Maga threats, excuses, lies, and delusions

 

Is Something Called “Narcissistic Collapse” Coming To America?

Morals, censorship, stupidity.

Explaining Wall Street ethics, cheating, intuition. Dan Ariely on our buggy moral code.

Censored Doonesbury about Palin not reading. And then there is the party of stupid. And Republicanism as religion. (Last one is scary.)

Surprise! (And thank god.) There are still intelligent people out there:

A federal judge on Wednesday blocked enforcement of a first-in-the-nation law that restricted what Florida physicians can say about guns to their patients, ruling the law violates the U.S. Constitution’s free speech guarantees and does not trample gun rights.

Some reasons why we actually need a government. You know... the kind Republicans deny exists. A government that works for the people. Or as the Republicans would have it... only some of the people.

Oops. FBI Raids Home Of CBS Correspondent By Mistake

Wars over water are just over the horizon.

Just imagine all those plastic dinosaurs we played with were really just terribly bald. Dinosaurs had colorful feathers.

Just a reminder:

Pat Robertson wants you to know if you get Alzheimer's.... your spouse can dump you.

The sign of the times

FBI giving cops critical info: How to spot an IED

BLYTHE, Ga. – If police officers find grainy white powder at a makeshift lab and assume they've made a drug bust, they could be making an explosive mistake.

The FBI has been training thousands of law enforcement officials across the nation to identify, disrupt and dismantle improvised explosive devices, including bombs made out of ordinary household products.

The need was underlined this week when federal authorities said they disrupted a suspected plot by a Christian militia to kill police officers with homemade bombs. That follows last year's alleged plot to make bombs out of beauty supplies and an airline passenger's alleged attempt on Christmas Day to detonate a bomb hidden in his underwear.

Such devices have been around for years, but they've become a greater concern recently not only because of terrorism, but because of the growing availability of dangerous recipes on the Internet.

Local-level bomb experts have been getting three-day courses designed to supplement their training with the latest techniques and strategies. First responders are invited on the third day to learn how to spot an improvised explosives lab.

Headlines

Sometimes earlier technology is better:

Rare Austin which stood in garage for 50 years discovered... and starts first time!

Try not to piss off your crazy armed-to-the-teeth base!:

In the Wake of Arrests in Three States, Right-Wingers Rush to Defend Terror Suspects, Criticize FBI

In one word: No. In three: PLEASE GOD, NO!:

Is America ‘Yearning For Fascism?'

Frank Rich tries to explain the fever pitch of hysteria:

The Rage Is Not About Health Care

In one word: Yes. In elventy: WTF, just do it! We're drying up and blowing away here!:

Can Wastewater Save California's Parched Farmland?

The destruction of the ocean habitats continues:

Mysterious whale die-off is largest on record

When in doubt... take off clothes:

Man cites boredom after arrest on streaking charge

The FBI is clearly a islamofascisticsocalismizing commie organization

Or they wouldn't have put a stop to this peaceful, neighbor-loving, good Christianist group:

Hutaree, the Christian militia in southeast Michigan reportedly raided by the FBI Sunday, was preparing to battle the Antichrist because "Jesus wanted us to be ready to defend ourselves using the sword and stay alive using equipment," according to its Web site.

A Joint Terrorism Task Force, led by the FBI, arrested at least seven people in three states as part of the raids on the Adrian, Michigan-based group, the Detroit News reported.

Details are still murky because the charges against those arrested are still sealed. But one member of Michigianmilitia.com told the News that "he heard from other militia members that the FBI targeted the Hutaree after its members made threats of violence against Islamic organizations."

Update... more specifics:

Nine members of the Christian militia group Hutaree have been indicted on multiple charges involving an alleged plot to attack police, including seditious conspiracy and attempted use of weapons of mass destruction, the U.S. Attorney in Michigan announced this morning.

"Six Michigan residents, along with two residents of Ohio and a resident of Indiana, were indicted by a federal grand jury in Detroit on charges of seditious conspiracy, attempted use of weapons of mass destruction, teaching the use of explosive materials, and possessing a firearm during a crime of violence," according to the government's press release...

