Exclusive: Blackwater 'Blood Money' Angers Iraqis

[babylonsister]

Exclusive: Blackwater 'Blood Money' Angers Iraqis
Two Iraqi Families of Victims Killed by Blackwater Guards Tell ABC News They've Refused Compensation From the Company


The father of an Iraqi boy, Ali, 9 and pictured above, says his son was one of 17 civilians killed when Blackwater security guards, escorting a diplomatic convoy, opened fire at Baghdad's Nisour square Sept. 16. (ABC News)

By AADEL FAIQ
March 20, 2008


At least two Iraqi families of victims killed by Blackwater security guards in September tell ABC News they have refused compensation offered by the company.

The father of a 9-year-old boy, who says his son was one of the 17 civilians killed when Blackwater guards, escorting a diplomatic convoy, opened fire at Baghdad's Nisour Square on Sept. 16, says he is trying to file a lawsuit against the company. He told ABCNews.com that Blackwater offered him $20,000 through an Iraqi prosecutor, but he refused the money.

Another Iraqi who lost both his wife and son in the incident says he too has refused the company's offer of compensation of $20,000 for each victim.

Adel Jabur Shamma, who was injured in the incident, says he was bed-ridden for six months after being shot in the thigh. He says he was given $10,000 by the Iraqi prosecutor who is mediating between the families and Blackwater, but that the amount isn't nearly enough to cover his surgery. He says he took the money because he had no other choice.

While a federal grand jury in Washington, D.C. investigates the deaths, Blackwater has been operating behind the scenes in Iraq to offer condolence payments to survivors and families of the dead.

more...

http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=4489251&page=1

[Echo In Light]

1. K&R

[MikeNearMcChord]

2. If it was up to me, it would be $20 million

Blackwater must be abolished, end of story!

[annabanana]

3. Here's some cheap American dollars. . Sorry about your kid but-

you know... stuff happens.

[pleah]

4. This only proves that our government/blackwater do not value life.

Damn it, I am so angry!:mad: :grr: :banghead:

[gratuitous]

5. Gee, that's not what I've heard

Whether it's our good friends in Blackwater or our faultless men and women in other uniforms, paying compensation to the survivors was supposed to be culturally sensitive. Who knew that those ingrates we're liberating don't understand the value of a dollar, or twenty thousand dollars? "Blood money"! That's a fine thing to call an insurance premium against charges of crimes against humanity.

[Usrename]

6. Can we impeach now?

The world is watching.

[1776Forever]

7. This is the face of the Bush thugs policies with Rummy's fingerprints all over it!

I have for years sent letters and emails to a lot Senators and MSM shows throughout the last 5 years. One can only try to get the word out.

Here is a great article on Blackwater:

Checkbook Imperialism: The Blackwater Fiasco

Posted on Sep 18, 2007

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20070918_checkbook_imperialism_the_blackwater_fiasco/

By Robert Scheer

Please, please, I tell myself, leave Orwell out of it. Find some other, fresher way to explain why “Operation Iraqi Freedom” is dependent upon killer mercenaries. Or why the “democratically elected government” of “liberated” Iraq does not explicitly have the legal power to expel Blackwater USA from its land or hold any of the 50,000 private contractor troops that the U.S. government has brought to Iraq accountable for their deadly actions.

Were there even the faintest trace of Iraqi independence rising from the ashes of this failed American imperialist venture, Blackwater would have to fold its tents and go, if only in the interest of keeping up appearances. After all, the Iraqi Interior Ministry claimed that the Blackwater thugs guarding a U.S. State Department convoy through the streets of Baghdad fired “randomly at citizens” in a crowded square on Sunday, killing 11 people and wounding 13 others. So the Iraqi government has ordered Blackwater to leave the country after what a government spokesman called a “flagrant assault ... on Iraqi citizens.”

But who told those Iraqi officials that they have the power to control anything regarding the 182,000 privately contracted personnel working for the U.S. in Iraq? Don’t they know about Order 17, which former American proconsul Paul Bremer put in place to grant contractors, including his own Blackwater bodyguards, immunity from Iraqi prosecution? Nothing has changed since the supposed transfer of power from the Coalition Provisional Authority, which Bremer once headed, to the Iraqi government holed up in the Green Zone and guarded by Blackwater and other “private” soldiers.

(snip)

But the White House hopes the outrage will once again blow over. As the Associated Press reported on Monday: “The U.S. clearly hoped the Iraqis would be satisfied with an investigation, a finding of responsibility and compensation to the victim’s families—and not insist on expelling a company that the Americans cannot operate here without.” Or, as Ambassador Ryan Crocker testified to the U.S. Senate last week: “There is simply no way at all that the State Department Bureau of Diplomatic Security could ever have enough full-time personnel to staff the security function in Iraq. There is no alternative except through contracts.”

Consider the irony of that last statement—that the U.S. experiment in building democracy in Iraq is dependent upon the same garrisons of foreign mercenaries that drove the founders of our own country to launch the American Revolution. As George Washington warned in his farewell address, once the American government enters into these “foreign entanglements,” we lose the Republic, because public accountability is sacrificed to the necessities of war for empire.

(snip)

“We are not simply a ‘private security company,’ ” Blackwater boasts on its corporate website. “We are a professional military, law enforcement, security, peacekeeping, and stability operations firm. ... We have become the most responsive, cost-effective means of affecting the strategic balance in support of security and peace, and freedom and democracy everywhere.”

............

What BS!!

:hide: