Blackwater has been outed

Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo:

US suspends all land travel by US diplomats and other civilian officials in Iraq over Blackwater incident.

A semi-rhetorical question: why do we need Blackwater, a 'private security' firm, to provide security for US officials in Iraq when we have the US Army and US Marine Corps? Not to mention the various security agencies connected to the State Department and the paramilitary arms of our intelligence services?

I say it's a rhetorical question because I know most of the answers experts in the field would give. But none of them are very good answers. And many are very, very bad.

John Amato at Crooks and Liars quotes Jeremy Scahill:

Scahill: …instead the administration is building a coalition of corporations. Right now in Iraq, private personnel on the US government payroll outnumber official US troops. There are about 186,000 so-called private contractors operating alongside 165,000 troops. The US military is the junior partner in this coalition.—-This is a shadow war. We’re in the midst right now of a discussion about a surge, and about troop withdrawals, and we hear conflicting messages. But there’s been a surge on for four years of the private sector, in Iraq, this mercenary army that the Bush administration has built up all over that country.

The arrogance of the West, toward Iraq is incredible. This is a civilization that’s been around for thousands and thousands of years. We think that we’re going to somehow bring the solution to Iraq? No, these are people that can very much dictate their own destiny and they should be allowed to do so, and mercenaries need to get out of Iraq immediately.

Scarecrow at Firedoglake:

Larry Johnson at No Quarter notes that Blackwater may not even have or need a formal “permit.” That’s because the notion that the Iraqis have a sovereign government that can decide routine matters, like who has permission to kill people, is just another propaganda myth. Still, al Maliki can cause a fuss about this and make life uncomfortable for Ambassador Crocker.

Aside from the Iraqis’ understandable anger that contractors like Blackwater can kill Iraqis at will with absolutely no criminal liability, the Iraqis must surely be sending a message to the Bush Administration that they’ve had enough being blamed for every mistake Bush and Cheney have made in the invasion and occupation of their country. It’s just one more illusion stripped off an unmitigated string of illusions about how things are just peachy over there.

The internal political problem, however, is even worse for the Bush Administration. What the Blackwater episode has done is reenforce the “betrayal of the truth” [edit] theme that, thanks to Fox News and the Republicans repeating it so often, is taking hold in the public mind. And the betrayal of the whole truth here is precisely on the matters about which Crocker and Petraeus testified.

When Bush sent General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker to Congress to claim the surge has been successful enough to allow us to withdraw a few troops soon and more later (but less than the original surge increase), he never asked those he hid behind to discuss the fact that there were two surges, not just one. The first surge was official US combat troops. The second surge was composed of unofficial combat forces outside the Army/Marines — the mercenaries like Blackwater that provide armed security for all the US civilian activities.

Update: The Courage Campaign talks about Blackwater being Mafia-like. Petition to say no to Blackwater in San Diego.