In the few days after the massacre, the State Department collected testimony from the Blackwater guards involved to find out what happened. It told the guards they had "limited-use immunity" — which meant they wouldn't be prosecuted for anything they told the State Department in that interview. The problem was that the State Department didn't have that authority.
Only a prosecutor can grant immunity — and no one at the Justice Department, which would be prosecuting the case, knew anything about the State Department's offer. But the fact that the first interviews given by the Nisour Square shooters were given with the promise of immunity from prosecution ended up being a big problem for the rest of the case.
The US military conducted an initial investigation, interviewing eyewitnesses and reviewing video footage. The military's report, which was completed within a month of the Nisour Square incident, concluded that Blackwater was to blame for the massacre. A senior official involved in the investigation told the Washington Post, "It was obviously excessive. It was obviously wrong. This investigation is covered in Jeremy Scahill's book Blackwater.
The employees said they couldn't tell the FBI anything, because they'd already been granted immunity by the State Department — something the State Department didn't have the authority to do. In October, the Associated Press confirmed that the State Department had tried to give limited immunity to the guards before interviewing them.
The Justice Department's prosecutors had seen the testimony that the State Department had gathered — so they had to be taken off the case, and replaced with a new set of prosecutors. Blackwater also claimed that its account could be proven by looking at damage done to a couple of Blackwater vehicles.
The FBI tracked the vehicles down, only to find that Blackwater had already repaired and repainted them, destroying the evidence it claimed was important. The State Department had done nothing to intervene and preserve the evidence.
However, the FBI was still able to go through with the investigation. Its final report didn't come out until April But as early as November , FBI officials were telling the press that their report indicated Blackwater was to blame.
The final report found that 14 of the 17 deaths were unjustified. A victim of the Nisour Square massacre holds up a picture when testifying to federal investigators. The Iraqi Ministry of the Interior actually attempted to prosecute the Blackwater guards responsible for the massacre in Iraq.
This turned out to be impossible, since the agreement under which American military and contractors were serving in Iraq at the time explicitly said that the Iraqi government didn't have jurisdiction over them. The US federal government, meanwhile, is allowed to prosecute defense contractors for crimes committed abroad. But since the Blackwater employees in question were under contract by the State Department, rather than the Department of Defense, it wasn't clear that they were included in that law.
The Department of Justice decided to go ahead and try. A sixth guard, Jeremy Ridgeway, agreed to take a plea bargain — he pled guilty to manslaughter in exchange for a shorter sentence and agreed to testify against his former colleagues. The others pled not guilty. However, in December — before the case went to trial — the district court judge, Ricardo Urbina, abruptly dismissed all charges against the five defendants. Judge Urbina felt the federal government had built its case against the guards on the testimony they gave the State Department in the days after the shooting — testimony that was given because of the State Department's promise of immunity.
That testimony couldn't be introduced in court because it violated their Fifth Amendment rights. No one worried that I was one of the dead. I realize no one at home gives a shit as I lie in bed unable to sleep. The next day we walk to the nondenominational U. Embassy chapel. There is an elevated platform and a podium where a pastor can stand and give a jeremiad based on the religious service of the day.
My body attempts to sweat out the toxins consumed the night prior. I take a seat next to George, who is on the Quick Response Force team with me.
Who brings a suit to a combat zone? He speaks in platitudes about how important this mission is and how we are integral to both the State Department and the effort to rebuild Iraq. The people of Iraq are indebted to us. He speaks glowingly of the dead. I doubt he ever met them. I listen to his drivel and feel disdain for him, for the mission, and for the people of Iraq. Fully automatic MB. She jumps on the lap of the driver.
The look in her eyes is abject terror. I take a moment to feel bad. I need to feel bad about this. At least a little bad. This is my life. I have no ethical obligation to the people of Iraq, this war, this quagmire we created. Secondly, the murky legal status of the contractors meant they might be considered exempt from Iraqi law because of a mandate left over from the Coalition Provisional Authority, the U.
The Blackwater mess has roiled Capitol Hill and shined light on the many questions surrounding the legal status, management, oversight and accountability of the private military force in Iraq, which numbers more than , — at least as many as the total number of uniformed American forces there. Henry Waxman of California.
