer than Cubans on average. So Americans do pay more, but the United States also ranks highest in patient satisfaction.

And Americans have shorter wait times than everyone but Germans when seeking non-emergency elective procedures like hip replacement, cataract surgery or knee repair. That's not something you'll see in "Sicko" as Americans tell their tales of lack of coverage and suffocating red tape.

It's true that the United States is the only country in the Western world without free universal access to health care. But you won't find medical utopia elsewhere. The film is filled with content Canadians and Brits sitting in waiting rooms, confident care will come.

In Canada, you can be waiting for a long time. A survey of six industrialized nations found that only Canada was worse than the United States when it came to waiting for a doctor's appointment for a medical problem.

PAUL KECKLEY, DELOITTE HEALTH CARE ANALYST: That's the reality of those systems. There are quotas. There are planned wait times. The concept that care is free in France and Canada and Cuba, and it's not. Those citizens pay for health services out of taxes. And as a proportion of their household income, it's a significant number.

GUPTA: It's true that the French pay higher taxes and so does nearly every country ahead of the United States on that list. But even higher taxes don't give all the coverage everyone wants.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Fifteen-to-20 percent of the population will purchase services outside the system of care run by the government.

GUPTA: So, there's no perfect system anywhere. But no matter how much Moore fudged the facts -- and he did fudge some facts -- there's one everyone agrees on. The system here should be far better. Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN, reporting.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

And here's part of Moore's response:

BLITZER: Michael Moore is joining us now live from Detroit. Michael, thanks very much for coming in. You want to respond to anything ...

MOORE: First of all, Wolf, yeah, well -- yeah, I'd like about 10 minutes to respond to what was said.

BLITZER: Give us a couple of headlines, what you'd like to say.

MOORE: I don't talk in sound bites. So -- that report was so biased. I can't imagine what pharmaceutical company ad's coming up right after our break here.

But why don't you tell the truth to the American people? I mean, I wish that CNN and the other mainstream media would just for once tell the truth about what's going on in this country, whether it's with healthcare -- I don't care what it is. I mean, you guys have such a poor track record.

And for me to come on here and have to listen to that kind of crap. I mean, seriously, I haven't been on your show now for three years. The last time I was on, you ran a similar piece about "Fahrenheit 9/11" saying this can't be true what he's saying about the war, how it's going to be a quagmire, the weapons of mass destruction.

You know, and -- why don't you start off actually with my first appearance back here on your show in three years and maybe apologize to me for saying that three years ago, because it turned out everything I said in "Fahrenheit" was true. Everything has come to happen.

Everything I said. I mean, I was -- I took you in that film to Walter Reed Hospital and it took three years before you or any of the rest of the mainstream media would go to Walter Reed Hospital and see what was happening to our troops. So for me to have to sit here and listen again to more crap about socialized medicine or how the Canadians have it worse than us and all this, all the statistics show that we have far worse healthcare than these other industrialized countries.

We're the only ones that don't have it free and universal. And, you know, there's a -- there's a -- you said that Germany was the only one that was better than us in terms of wait times. The Commonwealth Fund last year showed of the top six countries, we were second to last, next to Canada. It showed that Britain, for instance, 71 percent of the British public, when they call to see a doctor, get to see the doctor that day or the next day. It's 69 percent in Germany. It's 66% in Australia. And you're the ones who are fudging the facts. You fudged the facts to the American people now for I don't know how long about this issue, about the war.

And I'm just curious when are you going to just stand there and apologize to the American people for not bringing the truth to them that isn't sponsored by some major corporation? I mean, I'll sit here for as long as it takes, if you can do that for me.

And that was just the beginning. Make sure you read and/or view the rest. Moore was on fire and Blitzer didn't know what hit him.

Related: Michael Moore's site
 

24 Hours in Iraq: A Huge Death Toll

Via antiwar.com:

161 Iraqis, 3 GIs, 2 Britons Killed; 257 Iraqis Wounded

And the death toll for US forces now sits at 3,600.

But just wait until September for Petraeus' rosy report about how well the surge is working, DC politicians. It's not like you ought to be horrified by what happens in Iraq every single day. It's just war, after all. Right?

In other violence, police said a family of seven sleeping on a Baghdad roof died when a mortar hit the building.

The dead reportedly included a couple and their four children, aged nine to 17, as well as a relative.

Many Iraqis choose to spend hot summer nights sleeping on the roof of their home because of frequent electricity failures.
BBC

At least during the current heat wave gripping the western US, no American will have to worry about their family being killed by a mortar attack.

And what is CNN covering at this hour? Healthy food choices. The world has gone insane.