They're doing the same weird reasoning that activated Timothy McVeigh. They think that by attacking what they think is the government, they will bring on the Red Dawn scenario.... but all they would actually do would be to kill innocent people. People in their own community.

The government will not fall by attacking a police department. Government will not fall even if all governmental buildings were to explode as long as society operates together as a unit. Nice that Hutaree has exposed itself as a society-hating terrorist group.

I don't think Jesus would find this behavior acceptable. You know, this man:

And Jesus answering said unto them, Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's. And they marvelled at him.

Tweeting is against the law? And owning Curious George toys?

A social worker from New York City was arrested last week while in Pittsburgh to participate in the G-20 protests, then subjected to an FBI raid this week at his home—all for using Twitter. Elliot Madison faces charges of hindering apprehension or prosecution, criminal use of a communication facility and possession of instruments of crime. He was posting to a Twitter feed (or tweeting, as it is called) publicly available information about police activities around the G-20 protests, including information about where police had been ordered to disperse protesters.

[snip]

Madison, his wife and housemates were roused from sleep during the weekend when the Joint Terrorism Task Force swept into their house, keeping them handcuffed for hours, searching the house and removing computers and other property from everyone in the house. Madison said the FBI “for 16 hours, proceeded to take everything, from plush toys to kitchen magnets and lots of books ... they took Curious George stuffed animals.

What the fuck is going on?

The torture thirteen

They're naming names. Whether or not they can possibly be shamed is another thing entirely.

Sibel Edmonds still frightens the Bush administration

And with good reason:

David Rose, author of the Vanity Fair article on Sibel's case, and the only other journalist who has been able to speak to some of the first-hand sources - from the FBI, Dept of Justice, and Congress - in Sibel's case, also reported how fearful his sources are:

The people that I talked to about these tapes are extremely nervous. There is a climate in America now which is punitive towards people who are suspected of disclosing information without authorization to journalists. The approach of the Bush administration is to punish people who come forward.

The good news is that Joe Lauria and the Times have a lot more information about the case that they haven't yet published, and are still actively investigating - 8 months after their first article was published, and 6 years since Sibel first went to Congress. It is no wonder that the FBI is nervous and issuing formal complaints.

Read the article if you want your hair to stand up on end....

Blog sprinkles

Electric cars


Painter Bob Ross


Lol Bush from the Guardian:




The unraveling of the FBI's case against Bruce Ivins.


Coal emissions and profits are up.


Fill in the blank, you trollop! (More) (and even more with pictures)


McCain's mother sued his first wife.


DistributorCap NY has an excellent ongoing discussion about our broken Constitution.


Proof that eggplant kills.


Newt's bloated head needs a tire gauge.

Six unanswered questions about the anthrax case:

Tom Engelhardt of Tomdispatch:

Those deaths-by-anthrax ceased to be part of the administration's developing Global War on Terror narrative, which was, of course, aimed at Islamist fanatics (and scads of countries that were said to provide them with "safe haven"), but certainly not military scientists here at home. No less quickly did those attacks drop from the front pages -- in fact, simply from the pages -- of the nation's newspapers and off TV screens.

[snip]

This essentially remained the state of the case until, as July ended, Ivins committed suicide. Then, what a field day! The details, the questions, the doubts, the disputed scientific evidence, the lists of kinds of drugs he was prescribed, the lurid quotes, the "rat's nest" of an anthrax-contaminated lab he worked in, the strange emails and letters! ("I wish I could control the thoughts in my mind… I get incredible paranoid, delusional thoughts at times, and there's nothing I can do until they go away, either by themselves or with drugs.") Case solved! Or not... The "mad scientist" from the Army's Fort Detrick bio-wars labs finally nabbed! Or not...

It was a dream of a story. And the mainstream media ran with it, knowledgeably, authoritatively, as if they had never let it go. Now, as the coverage fades and the story once again threatens to head for obscurity (despite doubts about Ivins's role in the attacks), I thought it might be worth mentioning a few questions that came to my mind as I read through recent coverage -- not on Ivins's guilt or innocence, but on matters that are so much a part of our American landscape that normally no one even thinks to ask about them.

