http://news.yahoo.com/former-blackwater-guard-sentenced-life-prison-baghdad-shooting-201420167.html Blackwater guards sentenced to mucho years, 1 got life.....I've read numerous reports on the incident....I find it very hard to even charge someone with murder or even manslaughter considering the war zone they were in.....terrorists, car bombings, IEDs, civilians killing civilians ....civilians hanging US citizens from a bridge, non-uniformed enemy, etc etc........ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackwater_Baghdad_shootings here is the wiki version
War zone or not they are still to follow the rule of law be it civilian or military. When it comes to black water I have no sympathy, It was a trigger happy company that according to wiki fired first in over 80% of cases. If you want some one to blame other then those that did the killing blame the company, When you have former military who had good careers with no issues going on to become trigger happy after signing up with black water then something is obviously wrong the company (now named Academi)
Unfortunately, many contractors are ill trained, poorly supervised, their status led to many incidents where they operated like drunken cowboys, and no one knew who had control of them in order to rein them in. Let me ask you some questions. -US military personnel have restrained by certain rules of engagement, why should contractors be exempt from similar rules? -If it had been in Paris during WWII and a spooked US soldier fired upon and killed a bunch of French, including unarmed women and children, wouldn't you expect US military authorities to take action against the soldier in question? -All the same problems you mentioned, "terrorists, car bombings, IEDs, civilians killing civilians, non-uniformed enemy," are there for our uniformed military personnel, yet they are expected to operate within certain boundaries. The contractors go in knowing all these conditions exist. They take the risks which are higher than what you'd have here in the US, but much less than what a combat soldier is exposed to on a daily basis, and are more than amply paid for accepting these risks, the going rate in Iraq was $120,000. for a six month contract, many times what a a US soldier was paid. So why should they get a pass when they screw up? -When given the contract by the government the corporation contracted is expected to have a certain level of expertise. Those signing up to work for the contractor should be able to tell if the corporation employing them cuts corners and hires unstable, inexperienced, ill-trained or employs ill equipped personnel. When they discover this they have the option of quitting (something service members do not have the luxury of). If they continue in the employ of said contractor, they are tacitly accepting these additional risks, and the consequences, are they not? Then they have no right to cry and whine when things go wrong, they could have left at any time. The Blackwater contractors that got hung from the bridge in Fallujah went out undermanned, inadequately armed, were not provided with adequate maps or a sufficient briefing on the mission (escorting empty trucks that were to pick up food preparation equipment). They took a wrong turn, ended up in a known terrorist controlled area, and got killed. The money was good, but good enough to ignore all the half-arsed, screwed-up situation? Contractors improper actions did lead to bolstering the enemy's cause, making the job harder and more dangerous for those that were there in the military doing their job for reasons other than a huge paycheck. The Fallujah/Bridge incident led directly to the 1st Battle of Fallujah. The Marines were using a "strategy of foot patrols, less aggressive raids, humanitarian aid, and close cooperation with local leaders" They had been making steady progress when the Blackwater Guards took the wrong route and got killed. When the pictures and stories made the news there was moral outrage here in the US and a public outcry for action. The Marine commanders had in the meantime identified those responsible and were going to use snipers and special ops teams to capture and kill the terrorists involved for the killings. So for political reasons the US military high command in Iraq ordered the current Marine operations, "suspended on orders to mount a military operation to clear guerrillas from Fallujah." So a large offensive was launched into the city, an offensive that the ground commanders felt would be counter-productive. We attacked, and had taken a portion of the city, killing many terrorists, when media coverage of the innocents caught in the fighting led to vocal opposition for the assault and it was halted and turned over to an Iraqi Brigade. We lost all the progress we had made and lost much of the good will from the populace that we had earned. This conditions caused by this fight led to the larger Second Battle of Fallujah, all because Blackwater cut corners and got some of their people killed. How about this incident where US Marines seized and held US contractors that were driving through their area of operations, shooting wildly at anything that moved including US troops? WASHINGTON — U.S. Marines forcibly detained a team of security guards working for an American engineering firm in Iraq after reportedly witnessing the contractors fire at U.S. troops and Iraqi civilians from an armed convoy, the military said Tuesday. After three days of detention in jail cells at a U.S. military base in Iraq, 19 employees of North Carolina-based Zapata Engineering, including 16 Americans, were released last week. All have resigned from the company and are returning home, U.S. and company officials said.