The problem is, some of the most critical questions may yet go unasked. I have reported my findings to audiences including the U. When we evaluate the facts, the use of private military contractors appears to have harmed, rather than helped, the counterinsurgency efforts of the U. Instead, the massive outsourcing of military operations has created a dependency on private firms like Blackwater that has given rise to dangerous vulnerabilities. We can expect that Prince will wrap himself in the flag, discussing all the vital missions that Blackwater conducts in Iraq, while downplaying the recent killings.
State Department officials are likely to say that they had no other option but to use the firm, given their lack of Diplomatic Security forces — conveniently ignoring that the department has chosen to hollow out its Diplomatic Security corps and instead hand over the task to a consortium of private firms led by Blackwater under a multibillion-dollar contract. Prince will take his shots, and State officials will point to new investigations they are now launching to try to mollify congressional anger.
But regardless of whether the Blackwater contractors were justified in the shooting, whether there was proper jurisdiction to ensure accountability, or even whether using firms like Blackwater saves money the data shows it does not , there is an underlying problem that everyone is ignoring. Related Books Terrorism and U. Foreign Policy By Paul R. Daalder and James M. Our dependency on military contractors shows all the signs of the last downward spirals of an addiction.
If we judge by what has happened in Iraq, when it comes to counterinsurgency and the use of private military contractors, the U. When the U. Led by then Army Chief of Staff Gen. Creighton Abrams , they wanted to ensure that the military would not go to war without the sufficient backing and involvement of the nation. The use of contractors in Iraq is unprecedented in both its size and scope.
Estimates of the number of contract personnel in Iraq vary widely. In , the United States Central Command estimated the number to be around , Yet even this figure was a conservative estimate, since a number of the biggest companies, as well as any firms employed by the State Department or other agencies or NGOs, were not included in the census.
Peter W. What matters is not merely the numbers, but the roles that private military contractors play. In addition to war gaming and field training U. The massive U. During the invasion, contractors maintained and loaded many of the most sophisticated U. Private military firms — ranging from well-established companies, such as Vinnell and MPRI, to start-ups, such as the British Aegis — have played an even greater role in the post-invasion occupation. Other firms are helping to train local forces, including the new Iraqi army and national police.
Then there are the firms such as Blackwater that have played armed roles within the battle space. They use military training and weaponry to carry out mission-critical functions that would have been done by soldiers in the past, in the midst of a combat zone against fellow combatants.
As it has been planned and conducted to date, the war in Iraq would not be possible without private military contractors. Contrary to conspiracy theories, the private military industry is not the so-called decider, plotting out wars behind the scenes like Manchurian Global.
But it has become the ultimate enabler, allowing operations to happen that might otherwise be politically impossible. The private military industry has given a new option that allows the executive branch to decide, and the legislative branch to authorize and fund, military commitments that bypass the Abrams Doctrine. It is sometimes easier to understand this concept by looking at the issue in reverse. If a core problem that U. Rather, it is that each of them was considered politically undesirable.
One answer to the problem of insufficient forces would have been for the executive branch to send more regular forces, beyond the original , planned. However, this would have involved publicly admitting that those involved in the planning — particularly then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld — were wrong in their slam of critics like Army Gen. Eric Shinseki, who warned that an occupation would require far more troops.
Plus, such an expanded force would have been onerous on the overall force, creating even more tradeoffs with the war in Afghanistan, as well as broader global commitments.
Another option would have been a full-scale call-up of the National Guard and Reserves, as originally envisioned for such major wars in the Abrams Doctrine. Some proposed persuading other allies to send their troops in to help spread the burden, much as NATO allies and other interested members of the U.
However, this would have involved tough compromises, such as granting U. Plus, much of the world was vehemently opposed to the war, so it was unlikely that NATO allies or the U. The private military industry was an answer to these political problems that had not existed in the past. It offered the potential backstop of additional forces, but with no one having to lose any political capital. Plus, the generals could avoid the career risk of asking for more troops. That is, there was no outcry whenever contractors were called up and deployed, or even killed.
If the gradual death toll among American troops threatened to slowly wear down public support, contractor casualties were not counted in official death tolls and had no impact on these ratings.
I am overwhelmed with emotion at this fantastic news. The pardons are one of several the US president has granted to American service personnel and contractors accused or convicted of crimes against non-combatants and civilians in war zones.
In November last year, he pardoned a former US army commando who was set to stand trial over the killing of a suspected Afghan bomb-maker, and a former army lieutenant convicted of murder for ordering his men to fire at three Afghans.
Supporters of the former contractors at Blackwater Worldwide had lobbied for the pardons, arguing that the men had been excessively punished.
0コメント