Tom then lists the questions and discusses them:

1. Why wasn't the Bush administration's War on Terror modus operandi applied to the anthrax case?

2. Why wasn't the U.S. military sent in?

3. Once the anthrax threat was identified as coming from U.S. military labs, why did the administration, the FBI, and the media assume that only a single individual was responsible?

4. What of those military labs? Why does their history continue to play little or no part in the story of the anthrax attacks?

5. Were the anthrax attacks the less important ones of 2001?

6. Who is winning the Global War on Terror?

Go read if you want to realize:

In fact, it's been clear enough for quite a while that the Bush administration's Global War on Terror has mainly succeeded in creating ever more terrorists in ever more places. And yet, arguably, the anthrax killer or killers have, to date, gained far more than al-Qaeda. Looked at a certain way, whatever the role of Bruce Ivins, the anthrax killings proved to be a full-scale triumph of terrorism.

Exactly. A fearful population is a compliant one. And the war machine that was gearing up to attack Iraq needed to silence the dissenters quickly. How convenient the anthrax attacks were, and how quickly dropped when they no longer served the purpose.

So now it should be very obvious why we have never caught Osama.

From the same guys who helped the Bush administration start a war

The FBI wants to show how they know it's Bruce Ivins who sent out the anthrax. Riiiiiiggght.

Greg Gordon of McClatchy lists some of the unanswered questions:

WASHINGTON — Despite the Justice Department's pronouncement that former Army microbiologist Bruce Ivins unleashed the 2001 anthrax attacks that killed five people, three central questions about the case remain unanswered:

_ Can the FBI prove that a flask of anthrax in Ivins' bioweapons laboratory at Ft. Detrick, Md., contained the same mutated strain of finely milled powder that was in the envelopes that were mailed to two U.S. senators?

_ Did Ivins, who committed suicide last week, have the technical capability to produce that form of anthrax?

_ Why, after he came under suspicion in 2005 or earlier, was Ivins allowed to retain a high-level security clearance that enabled him to continue working in the bioweapons laboratory at Ft. Detrick, apparently until this summer?

And as emptywheel at Firedoglake says:

While what I've seen of their case so far makes a pretty compelling argument that Ivins was involved in creating the anthrax, they've got nothing that explains how it walked out of Ft. Detrick, got into envelopes, and got sent to a bunch of media figures and senators. Importantly, their "motive" for the selection of Leahy and Daschle is piss poor.

And, as I've said twice already, if they take their "motive" seriously: a desire to make sure anthrax vaccines were continued, a desire to pass the PATRIOT Act, and a reason to dislike Daschle and Leahy, Scooter Libby (who also lived in an area where he could have gotten those envelopes) and Dick Cheney had much stronger motives for sending the anthrax.

But don't worry, the FBI says. We've got Ivins 200 miles away and no real motive and no real evidence tying him to the emptying the flask, but since we used some really cool science to place Ivins with the flask, that should be good enough for you.

Emptywheel also has an excellent timeline.

Sign the petition

Petition Text:
TO:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy
House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers
House Select Oversight Panel Chairman Rush Holt

During the height of the fear generated by the anthrax attacks of 2001, ABC News repeatedly reported that the Anthrax used in the attacks could be linked to Saddam Hussein. We now know these claims to be false, but at the time they played a key role in fanning the flames of mounting tension with Iraq, and ABC refuses to identify who fed them those fabricated reports.

Beyond that disturbing episode, there are numerous questions that remain unresolved with regard to the anthrax attacks. Even leading members of Congress charged with oversight of the FBI -- including Sen. Pat Leahy, Rep. Rush Holt and former Sen. Tom Daschle -- have repeatedly complained that they have been "stonewalled" in their attempt to obtain basic information. In light of the magnitude of the anthrax attacks, it is imperative that Americans be convinced that all facts relevant to these attacks have been divulged.

Only an investigative body endowed with full Subpoena power -- whether that be a specially-constituted Senate-House Committee of the type that investigated the Iran-contra scandal, or an independent Commission of the type that investigated the 9/11 attacks -- would be sufficient for ensuring that all facts are divulged.

