UberNeuman
Lifer
- Nov 4, 1999
- 16,937
- 3,087
- 126
Lemon law
Lifer
- Nov 6, 2005
- 20,984
- 3
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I see palehorse74 does not quit while he is behind when he say.------------As for this particular alleged incident, dealing with those specific operators, I would have shot the idiots.
From behind your desk?
yes, even from there... loser.
What an idiotic post Palehorse74. Its exactly WHAT DID NOT HAPPEN. What we have is an auto accident that occurs all over the world with depressing frequency. The blackwater guys pulled guns while the more rational US troops did not. No one was killed. Later a protest by the US troops was filed shortly after it happened in 2006. Its was passed up the US command and promptly buried by the US command. The shit should have hit the fan in 2006 and did not because there is something radically wrong with the command structure of
of the US command. If anything, Palehorse74 should be taking his gun and using it to shoot the US high command for defective followup.
ok, dude, fix your exaggeration and sarcasm meters.
Ok Dude, I would not blame you a bit for doing the rational thing with a blackwater gun to your head to not shoot. If you were a hot head, you would have gotten yourself and
your fellow US troops killed. But you were not there and now claim cubicle courage.
The point is that a protest was filed in 2006 and you demonstrate no outrage at the very US high command that failed you.
And now accuse me of being sarcastic for your defective outrage at the very people in the US command that betrayed you?
Why can't you label a spade a spade and tell God's honest truth? What blackwater did was outrageous and your own commander and thief betrayed you and all out troops when the shit did not hit the fan in 2006 simply because corporate profits trump your safety.
From behind your desk?
yes, even from there... loser.
What an idiotic post Palehorse74. Its exactly WHAT DID NOT HAPPEN. What we have is an auto accident that occurs all over the world with depressing frequency. The blackwater guys pulled guns while the more rational US troops did not. No one was killed. Later a protest by the US troops was filed shortly after it happened in 2006. Its was passed up the US command and promptly buried by the US command. The shit should have hit the fan in 2006 and did not because there is something radically wrong with the command structure of
of the US command. If anything, Palehorse74 should be taking his gun and using it to shoot the US high command for defective followup.
ok, dude, fix your exaggeration and sarcasm meters.
Ok Dude, I would not blame you a bit for doing the rational thing with a blackwater gun to your head to not shoot. If you were a hot head, you would have gotten yourself and
your fellow US troops killed. But you were not there and now claim cubicle courage.
The point is that a protest was filed in 2006 and you demonstrate no outrage at the very US high command that failed you.
And now accuse me of being sarcastic for your defective outrage at the very people in the US command that betrayed you?
Why can't you label a spade a spade and tell God's honest truth? What blackwater did was outrageous and your own commander and thief betrayed you and all out troops when the shit did not hit the fan in 2006 simply because corporate profits trump your safety.
Well that explains a lot. A furious no named colonel, the evil blackwater, and a Blackhawk down movie quote all in the same article. LOL
That's Furious No Named Colonel SIR to you, unless you want to tell us you outrank him, and you've put your own ass on the line in Iraq, junior. :thumbsdown: :| :thumbsdown:
ummmmmmk. Junior? Can't provide proof of an event so the throwing personal insults begin. Typical and unnecessary. Is it too much to ask for proof? Or must we agree with every thing that aligns with your political views. You must be a Neocon.
Yes, Junior, Junior... unless you're that older and more qualified than the Colonel you're so quick to dismiss. There are enough other, confirmed reports of inappropriate violence by Blackewater and other contractors, conveniently working without any legal oversight, that you can't dismiss the charge out of hand, anymore than they originally tried to dismiss and minimize the early reports of abuse at Abu Ghraib.
I don't know the story on this Colonel anymore than you do, but without any evidence to the contrary, and on the chance that he's real and right, a no name anonymous poster like you is way out of line dismissing a "furious no named colonel" who may be putting his ass on the line fighting for your freedom to say that.
LOL, you?re killing me. Please stop. Colonel No Name come in over. Batboy requesting JDAM drop on mutant tango position over.
By the way, I've paid for my own freedom in full, so mind your own business "Junior".
You beg my pardon. My name is Harvey Rubens. At least, that's what it says in my profile.
What do those initials stand for, again, JD? :laugh:
And if you're talking about General Petraeus, regardless of his past record, there are plenty of military sources, including retired Generals who have stated for the record that they believe as a "good soldier" he's now following orders and acting like your TRAITOR IN CHIEF's four star political poodle.
