John Ashcroft Now in Charge of Ethics at Blackwater

The left has had a few days of enjoyment since the killing of Osama bin Laden. Well, they're only enjoying it since a Democrat is president. You know they'd be freaking out if it happened under Bush and the story behind it kept changing as it does.

Anyway, they'll be back to their usual frothing rage once they read this.

Notorious private contractor Blackwater (which two years ago gave itself the new name Xe Services) has tapped former Attorney General John Ashcroft to head its ethics committee. It's a signal, Wired’s Spencer Ackerman writes, that the company will continue to pursue lucrative government security contracts. Blackwater, which has not been very successful in getting people to use the Xe Services name, has been trying to shed its Iraqi cowboy reputation since its founder, Erik Price, sold the company late last year. Ashcroft, who was the early face of the Bush administration’s War on Terror, has long-standing ties to Washington and will reassure federal officials that the company is now on the straight and narrow.

A federal judge recently reinstated the manslaughter and weapons case against Blackwater for the shooting deaths of 14 unarmed Iraqi civilians in Baghdad's Nisoor Square in 2007. The case had been tossed out in December 2009 because of the way the private contractors initial statements about what happened were obtained. Other black marks on Blackwater's resume include contractors obtaining AK-47s under cartoon characters' names and rampant steroid and cocaine use at parties in which personnel "would run around naked."

Unreal: U.S. to Appeal Dismissal of Charges Against Blackwater

Makes you wonder whose side they're on. Actually, no, I'm no longer wondering. They're definitely not on our side.

The U.S. will appeal a court decision dismissing manslaughter charges against five Blackwater Worldwide security contractors involved in a deadly 2007 Baghdad shooting, U.S. Vice President Joe Biden said Saturday.

Biden's announcement after a meeting with Iraqi President Jalal Talabani shows just how diplomatically sensitive the incident remains nearly three years later.

Blackwater security contractors were guarding U.S. diplomats when the guards opened fire in a crowded Baghdad intersection. Seventeen people were killed, including women and children, in a shooting that inflamed anti-American sentiment in Iraqi.

The U.S. rebuffed Iraqi demands that the U.S. contractors face trial in Iraqi courts. After a lengthy investigation, U.S. prosecutors charged five of the contractors with manslaughter and took a guilty plea from a sixth.

But the case fell apart in December after a judge found that the Justice Department mishandled evidence and violated the guards' constitutional rights. Prosecutors now face difficult odds getting an appeals court to reinstate the case.

The dismissal outraged many Iraqis, who said it showed the Americans considered themselves above the law. The Iraqi government began collecting signatures for a class-action lawsuit from victims who were wounded or lost relatives.

Messages seeking comment from lawyers for the guards were not immediately returned Saturday.

Blackwater has said the guards were innocent, contending there were ambushed by insurgents. Prosecutors said the shooting was unprovoked.

The government is eager to ruin the lives of these people doing a dirty job, yet when it comes to prosecuting domestic thugs, well, they're just not interested in that.

The Justice Department, citing privilege claims, has refused to release e-mails and other documents sought under an open records request by The Washington Times to explain its decision last year to dismiss a civil complaint accusing the New Black Panther Party of intimidating voters at a Philadelphia polling place.

In a letter, the department said that while 69 documents totaling 135 pages were responsive to the Freedom of Information Act request for information on how and why the decision to dismiss the complaint was made, they were being withheld because of "deliberative process" and "attorney work-product" privilege exemptions.

Obama has his priorities straight, that's for sure: Black Panthers good, Blackwater bad.

It's as if they're unaware of a certain election this past week that sent a very loud message people don't like how this administration is operating.

Horror in Baghdad: Blackwater Shoots a Dog

Not just any old dog, but one claimed by the New York Times.

Question: Will this merit more front pages than Abu Ghraib?

The U.S. embassy in Iraq is investigating another deadly shooting incident involving its Blackwater bodyguards -- this time of the New York Times's dog.

Staff at the newspaper's Baghdad bureau said Blackwater bodyguards shot Hentish dead last week before a visit by a U.S. diplomat to the Times compound.

Blackwater spokeswoman Anne Tyrrell said the dog had attacked one of Blackwater's bomb-sniffer dogs while a security team was sweeping the compound for explosives.

"The K-9 handler made several unsuccessful attempts to get the dog to retreat, including placing himself between the dogs. When those efforts failed, the K-9 handler unfortunately was forced to use a pistol to protect the company's K-9 and himself," she said in an e-mail to Reuters.

The U.S. embassy employs about 1,000 armed Blackwater staff to protect American diplomats in Baghdad.

Will there be Congressional hearings over such brutal use of force?