Rep. Holt, as Chair of the Select Intelligence Oversight Panel, recently said that he supports this proposal, and as Americans who insist that facts surrounding the anthrax attacks and the subsequent investigation be fully disclosed, we urge you to support such a proposal and promptly commence a real investigation.

Glenn Greenwald
Jane Hamsher
Accountability Now

Glenn Greenwald's posts and updates on Ivins and the FBI's incompetence shows that the whole affair is completely unreliable and full of holes. We need an investigation.

Why we should always keep an eye on our government

And those we hire to protect us. They think our own citizens are the terrorists:

Undercover Maryland State Police officers repeatedly spied on peace activists and anti-death penalty groups in recent years and entered the names of some in a law-enforcement database of people thought to be terrorists or drug traffickers, newly released documents show.

The files, made public Thursday by the American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland, depict a pattern of infiltration of the activists' organizations in 2005 and 2006. The activists contend that the authorities were trying to determine whether they posed a security threat to the United States. But none of the 43 pages of summaries and computer logs - some with agents' names and whole paragraphs blacked out - mention criminal or even potentially criminal acts, the legal standard for initiating such surveillance.

State police officials said they did not curtail the protesters' freedoms.

The spying, detailed in logs of at least 288 hours of surveillance over a 14-month period, recalls similar infiltration by FBI agents of civil rights and anti-war groups decades ago, particularly under the administration of President Richard M. Nixon.

[snip]

In February 2006, the national ACLU and its affiliates filed multiple federal Freedom of Information requests seeking records of Pentagon surveillance of anti-war groups around the country. Using information from a secret Pentagon database, NBC News reported that a unit of the Department of Defense had been accumulating intelligence about domestic organizations and their protest activities as part of a mission to track "potential terrorist threats."

"It serves no security purpose to infiltrate peaceful groups," said Michael German, a former FBI agent who specialized in counter-terrorism and who joined the ACLU two years ago as policy counsel in its Washington legislative office. "It completely misuses law enforcement resources."

Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, German said, the government has "actively encouraged" local police agencies to become intelligence gatherers and to compile information that does not necessarily have a connection to criminal activity.

Notice anything odd?

P.Z. Myers of Pharyngula has:

Minneapolis is hosting the Republican National Convention this summer, and that means we're seeing an uptick in sleaze (you might want to avoid public restrooms when these guys are in town). The most bizarre part of it all is that the FBI is looking for villains in all the wrong places.

What they were looking for, Carroll says, was an informant--someone to show up at "vegan potlucks" throughout the Twin Cities and rub shoulders with RNC protestors, schmoozing his way into their inner circles, then reporting back to the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force, a partnership between multiple federal agencies and state and local law enforcement. The effort's primary mission, according to the Minneapolis division's website, is to "investigate terrorist acts carried out by groups or organizations which fall within the definition of terrorist groups as set forth in the current United States Attorney General Guidelines."

I'm sure the Pentagon is just itching to use this on any dangerous hippies!:



And I will be interested to see if the FBI has as much concern over keeping the peace for the Democratic National Convention....

How can you fire thugs?

Especially when you've given them free rein in a war with tons of cash and no accountability....

Security firm Blackwater has had its contract to protect US diplomats in Iraq extended.

The move comes despite the continuing FBI investigation into the killing of 17 Iraqis by Blackwater staff guarding US officials in Baghdad last September.

Blackwater says its guards acted in self-defence. An Iraqi inquiry concluded the shooting was unprovoked.

The security company's contract was due to expire in May, but the government of Iraq said it had now set new criteria.

State department head of security Gregory Starr said on Friday the contract had been extended for another year.

Iraq's government said requests for tighter controls on Blackwater's activities had been met.

[snip]

"The demands of the Iraqi government have been taken into consideration and Blackwater will follow the Iraqi government's laws," said Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh.

However, the Iraqi government's political opponents called the move a "violation of the Iraqi judicial system".

"The government should have shown its influence and authority by taking the initiative," a spokesman for the mainly Sunni Arab Accordance Front bloc told Reuters.

"But the Americans want to show that Iraq is under their control."