Lemon law
Lifer
- Nov 6, 2005
- 20,984
- 3
- 0
I see Jd50 comes up with the absurd with-----This coming from the no name anonymous poster that calls a 4 star General who was putting his ass on the line fighting for your freedom a traitor? What a hypocrite.
The point is that General Petraeus's greatest hazard is getting paper cuts or in having falling paper clips get in his shoes. He is almost the last person on earth putting his life on the line in Iraq. Others US troops put their life on the line in Iraq, General Petraeus is definitely not one of them.
If Patraeus policies end up saving lives and ending the conflict in Iraq, Patraeus deserves praise, if Patraeus is simply an apologist for failed policies not even he believes in, then he deserves every bit of scorn that can be heaped on him. Since the jury is still out on which, we must consider all points of view on their merits.
In every conflict there is a winning general and a losing general. At least in a conventional war. When it came to Vietnam and an occupation, the whole damn US army could not come up with even one winning general. And it sure was not due to a lack of Generals. And had more to do with a bunch of clueless idiots that we had an over abundance of lacking the personal courage to tell the Presidents involved that they were full of shit. And even if we lost some 58,000 US troops in Vietnam, I can't think of a single General who died in combat putting their ass on the line.
The point is that General Petraeus's greatest hazard is getting paper cuts or in having falling paper clips get in his shoes. He is almost the last person on earth putting his life on the line in Iraq. Others US troops put their life on the line in Iraq, General Petraeus is definitely not one of them.
If Patraeus policies end up saving lives and ending the conflict in Iraq, Patraeus deserves praise, if Patraeus is simply an apologist for failed policies not even he believes in, then he deserves every bit of scorn that can be heaped on him. Since the jury is still out on which, we must consider all points of view on their merits.
In every conflict there is a winning general and a losing general. At least in a conventional war. When it came to Vietnam and an occupation, the whole damn US army could not come up with even one winning general. And it sure was not due to a lack of Generals. And had more to do with a bunch of clueless idiots that we had an over abundance of lacking the personal courage to tell the Presidents involved that they were full of shit. And even if we lost some 58,000 US troops in Vietnam, I can't think of a single General who died in combat putting their ass on the line.
JD50
Lifer
- Sep 4, 2005
- 11,889
- 2,788
- 136
Ah ok, so as long as people know your first and last name, and you are insulting a known general, then thats ok. But if you are an anonymous poster that insults an anonymous Colonel, then that is just OUTRAGEOUS!!!! :| :thumbsdown::| :| :thumbsdown::|
:| :thumbsdown::|
You're a joke.
[Harvey's response] Not as much of a joke as your TRAITOR IN CHIEF'S CRIMINAL CABAL WAR OF LIES chickenhawk grrrrrgrrrrr :thumbsdown: :| :thumbsdown: :| :thumbsdown: :|
[/Harvey's response]
I'm sure most Blackwater contractors are just fine, but no matter how people try and spin it...being a contractor is NOT the same as being a soldier. I have no problem with contractors doing a lot of different things, but I think the problem in Iraq (and the problem back home) is that contractors are being treated as a replacement for soldiers instead of as a supplement. In a lot of cases, they have rights and authority above and beyond that of the regular government people. I respect what they do, but they are not serving in the same way that government employees are. When people realize this, I think the system works just fine...but there are a lot of cases where this doesn't seem to have happened.
Lemon law
Lifer
- Nov 6, 2005
- 20,984
- 3
- 0
Now JD50 points out that----You do realize that they don't just start out as Generals right?
I Guess you must be talking about a fellow named George Armstrong Custard who put his life on the line countless times during the civil war.
Or maybe William Westmorland who clawed his way up to the top by hard work.
Tell me again, what has Petraeus done to make things better by not addressing the Iraqi insurgencies that can go from semi-quiet to full blown snit in a heartbeat? Are the political problems in Iraq being addressed? Are the Iraqis any closer to assuming the burden of their own policing than they were when we first invaded? Has Petraeus really been honest with the American people or our commander and thief?
I Guess you must be talking about a fellow named George Armstrong Custard who put his life on the line countless times during the civil war.
Or maybe William Westmorland who clawed his way up to the top by hard work.
