Badges, Stinking, We Don't Need No

Cheney's mercenaries shot up a bunch of Iraqis recently, and Iraq is not best pleased. The government responded by suspending Blackwater's license and ordering them out of the country. Larry Johnson is betting that Blackwater don't need no stinking license.

Depending on whether the Blackwater security firm stays in Iraq will inform us whether Prime Minister Maliki has any power or is just a U.S. puppet. My money is on the puppet. Over the weekend Blackwater contractors escorting a State Department/US Embassy Baghdad convoy got into a shoot out.


One problem is that if Blackwater and the Iraqi Army were to get busy, BW would probably kick ass:

The Iraqi government has zero power to enforce a decision to oust a firm like Blackwater. For starters, Blackwater has a bigger air force and more armored vehicles then the Iraqi Army and police put together. As Spencer Ackerman reported, Blackwater’s little bird helicopter (an aircraft normally used by U.S. special operations forces) that was firing mini guns at Iraqi targets on the ground this past weekend.

I can only imagine how Americans would react if there were Russian, Chinese, Mexican, or French security firms running around the United States and getting into firefights in tough neighborhoods, such as South Central Los Angeles. We would just shrug our shoulders and say nothing. Right?

Yeah, that’s what I thought. This incident will enrage Iraqis and their subsequent realization that they are impotent to do anything about it will do little to support the fantasy that the surge is working. There are some Iraqis who genuinely want to run their own country. But we are not about to give them the keys to the car. Blackwater is staying.


I'm pretty sure that mercenary armies violate the Geneva Conventions. Their creation and funding on a massive scale will probably not be remembered as one of the lesser Bush-Cheney war crimes. I suspect that they will prove a continuing danger to the United States and other nations.

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