Sunday, October 24, 2010
Occupation Iraq: Blackwater Contractor Gets Away With Murder
SEATTLE — A former security contractor for Blackwater USA will not be indicted in the killing of an Iraqi guard in 2006, a federal prosecutor says.
According to a congressional report, Seattle resident Andrew Moonen was wandering drunk around Baghdad’s Green Zone after a Christmas Eve party in 2006 when he encountered and fatally shot Raheem Saadoun, 32, a guard for Vice President Adil Abd-al-Mahdi.
But US Attorney Jenny Durkan said Monday that prosecutors decided there wasn’t enough evidence to sustain a criminal conviction for the killing....
Moonen’s lawyer, Stewart Riley, said the past four years have been stressful for Moonen, adding the Army veteran has lost out on job opportunities and has not been able to serve in Iraq or Afghanistan as an Army reservist.
Well, he is doing BETTER than the DEAD GUY!
Riley said Moonen served a seven-month tour in Iraq before working for Blackwater.
Better money than reenlisting!
“He will now attempt to put this very difficult time in his life behind him and hopefully move on,’’ Riley said in a statement.
Yeah, it is ALL ABOUT HIM when an INNOCENT MAN who DID NOTHING is lying in a GRAVE!
“Unlike some in Congress and some in the news media, the United States Attorney’s Office did not rush to judgment and appears to have been decidedly immune from outside pressure.’’
But INSIDE PRESSURE STILL WORKS!
In 2008, federal prosecutors, FBI agents, and other officials traveled to Iraq to investigate whether they could charge Moonen, interviewing witnesses and reviewing available records.
“After a thorough review of the above-described materials, and an analysis of the facts of this case and the applicable law, we have decided to close the investigation of Mr. Moonen without asking a grand jury to return an indictment against him,’’ Durkan wrote....
Another failed investigation from the he Fascist Bureau of Instigation.
After the shooting, Blackwater arranged to have the State Department fly Moonen, a former Army Ranger, back to the United States.
They AIDED and ABETTED a MURDERER!
The company then fired him and fined him. Blackwater paid Saadoun’s family $15,000....
But no evidence of a crime, blah, blah, blah.
--more--"
Related: Operation Iraq: Blessed Blackwater
Not the first time, and probably not the last:
NEW YORK — It was early in the Iraq war, Dec. 22, 2004, and the shots came not from insurgents or criminals. They were fired by workers for a US private security company, Custer Battles, according to an incident report in an archive of more than 300,000 classified military documents made public by WikiLeaks....
Somehow no one had been hurt, and the contractors found a quick way to prevent messy disciplinary action. They handed out cash to Iraqi civilians and left.
YOUR TAX DOLLARS at WORK, America!
The documents sketch, in vivid detail, a critical change in the way America wages war: the early days of the Iraq war, with all its Wild West chaos, ushered in the era of the private contractor, wearing no uniform but fighting and dying in battle, gathering and disseminating intelligence, and killing presumed insurgents.
This kind of "journalism" is REALLY MAKING ME SICK!
There have been many abuses, including civilian deaths, to the point that the Afghan government is working to ban many outside contractors entirely.
The use of security contractors is expected to grow as US forces shrink. A July report by the Commission on Wartime Contracting, a panel established by Congress, estimated that the State Department alone would need more than double the number of contractors it had protecting the US Embassy and consulates in Iraq.
So WHEN does the WAR-PROFITEERING and EMPIRE END, American taxpayers?
Contractors were necessary at the start of the Iraq war because there simply were not enough soldiers....
And yet we INVADED at a TIME and PLACE of OUR OWN CHOSSING!
At the TIME we were told we had MORE THAN ENOUGH FORCE and EVERYTHING was CAREFULLY CALCULATED and PLANNED!!
Yup, the LIES NEVER END from the government and its MOUTHPIECE MEDIA!
Even now — with many contractors discredited for unjustified shootings and a lack of accountability described in the documents — the military cannot do without them.
Then it is TIME to END the EMPIRE and BRING EVERYONE HOME!
There are more contractors than military forces serving in Afghanistan.
The archive, which describes many episodes never made public in detail, shows the multitude of shortcomings with this new system: how a failure to coordinate among contractors, coalition forces, and Iraqi troops, as well as a failure to enforce rules of engagement that bind the military, endangered civilians as well as the contractors themselves. The military was often outright hostile to contractors for being amateurish, overpaid, and often trigger-happy.
Contractors often shot with little discrimination — and few, if any, consequences — at unarmed civilians, Iraqi security forces, US troops, and even other contractors, stirring outrage and undermining much of what coalition forces were sent to accomplish.
As we SAW ABOVE!
And they accomplished what they were sent to do: remove Israel's foe and get on top of those oil fields.
Do you know HOW SICK I am of the MSM SHIT-SPIN?
For all the contractors’ bravado — Iraq was packed with beefy men with beards and flak jackets — and for all the debates about their necessity, it is clear from the documents that the contractors appeared notably ineffective at keeping themselves and the people they were paid to protect from being killed.
Unless they were GUARDING U.S. OFFICIALS, etc!
In fact, the documents seem to confirm a common observation on the ground during those years: far from providing insurance against sudden death, the easily identifiable, surprisingly vulnerable pickup trucks and SUVs driven by the security companies were magnets for insurgents, militias, disgruntled Iraqis, and anyone else in search of a target....
The threats were not limited to insurgents, the documents show: private security contractors repeatedly came under fire from Iraqi and coalition security forces, who often seemed unnerved by unmarked vehicles approaching at high speeds and fired warning shots, or worse.
You know, the SAME THING "terrorists" would do!
As the war dragged on, there seemed no universal method for the military to identify these quasi-soldiers.
--more--"
Also see: Occupation Iraq: Israel's IEDs
Occupation Iraq: Israelis Killing U.S. Troops
Occupation Iraq: Israeli-Trained Death Squads
Plan B
Prop 101: Al-CIA-Duh and the OSI
Prop 101: Al-CIA-Duh's Greatest Hits
Prop 101: The "Terrorism" Business
Prop 102: Iraq and Government Lies
Al-CIA-Duh
Who Invented "Al-CIA-Duh?"
"Al-CIA-Duhs" Catch-and-Release Program
Asymmetrical Warfare Group
Operation Gladio
Operation Northwoods
Occupation Iraq: British Bombers
Occupation Iraq: America's Roadside Bombs
'The Salvador Option'
Special Police Commandos
Proactive, Preemptive Operations Group
Prop 201 tutorial
FRU
Islam's 9/11
Who is Bombing in Iraq? Are the bombers Al-Qaeda, the CIA or Israel?
Who are the TERRORISTS again?
