Private security firm Blackwater USA, which sent its mercenaries to Iraq, has been condemned as being ‘dangerously out of control’ after nearly 200 shootings by its operatives in Iraq since 2005.
A just-released US Congressional committee report says Blackwater has covered up fatal shootings involving its employees, is the first to shoot in most incidents, and has joined in US military occupation force tactical operations.
The House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Government Reform report quotes US military commanders as saying that Blackwater operatives, ‘act like cowboys’ with ‘very quick trigger fingers’.
Citing company information, it says Blackwater has been involved in at least 195 ‘escalation of force’ incidents since 2005 and that use of force is ‘frequent and extensive, resulting in significant casualties and property damage’.
The report states: ‘Blackwater’s contract to provide protective services to the State Department provides that Blackwater can engage in only defensive use of force.
‘In over 80 per cent of the shooting incidents, however, Blackwater reports that its forces fired the first shots.’
The report is also highly critical of the US State Department for failing to restrain Blackwater’s activities and helping cover up some of its wrongdoings.
It cites an instance of the State Department helping get a drunken Blackwater employee safely out of the country after he shot dead a guard of puppet Iraqi Vice president Adil Abd-al-Mahdi.
The committee’s report comes as hearings are due to open into Blackwater’s activities in Iraq and in particular a September 16 shooting incident in a crowded Baghdad square that killed at least eleven Iraqi civilians.
Nearly two weeks after the bloody shootout, the circumstances remain unclear, with Iraqis angry and indignant and puppet premier Maliki having demanded Blackwater’s expulsion.
The largest private security firm operating in Iraq, Blackwater, has received more than $1bn in US government contracts since 2001.
• The majority of Americans do not want to give President George W Bush the $190bn he has requested for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll, out yesterday.
While 27 per cent of those polled said they would give a green light to the funding, a hefty 43 per cent of those surveyed said they wanted the budget for those conflicts reduced sharply; and another 23 per cent said they wanted the funding lowered somewhat.
Three per cent said no funding should be approved and three per cent had no opinion.