Tell me again, what has Petraeus done to make things better by not addressing the Iraqi insurgencies that can go from semi-quiet to full blown snit in a heartbeat? Are the political problems in Iraq being addressed? Are the Iraqis any closer to assuming the burden of their own policing than they were when we first invaded? Has Petraeus really been honest with the American people or our commander and thief?
- Sep 26, 2000
- 28,559
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http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10....html?_r=1&oref=slogin
New Evidence That Blackwater Guards Took No Fire
By JAMES GLANZ
This article was reported by James Glanz, Richard A. Oppel Jr. and Michael Kamber and written by Mr. Glanz.
BAGHDAD, Oct. 12 ? Fresh accounts of the Blackwater shooting last month, given by three rooftop witnesses and by American soldiers who arrived shortly after the gunfire ended, cast new doubt Friday on statements by Blackwater guards that they were responding to armed insurgents when Iraqi investigators say 17 Iraqis were killed at a Baghdad intersection.
The three witnesses, Kurds on a rooftop overlooking the scene, said they had observed no gunfire that could have provoked the shooting by Blackwater guards. American soldiers who arrived minutes later found shell casings from guns used normally by American contractors, as well as by the American military.
The Kurdish witnesses are important because they had the advantage of an unobstructed view and because, collectively, they observed the shooting at Nisour Square from start to finish, free from the terror and confusion that might have clouded accounts of witnesses at street level. Moreover, because they are pro-American, their accounts have a credibility not always extended to Iraqi Arabs, who have been more hostile to the American presence.
Their statements, made in interviews with The New York Times, appeared to challenge a State Department account that a Blackwater vehicle had been disabled in the shooting and had to be towed away. Since those initial accounts, Blackwater and the State Department have consistently refused to comment on the substance of the case.
The Kurdish witnesses said that they saw no one firing at the guards at any time during the event, an observation corroborated by the forensic evidence of the shell casings. Two of the witnesses also said all the Blackwater vehicles involved in the shooting drove away under their own power.
The Kurds, who work for a political party whose building looks directly down on the square, said they had looked for any evidence that the American security guards were responding to an attack, but found none.
?I call it a massacre,? said Omar H. Waso, one of the witnesses and a senior official at the party, which is called the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan. ?It is illegal. They used the law of the jungle.?
Many of the American soldiers were similarly appalled. While Blackwater has said its guards were attacked by automatic gunfire, the soldiers did not find any casings from the sort of guns typically used by insurgents or by Iraqi security forces, according to an American military official briefed on the findings of the unit that arrived at the scene about 20 minutes after the Blackwater convoy left. That analysis of forensic evidence at the scene was first reported Friday by The Washington Post.
The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak about the matter, added that soldiers had found clear evidence that the Blackwater guards were not been threatened and also opened fire on civilians who had tried to flee. ?The cartridges and casings we found were all associated with coalition forces and contractors,? the official said. ?The only brass we found where somebody fired weapons were ones from contractors.?
The case has angered many in the military who believe that the conduct of the security guards makes the troops? jobs harder. ?If our people had done this,? another American military official said, ?they would be court-martialed.?
The shooting, on Sept. 16, and the deaths of two Iraqi women in a shooting by a different security company on Tuesday, have provoked anger at politically potent levels of Iraqi society. In the holy cities of Karbala and Najaf, officials affiliated with Iraq?s most revered Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, called for sanctions against the companies.
In Karbala, a spokesman for the ayatollah inveighed against ?the cheapening of Iraqi blood? and called for Parliament to take action. In a legacy of orders handed down during post-invasion American rule here, Western contractors essentially have immunity to Iraqi law.
None of the roughly two dozen witnesses previously interviewed by Iraqi investigators said that they saw or heard anyone but the Blackwater guards fire during the shooting, which Iraq says killed 17 and wounded 27. Still, because nearly all of those witnesses were in the field of fire, their accounts could conceivably have been skewed by the terror and confusion of the moment.
The Kurdish witnesses on the rooftop said they had not been interviewed by Iraqi investigators. They said they had been visited by American investigators, but had not been fully interviewed.
After the shootings, American soldiers found plenty of empty bullet casings 7.62 millimeters in diameter. Had the 7.62-millimeter casings been from an AK-47 rifle, a common insurgent and Iraqi police weapon, they would have been 39 millimeters long. Had they been from a PKC machine gun, another common Iraqi weapon, they would have been 54 millimeters long. The soldiers did not find any of those, the military official said.