Remarkably, the State Department is taking this seriously.

State Department investigators have made two follow-up visits to the Times compound to investigate the shooting of Hentish, correspondent Alissa Rubin said.

"They were very solicitous and I thought took the incident very seriously," Rubin said. "It's not a dog that everyone's close to in the compound.

"But it's a dog that's been around a long time. It lived its whole life there."

UPDATE: The Kos Kidz are taking this very seriously.

Whether it's a jaywalker, a random carload of people driving too slowly or too close, or man's best friend, Blackwater will shoot anything that moves in Iraq.

UPDATE II: Sweetness & Light has an interesting look at things. Meanwhile, it's getting ugly in the leftwing fever swamps.

Sometimes, gang-raping and civilian killing just isn’t enough to get the message across, I guess.

Comment by tombaker — December 18, 2007 @ 2:48 pm

Speaks volumes for the climate …. Gang rapes, murder, thievery,… now the slaughter of dogs? Do we want this crowd helping Americans in time of disaster? And I agree with the above posts… that middle finger in the emblem says it all.

Comment by had enough — December 18, 2007 @ 3:23 pm

Repubs just love dogs.
Mitt-Flop Romney chains them to the roof of his car for ten hour rides.
Rudy’s mistress/wife sells them for cruel lab experiments.
Huckabee’s kids use them as Pinatas.
The Repub party is the party of Jeffrey Dahmers.

Comment by OxyCon — December 18, 2007 @ 3:30 pm

BTW, isn’t Blackwater a militia?
And aren’t militias illegal?
By having the Blackwater militia competing with out armed forces, we are weakening our country and sliding down a slippery slope where a fascist right wing dictator can arise and use Blackwater to gain power.
What does Blackwater do exactly which hasn’t been done by our military for the past 225 years? Why are they even necessary?
Outsourcing our military to overpaid mercenary militias is extemely dangerous, extravagantly expensive and should be immediately outlawed.

Comment by OxyCon — December 18, 2007 @ 3:37 pm

From Whitewater to Blackwater

The left has been obsessing on Blackwater lately, with Henry "Nostrilitus" Waxman holding hearings earlier this week. It's become another convenient way of undermining our mission in Iraq now that we've been making progress. That, and it's a nice diversion from the MoveOn.org-inspired General "Betray Us" fiasco that blew up in their faces a couple of weeks ago.

Well, look what we have here. It turns out one of Mrs. Bill Clinton's top campaign officials has very cozy ties with Blackwater.

Let's see how much attention this gets. Very little, I'm sure.

BLACKWATERGATE LINKED TO HILL

October 6, 2007 -- WASHINGTON - The company run by one of Hillary Clinton's top campaign officials has been providing public-relations services for Blackwater - the security firm, accused of killing 17 Iraqi civilians, that has come under fire from Congress.

Burson-Marsteller, run by Clinton pollster Mark Penn, has been representing the troubled security firm in the lead-up to congressional testimony this week in which top company officials defended their policies and techniques for providing security in the war zone.

Penn is one of Clinton's longest-serving and most important advisers, perhaps second only to her husband in influence.

He said yesterday that his company was no longer representing Blackwater.

Listed as the "worldwide CEO" of the company, Penn also said he was not personally involved in the account.

Sure. Just provide all you phone records and emails to investigators and that'll clear everything up.

Blackwater became a political lightning rod as the Iraq war spiraled out of control and accusations of torture and abuse spread rampantly.

While Blackwater has been heavily criticized by Democrats - including Barack Obama and John Edwards - Clinton has been noticeably silent about the firm's conduct in Iraq.

The Clinton campaign downplayed the association yesterday, saying that Penn never did any work on the Blackwater account and that his company had cut its ties with Blackwater.

"Mark is and remains a valuable member of our team," Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson said.

He also sought to join the Democratic condemnation of Blackwater.

"Sen. Clinton believes Blackwater must be held accountable for its actions and has laid out a detailed proposal to sharply reduce the number of contractors employed by the federal government by 500,000," Wolfson said.

"She has repeatedly stated her concern that such contractors are not as accountable as federal employees."

Further complicating matters for Clinton is that Blackwater's first contract with the federal government actually wasn't under the Bush administration. It was in 1998, according to company officials, when Clinton's husband was in the White House.

Yesterday's revelations of a tie between Blackwater and Clinton became easy fodder for attacking the Democratic front-runner.

Campaigning in Iowa, former North Carolina Sen. Edwards noted Blackwater's deep ties to Republicans and the Bush administration and described Penn as Clinton's "Karl Rove."

Real cute, Silky. Now why don't you bring up Norman Hsu?