Wonder about any confusion they might have had. The 2 articles had different info. Yahoo- 14 killed, 17 wounded, and there was a 4 vehicle convoy trying to clear a way for US diplomats...Not any info on why there was confusion. . Wiki- 17 killed, 20 wounded, and had a very specific reasoning. Which seemed to support Blackwater employee version. Where is the evidence to support BW's version of events... Wonder if Dick Cheney had any interest in BW. And wouldn't that be a conflict of interest.
The difference in the killed is that US investigations found that 14 innocents were killed, three (14+3=17) were deemed justifiable, the people in the car and the one man by the car.
any unarmed person can be a threat....any vehicle can a threat.....they said a vehicle would not stop, and kept coming.. would you not agree it is a very volatile area/war zone?? ...they just had a bombing not long before this...mistakes happen... it's like a lot of these comments on police shootings '''I would've shot him in the hand'' "'why can't they just grab him and drop him with a phase 4 maneuver??"" it's not TV..it's dynamic, meaning once it's started, it builds like a wind swept fire...I saw one of the guards say there was no threat...maybe to him, but what about the others? there are always friendly fire and civilian casualties.....so, it had better be beyond a doubt, that the ''laws'' of war were not followed.... this wasn't anywhere near like the My Lai massacre.. did they really want to kill civilians?? that would be very, very hard to prove.... final--the vehicle was a threat, and the shooting started....the guards did not initiate the ordeal...
What's the alternative? Just say it's a dangerous place, so anything goes? This was not a witch hunt. The accused had a trial, in court, where all the facts could be brought out and they could present their defence. Sentences were imposed according to each defendant's actions. As USMCPrice mentioned, some of the killings were found to be justified; it appears that the court did a fair assessment.
Two occupants in the vehicle and one standing by the court viewed as a threat, Remaining civilians were ruled as murder, Simple. In actual fact the bloke that got life, Who was manning the machine gun, He while ordered to stop firing multiple times only stopped after another black water guard pointed his gun at him.. Three black water guards testified the shootings had been unjustified. Some times things are grey, But other times they are simply black and white and in this case they are black and white. This is why military's world wide need to stop hiring these people, Too many loose cannons get employed and bugger thing's up for every one.
If you're wondering how well trained some of these security personnel were, allow me to tell you a story. In 2004 my brother, retired Air Force, was working for Haliburton in his own specialty which was safety and occupational health. He's making piles of money and since I had recently retired from the Coast Guard, he suggested I should apply and come on over. At the time I was running a little armed security group at a missile site in Alaska. We were just subcontractors and had no special training beyond the state requirements for an armed security guard. Some firearms quals and the like. Think Paul Blart, Mall Cop. In Baghdad (or maybe Kabul...). I didn't think they'd take me. After all, I'm retired Coast Guard, not Marines or Army. My post retirement job meant nothing. We spent more time shooting rubber shotgun slugs at bears to keep them away from the equipment than worrying about security threats - it's absolutely in the middle of nowhere, there are no security threats. The money was damned good so I applied to a Haliburton security subsidiary even though I thought it was a waste of time. And they accepted immediately! They wanted me RIGHT NOW. They'd fly me to Houston (or Dallas?) for a physical and some paperwork and I'd be on my way to the ME within days after that. No further training required - my Coast Guard training would suffice even though it had NOTHING to do with the kind of security work involved. The only reason I didn't go was because my wife put her foot down and said she'd divorce me if I left again. I'd spent much of the marriage at sea and she wasn't going to do that any more. We divorced a year later anyway, so in hindsight being separated was pretty good for our marriage, but that's a different story. At any rate, I turned it down. I'm not sure what kind of security work they'd have had me doing, but it's a war zone and they were pleased as punch to get a 49 year old ex coastie! I'm sure these companies were having lots of trouble finding qualified personnel because they needed a lot of them and they needed them right now. So, when you see those pix of Blackwater or other private security guys with the Ray-Bans and the gee-whiz weapons and gear, don't assume they're all highly trained soldiers or SAS guys or whatever. Some of them (no doubt) were, but I suspect most of them were no more highly qualified than me. Even among ex-Army and Marines there are a lot of desk jockeys that would have to pull out a manual to field strip an AR. None of the panic and stupidity associated with these private security firms surprises me.
