Plea by Blackwater Guard Helps Indict Others

[groovedaddy]

WASHINGTON — In the first public airing of an investigation that remains the source of fierce international outrage, the Justice Department on Monday unsealed its case against five private security guards, built largely around the chilling testimony of a sixth guard about the 2007 shootings that left 17 unsuspecting Iraqi civilians dead at a busy Baghdad traffic circle.

In pleading guilty to manslaughter, the sixth security guard, Jeremy P. Ridgeway of California, described how he and the other guards used automatic rifles and grenade launchers to fire on cars, houses, a traffic officer and a girls’ school. In addition to those killed, there were at least 20 people wounded.

The six guards were employed by Blackwater Worldwide, the largest security contractor in Iraq; the company, based in North Carolina, has not been charged in the case.

Mr. Ridgeway said in court documents that the episode in Nisour Square on Sept. 16, 2007, started when the guards opened fire on a white Kia sedan “that posed no threat to the convoy.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/09/washington/09blackwater.html?_r=1

[yurbud]

1. these guys belong in an Iraqi courtroom

[zonmoy]

2. bremer made sure that that and any other chance that the iraqis

could ever hold the bush cabal to account can never happen.

[yurbud]

3. just because Bremer decreed something doesn't make it a law for all time

[zonmoy]

4. True

but do you think that the bush cabal wouldnt have made sure that any constitution that iraq was allowed to make wouldnt be made so that those decrees would be the permament law of the land.

[yurbud]

5. that constitution is worth as much as Bremer's decrees: the Iraqis will wipe their asses with it as

soon as we leave.

I think the oil companies are already figuring out that they aren't going to be able to gang-rape Iraq as they originally planned either.

[zonmoy]

6. Assuming that bush doesnt manufacture some pretense to stay and not honor any deal to get out.

He still has some time.