When, not if, martial law is declared

Digby of Hullabaloo quotes Matthew Rothschild of the Alternet:

One business owner in the United States tells me that InfraGard members are being advised on how to prepare for a martial law situation -- and what their role might be. He showed me his InfraGard card, with his name and e-mail address on the front, along with the InfraGard logo and its slogan, "Partnership for Protection." On the back of the card were the emergency numbers that Schneck mentioned.

This business owner says he attended a small InfraGard meeting where agents of the FBI and Homeland Security discussed in astonishing detail what InfraGard members may be called upon to do.

"The meeting started off innocuously enough, with the speakers talking about corporate espionage," he says. "From there, it just progressed. All of a sudden we were knee deep in what was expected of us when martial law is declared. We were expected to share all our resources, but in return we'd be given specific benefits." These included, he says, the ability to travel in restricted areas and to get people out. But that's not all.

"Then they said when -- not if -- martial law is declared, it was our responsibility to protect our portion of the infrastructure, and if we had to use deadly force to protect it, we couldn't be prosecuted," he says.

Deadly force to contain American citizens. Hmmm. And what if they use deadly force back?

Doesn't it sound like Bush and his cohorts know of some impending and ever so convenient terrorist attack? I suggest we watch for where Georgie and Dick go from now on to January 20, 2009. Just to observe if they take oddly timed vacations or start having trucks drive up to their secret undisclosed locations with lots and lots of canned food....

Sibel Edmonds is finally getting attention

And look who has run this article! The American Conservative:

Charismatic and articulate, the 37-year-old Edmonds has deftly worked the system to get as much of her story out as possible, on one occasion turning to French television to produce a documentary entitled “Kill the Messenger.” Passionate in her convictions, she has sometimes alienated her own supporters and ridden roughshod over critics who questioned her assumptions. But despite her shortcomings in making her case and the legitimate criticism that she may be overreaching in some of her conclusions, Edmonds comes across as credible. Her claims are specific, fact-based, and can be documented in detail. There is presumably an existing FBI file that could demonstrate the accuracy of many of her charges.

[snip]

Edmonds’s revelations have attracted corroboration in the form of anonymous letters apparently written by FBI employees. There have been frequent reports of FBI field agents being frustrated by the premature closure of cases dealing with foreign spying, particularly when those cases involve Israel, and the State Department has frequently intervened to shut down investigations based on “sensitive foreign diplomatic relations.” One such anonymous letter, the veracity of which cannot be determined, cites transcripts of wiretaps involving Marc Grossman and a Turkish Embassy official between August and December 2001, described above, in which Grossman warned the Turk that Brewster Jennings was a CIA cover company. If the allegation can be documented from FBI files, the exposure of the Agency cover mechanism took place long before journalist Robert Novak outed the company in his column on Valerie Plame in 2003.

[snip]

Curiously, the states-secrets gag order binding Edmonds, while put in place by DOJ in 2002, was not requested by the FBI but by the State Department and Pentagon—which employed individuals she identified as being involved in criminal activities. If her allegations are frivolous, that order would scarcely seem necessary. It would have been much simpler for the government to marginalize her by demonstrating that she was poorly informed or speculating about matters outside her competency. Under the Bush administration, the security gag order has been invoked to cover up incompetence or illegality, not to protect national security. It has recently been used to conceal the illegal wiretaps of the warrantless surveillance program, the allegations of torture and the CIA’s rendition program, and to shield the telecom industry for its collaboration in illegal eavesdropping.

Both Senators Grassley and Leahy, a Republican and a Democrat, who interviewed her at length in 2002, attest to Edmonds’s believability. The Department of Justice inspector general investigation into her claims about the translations unit and an internal FBI review confirmed most of her allegations. Former FBI senior counterintelligence officer John Cole has independently confirmed her report of the presence of Pakistani intelligence service penetrations within the FBI translators’ pool.

Edmonds wasn’t angling to become a media darling. She would have preferred to testify under oath before a congressional committee that could offer legal protection and subpoena documents and witnesses to support her case. She claims that a number of FBI agents would be willing to testify, though she has not named them.

