Finessing Blackwater

Blackwater founder Erik Prince stressed that Blackwater had yet to receive any indication from the State Department that it would be ordered to evacuate.

"Our abrupt departure would far more hurt the reconstruction team and the diplomats trying to rebuild the country than it would hurt us as a business," Prince said in an exclusive interview with the AP. From "Blackwater: We will leave Iraq if US orders it" by Mike Baker AP 1/30/09

Well, this illustrates at least one reason why Iraq has denied Blackwater Worldwide an operating license. Just seeing the head of this gang of gun-toting mercenaries look pointedly over at the American State Department when a sovereign nation has ordered them out is a damned good reason for rescinding their mayhem privileges. Another reason, of course, is that little kerfuffle at Nisoor Square back in 2007, when Blackwater guards opened fire in a crowded intersection, killing seventeen Iraqi civilians.

Which, the AP implies, was ever so unjust because it says right there in transcripts of Blackwater radio logs that they were coming under fire from insurgents.:

…Blackwater maintains the guards opened fire after coming under attack, an argument supported by transcripts of Blackwater radio logs obtained by the AP. They describe a hectic eight minutes in which the guards repeatedly reported incoming gunfire from insurgents and Iraqi police.

Far be it from the Associated Press to mention that there is no evidence, outside of these Blackwater transcripts, that there was any of this “incoming gunfire,” either according to the American military personnel who arrived on the scene just after the shootings or eyewitness reports, or the subsequent investigation by the FBI. The closest thing to possible provocation an FBI report could find was the sight of a white KIA sedan that continued moving after traffic had been stopped for the Blackwater Convoy. The dead bodies recovered from the sedan turned out to be a physician and her son, who according to relatives, were on a family errand.

But hey, who needs context?