WASHINGTON — Top executives at Blackwater Worldwide authorized secret payments of about $1 million to Iraqi officials that were intended to silence their criticism and buy their support after a September 2007 episode in which Blackwater security guards fatally shot 17 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad, according to former company officials.
Blackwater is a private military unit, which is owned by a militant Christian fundamentalist named Erik Prince. According to testimony from two of his former employees, Prince "views himself as a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe," and that Prince's companies "encouraged and rewarded the destruction of Iraqi life."
Somehow, though, the US Government gave this man billions of dollars to provide "security" in Iraq, a country populated mostly by Muslims.
I can almost hear how this conversation went:
Bush: Hey Erik! I need someone to keep the peace over there in Iraq. Those Islamites are looking kind of tense right now.
Prince: Well, I can do that!
Bush: I need someone who can really keep it chill. What're yer qualities, uh, quantitizat-, i mean, qualifications? Yeah.
Prince: Well, Dubya, I'm hell-bent on eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe. Family values, you know?
Bush: Perfect! Heh heh. Perfect!
And of course this happened:
At midday on Sept. 16, 2007, a Blackwater convoy opened fire on Iraqi civilians in the crowded intersection, spraying automatic weapons fire in ways that investigators later claimed was indiscriminate, and even launching grenades into a nearby school. Seventeen Iraqis were killed and dozens more were wounded.
Read more here. It's pretty bad.
Of course, this was just one of many Blackwater crimes in Iraq. But this one was so bad, so egregious, that they realized that not even the Bush administration could protect them if the Iraqis wanted to bar them from operating in the country. So, according to former company officials, they tried to bribe the Iraqis with $1 million.
And Blackwater is accountable to no one. They operated in Iraq with virtual immunity; their mercenary soldiers could kill almost at will. They are an evil outfit.
It's becoming harder and harder every day to vilify insurgents in countries that have been invaded by the United States.
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