But this information is not good:

Prior to 2006, Congressman Henry Waxman of the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee promised Edmonds that if the Democrats gained control of Congress, he would order hearings into her charges. But following the Democratic sweep, he has been less forthcoming, failing to schedule hearings, refusing to take Edmonds’s calls, and recently stonewalling all inquiries into the matter. It is generally believed that Waxman, a strong supporter of Israel, is nervous about exposing an Israeli lobby role in the corruption that Edmonds describes. It is also suspected that Waxman fears that the revelations might open a Pandora’s box, damaging Republicans and Democrats alike.

[snip]

Sibel Edmonds makes a number of accusations about specific criminal behavior that appear to be extraordinary but are credible enough to warrant official investigation. Her allegations are documentable: an existing FBI file should determine whether they are accurate. It’s true that she probably knows only part of the story, but if that part is correct, Congress and the Justice Department should have no higher priority. Nothing deserves more attention than the possibility of ongoing national-security failures and the proliferation of nuclear weapons with the connivance of corrupt senior government officials.

C'mon, Waxman! You've been a hero in pursuing corruption and injustice so far. Take on Sibel Edmonds' case and let the truth be told. Corruption on this level must be addressed even though it looks like it's both sides of the aisle.

No wonder the Bush administration has tried to shut Sibel Edmonds up

They have been trying for years:

A WHISTLEBLOWER has made a series of extraordinary claims about how corrupt government officials allowed Pakistan and other states to steal nuclear weapons secrets.

Sibel Edmonds, a 37-year-old former Turkish language translator for the FBI, listened into hundreds of sensitive intercepted conversations while based at the agency’s Washington field office.

She approached The Sunday Times last month after reading about an Al-Qaeda terrorist who had revealed his role in training some of the 9/11 hijackers while he was in Turkey.

Edmonds described how foreign intelligence agents had enlisted the support of US officials to acquire a network of moles in sensitive military and nuclear institutions.

Among the hours of covert tape recordings, she says she heard evidence that one well-known senior official in the US State Department was being paid by Turkish agents in Washington who were selling the information on to black market buyers, including Pakistan.

The name of the official – who has held a series of top government posts – is known to The Sunday Times. He strongly denies the claims.

However, Edmonds said: “He was aiding foreign operatives against US interests by passing them highly classified information, not only from the State Department but also from the Pentagon, in exchange for money, position and political objectives.”

She claims that the FBI was also gathering evidence against senior Pentagon officials – including household names – who were aiding foreign agents.

“If you made public all the information that the FBI have on this case, you will see very high-level people going through criminal trials,” she said.

[snip]

Edmonds, a fluent speaker of Turkish and Farsi, was recruited by the FBI in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks. Her previous claims about incompetence inside the FBI have been well documented in America.

She has given evidence to closed sessions of Congress and the 9/11 commission, but many of the key points of her testimony have remained secret. She has now decided to divulge some of that information after becoming disillusioned with the US authorities’ failure to act.

One of Edmonds’s main roles in the FBI was to translate thousands of hours of conversations by Turkish diplomatic and political targets that had been covertly recorded by the agency.

A backlog of tapes had built up, dating back to 1997, which were needed for an FBI investigation into links between the Turks and Pakistani, Israeli and US targets. Before she left the FBI in 2002 she heard evidence that pointed to money laundering, drug imports and attempts to acquire nuclear and conventional weapons technology.

“What I found was damning,” she said. “While the FBI was investigating, several arms of the government were shielding what was going on.”

The Turks and Israelis had planted “moles” in military and academic institutions which handled nuclear technology. Edmonds says there were several transactions of nuclear material every month, with the Pakistanis being among the eventual buyers. “The network appeared to be obtaining information from every nuclear agency in the United States,” she said.

They were helped, she says, by the high-ranking State Department official who provided some of their moles – mainly PhD students – with security clearance to work in sensitive nuclear research facilities. These included the Los Alamos nuclear laboratory in New Mexico, which is responsible for the security of the US nuclear deterrent.

[snip]

She has always claimed that she was victimised for being outspoken and was vindicated by an Office of the Inspector General review of her case three years later. It found that one of the contributory reasons for her sacking was that she had made valid complaints.

The US attorney-general has imposed a state secrets privilege order on her, which prevents her revealing more details of the FBI’s methods and current investigations.