Kody...good, relative story...yes I've heard of Haliburton and the government $ they spend [ waste ].........re your story....no training?? I wouldn't doubt anything that the government is in on could be idiotic....but, seems odd, that Blackwater would contract with anyone, and bring in some people with no training...it's not like a Target guard.....sounds like a recipe for trouble....I sure wouldn't want to be over there with someone with no training, etc....how would they get the 'job' done? I thought they got the contract to guard Bremer, headman in Iraq....I'm guessing they put their top men in that commitment... Von Noob....if they put untrained poeple in there, sounds like the ex-Blackwater company should be held accountable.... I think I've forgotten how to field strip 45s and 16s..both are quite simple..but I think It would come back to me if I tried....of course, I'm a lot older now....
True bronk7, Black water should be held accountable but that still does not excuse the actions of the 4 that have been found guilty. As it is with such firms more often then not it is all about the bottom dollar, The cost of putting them through a proper training course to make sure their qualified and can interact well with their team or to even provide psychological support while deployed to them just isn't worth it, And the failure in those two part's could be attributed to many of these incidents.
and, if they were not that well trained, if at all, as Kody points out, I would even hold the ''guards'' less liable/guilty
I'd have to go with Von Noobie on this, Bronk. Training or not, anybody should have enough clarity and restraint to only shoot at a threat. Something was going on there with the vehicle, but some of those guys opened up on others once the first shots were fired. Then when that happened the police opened up on them (which was absolutely the right thing to do) and they then shot back at those Iraqi cops. It was a fiasco. Imagine this was an American city. A guy driving a car shoots a carjacker (an actual threat) and then his passenger opens up on other people standing on the street nearby, then at the cops who respond to the whole mess. One might grant a little leeway in a place like Baghdad, but these guys went way over the top.
roger that...I know they just can't be blasting away for nothing...and they might be guilty as hell......but it's a big difference than a US city..they just had a bombing before the incident....one of the biggest killings of US servicemen post WW2 was the Beirut car bomb... so there is a credible threat, the car, and then the shooting starts... ok, if guilty, do they deserve 30 years for manslaughter in a warzone/bombing/killing/etc city???? especially after the other guards were ambushed, murdered, and hung from the bridge?? reminds me of the line in Apocalypse Now..''Shit... charging a man with murder in this place was like handing out speeding tickets in the Indy 500.' no, Carronade, not anything goes....but horrible mistakes happen....Friendly Fire happens in most wars....US servicemen have killed other US servicemen that were not even firing at the US shooter... main point is, in a warzone, especially one as chaotic as this, it has to be undeniably clear, that they knew their lives were not in danger...it's not like the NAfrican WW2 battles, where you know where the enemy is, and they wear uniforms, etc.....do they need more fire discipline in civilian areas?? sure....but it takes training!....and if these guys were not trained, I'd put most of the blame on the company....thanks all the informative and, as usual, great, varied replies....
True it has to be clear and in such combat situations telling friend from foe is a challenging factor at the best of times, All that said when looking at the actual case a 5th person had already pleaded guilty a few years earlier and 3 others testified that the shootings had not been justified add to the fact testimony had been put forth the the one manning the machine gun had previously stated wanting to kill as many Iraqi's as possible in retaliation for 9/11. With such testimonies then I do see the punishment's handed out as fair.
Read something somewhere, where a soldier was watching as Blackwater employees were flying by in their small birds in Afghanistan . ..the soldier heard BW employees were well paid, and their job was easier. He was jealous, and wanted to join BW. But he was also under the impression BW only hired very trained individuals...kind of like highly paid mercenaries.
