Blackwater/aka
Xe Services: The exoneration of company guards
who worked
in Iraq and were charged with killing 17 people has
the Muslim world seething.
Le Quotidien
d'Oran, Algeria
Blackwater 'No
Better Than al-Qaeda'
"The
judge's ruling to absolve the Blackwater murderers is one of stunning
violence. ... We should perhaps consider this January 1, 2010 'Ricardo Urbina Day,'
after the judge who granted these gangsters the right to kill in broad daylight."
United States District Court Judge Ricardo M. Urbina: His decision that evidence against Blackwater guards charged with killing 17 Iraqis was inadmissable has angered Iraqis and other Muslims.
The year of Obama is over!
Now is the year of Bush, only with Barack Hussein in the White House. The news
at the end of one year and the beginning of another is like a road map. In
recent days, we've suddenly been returned to the great confrontation of the
Bush era: al-Qaeda, which is everywhere, against the Empire, which
preemptively, is similarly everywhere. The Republicans, who've already won by
imposing Bush's war agenda, are committed to erasing the
"aberrations" of the Obama presidency in 2009.
And it's this sudden activism
by al-Qaeda - from Afghanistan to Yemen and in the Sahel region, to say nothing of
the attempt against a Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam to Detroit -
that makes it favorable to paint as pure whim the "moral"
equivocation of the preemptively-Nobelized president by a Norwegian Academy
that is a bit naive politically. In 2010, this will require monitoring the
front lines which are already ablaze, and expecting other areas to be set
alight, notably in the Middle East.
But at the beginning of 2010,
it was from the heart of the Empire that the most important message came.
Apparently for procedural reasons, an American judge simply decided to absolve
the murderers employed by Blackwater, who
had fired on peaceful Iraqis for fun, killing 17. This is an imperial
message on behalf of the law; American law, of course.
The "blunders" and
"collateral damage" inflicted by Americans are so numerous that
they've become part of the routine for a militarized civilization. Humanitarian
organizations are indignant, the American military is content offering a
laconic, "the investigation is in progress," and the local Karzai
laments the electoral consequences. The script is extremely well known.
Posted by WORLDMEETS.US
The fact remains that the
judge's ruling to absolve the Blackwater murderers is one of stunning
violence. We're not dealing here with a White House that knows how to make the
affair disappear, but with a court ruling which, based on a dubious procedural
pretext, decided that these repeat murderers, implicated in numerous atrocities
and who committed their crimes in plain sight of hundreds of Iraqis, aren't
punishable.
Blackwater, which changed its
name to "Xe Services" after its massacre of innocents, is in fact an
organization similar to al-Qaeda, but one under the full protection of American
law. We should perhaps consider this January 1, 2010, "Blackwater
Day," or "Ricardo
Urbina Day," after the judge who granted these gangsters the right to kill in broad
daylight. The "Urbina Doctrine" endorses the right of
mercenaries to kill without being held accountable. The gun-toting enterprises
that accompany the regular army of the United States have just been issued the
most satisfying assurance. They can continue to use their weapons
indiscriminately against Arabs and Muslims, all of whom, of course,
are subversives of al-Qaeda - that enemy which is so useful to the Empire.
Posted by WORLDMEETS.US
We'll have to wait and see if
those who pretend to govern Iraq from the Green Zone in Baghdad will choose to
expel the mercenary firms that remained after Blackwater left.
[Editor's Note: On September 16, 2007, Blackwater guards shot and killed 17 Iraqi civilians in Nisour Square, Baghdad. The fatalities occurred while a Blackwater Personal Security Detail was escorting a convoy of U.S. State Department vehicles. The
Washington Post quoted Judge Urbina's decision on how the evidence against five
Blackwater guards had been tainted: "In their zeal to bring charges,
prosecutors and investigators aggressively sought out statements in the
immediate aftermath of the shooting and in the subsequent investigation. In so
doing, the government's trial team repeatedly disregarded the warnings of
experienced, senior prosecutors, assigned to the case specifically to advise
the trial team on such matters."]