Her allegations were heard in a closed session of Congress, but no action has been taken and she continues to campaign for a public hearing.

She was able to discuss the case with The Sunday Times because, by the end of January 2002, the justice department had shut down the programme.

She has been forced into silence by court order and commands from her bosses. She's been under extreme scrutiny and pressure from those who do not want the truth to get out.

It's time we heard all of what she has to say.

Blackwater is deliberately unaccountable

Jeremy Scahill lists the reasons:

Federal agents investigating the Sept. 16 killing of 17 Iraqi civilians by operatives of the Blackwater security company have concluded that 14 were victims of unjustified and unprovoked shootings. Some died in a hail of bullets as they fled. The investigators also have rejected assertions by Blackwater that its forces were defending themselves, saying there is no evidence to support that claim.

This initial glimpse into the evidence uncovered by the FBI bolsters the Iraqi government's claim (made within hours of the shootings in Baghdad's Nisoor Square) that the killings were criminal, as well as the findings of a U.S. military investigation that called all 17 of the killings unjustified. But that raises a crucial and complicated question: Who will prosecute the killers?

The answer may be no one. That certainly seemed to be the view of veteran diplomat Patrick Kennedy, who recently reviewed the State Department's use of private security. Kennedy and his team came back from Baghdad concluding that they were "unaware of any basis for holding non-Department of Defense contractors accountable under U.S. law."

Although the FBI conclusions appear damning, each of the three potential avenues for prosecuting Blackwater have fatal flaws:

U.S. civilian law: The Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act of 2000 provides for prosecution in federal court of U.S. contractors for crimes committed overseas. The problem is that this law only applies to contractors working for or directly accompanying the U.S. military. Blackwater works for the State Department in Iraq as "diplomatic security," which is separate from military operations. Legislation has been introduced that would expand the act to apply to all contractors, but not retroactively. The Justice Department might argue that the Blackwater guards were indeed accompanying the military, but courts could well throw out such a case.

U.S. military law: In late 2006, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) inserted an amendment in the Defense Authorization Act that places all U.S. contractors under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, the court-martial system. But this has not been tested, and the Department of Defense has shown no desire to use this option against any security contractors -- let alone ones who aren't working for the military. Facing a military prosecution, Blackwater could even get support from civil libertarians, who would see it as a creep toward applying military law to civilians.

Iraqi law: The Iraqi government wants to prosecute the Blackwater shooters in its courts, but that isn't going to happen. The day before L. Paul Bremer III ended his tenure as the head of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq in June 2004, he issued Order 17. It grants all contractors sweeping immunity from prosecution in Iraqi courts. There is a provision that allows the U.S. to lift immunity in individual cases, but Washington would never hand over a U.S. citizen to an Iraqi court.

"These legal loopholes amount, in practice, to a license to kill with impunity," says Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, which is suing Blackwater for wrongful death and war crimes in federal court over the shootings. "There is no genuine deterrence to acting unlawfully."

Even if the Justice Department moves forward, the investigation was contaminated from the start. The State Department's initial report on the shooting was drafted by a Blackwater contractor on U.S. government stationery. Two weeks passed before the FBI was dispatched to investigate; for two weeks, the only people looking into this crime were from a non-law-enforcment agency, the State Department, which had potential culpability of its own.

Then there is this fact: The State Department inspector general, Howard Krongard, who previously has been accused of impeding investigations into Blackwater, has direct family ties to the company. His brother, A.B. "Buzzy" Krongard, former CIA executive director, this year joined Blackwater's advisory board as a paid consultant. While at the CIA, Krongard played a role in Blackwater's first soldier-for-hire contract in Afghanistan in 2002.

Deliberately setting up mercenaries above the law. And Blackwater wants to operate inside the United States.

Not only do we need new laws, we need a new government. Fire everybody who was hired in after January 2001 for starters. The whole place is contaminated.

You know those rightwing twits down the street?

Avendon Carol of The Sideshow suggests:

...it might be worthwhile to have a bunch of these to leave on people's doors when they're out. Might make 'em think.

Click for bigger pic. It's almost too true to be funny.