Instead, the official said, the casings were 51 millimeters long, the length used by NATO weapons, including the M-240 machine gun, a standard automatic weapon used by the America military and American security contractors, the official said. The soldiers also found empty 5.56-millimeter casings of the type used by the M-4 and M-16 rifles that American troops and contractors bear.
The F.B.I. has been interviewing soldiers from the unit that responded to the scene, the Third Battalion of the 82nd Field Artillery Regiment, which is part of the Second Brigade of the First Cavalry Division, to collect information in its investigation of the shooting, the official said.
Only one of the Kurdish witnesses, a guard who would give his name only as Sabah, saw the first shots fired by the Blackwater guards into a white sedan, killing a man and his mother and setting the events in motion.
Two others, Mr. Waso and his driver, Sirwan Ali, went to the roof after the shooting started and observed long enough to see the Blackwater vehicles leave the square. Eventually both went down to help the victims, they said. All three men have military backgrounds.
When asked if anything had occurred to provoke the initial shots from Blackwater, Sabah said: ?Nothing at all. No mortars. No shooting.?
All he saw, Sabah said, was that the white sedan ?moved a little bit and they started shooting.?
As events unfolded and the Blackwater guards unleashed a storm of gunfire into the crowded square, Mr. Waso and Mr. Ali both said, they could neither hear nor see any return fire. ?It was one-sided shooting from one direction,? Mr. Waso said. ?There wasn?t any return fire.?
Mr. Waso said that what he saw was not only disturbing, but also in some cases incomprehensible. He said that the guards kept firing long after it was clear that there was no resistance. People were shot while trying to flee, he said. One man ran from a Volkswagen and the guards shot him in the head from behind, Mr. Waso said.
Finally there was a pause of a few seconds in the shooting as the Blackwater convoy prepared to leave, he said. Then, Mr. Waso said with a look of disbelief on his face, at least one Blackwater guard began firing again, this time at a red bus full of people on the western rim of the square.
?The glass was all broken,? Mr. Waso said, struggling to describe the bus after the firing resumed. ?Women and children, all of them were shouting and crying.?
Some of the people who survived in the bus were tended to later at the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan building, he said.
After that last burst of gunfire in the square, Mr. Waso said, all four of the Blackwater vehicles left. As far as he could see, they drove away under their own power, he said.
In the end, Mr. Waso said, he went down and asked Iraqi national guard soldiers to chase the Blackwater team.
?Leave them and try to follow that company before they get away,? Mr. Waso said he told a soldier. ?They killed innocent people for no reason.?
Reporting was contributed by Wisam A. Habib, Ahmad Fadam, Qais Mizher and Alissa J. Rubin.
New Evidence That Blackwater Guards Took No Fire
By JAMES GLANZ
This article was reported by James Glanz, Richard A. Oppel Jr. and Michael Kamber and written by Mr. Glanz.
BAGHDAD, Oct. 12 ? Fresh accounts of the Blackwater shooting last month, given by three rooftop witnesses and by American soldiers who arrived shortly after the gunfire ended, cast new doubt Friday on statements by Blackwater guards that they were responding to armed insurgents when Iraqi investigators say 17 Iraqis were killed at a Baghdad intersection.
The three witnesses, Kurds on a rooftop overlooking the scene, said they had observed no gunfire that could have provoked the shooting by Blackwater guards. American soldiers who arrived minutes later found shell casings from guns used normally by American contractors, as well as by the American military.
The Kurdish witnesses are important because they had the advantage of an unobstructed view and because, collectively, they observed the shooting at Nisour Square from start to finish, free from the terror and confusion that might have clouded accounts of witnesses at street level. Moreover, because they are pro-American, their accounts have a credibility not always extended to Iraqi Arabs, who have been more hostile to the American presence.
Their statements, made in interviews with The New York Times, appeared to challenge a State Department account that a Blackwater vehicle had been disabled in the shooting and had to be towed away. Since those initial accounts, Blackwater and the State Department have consistently refused to comment on the substance of the case.
The Kurdish witnesses said that they saw no one firing at the guards at any time during the event, an observation corroborated by the forensic evidence of the shell casings. Two of the witnesses also said all the Blackwater vehicles involved in the shooting drove away under their own power.
The Kurds, who work for a political party whose building looks directly down on the square, said they had looked for any evidence that the American security guards were responding to an attack, but found none.
?I call it a massacre,? said Omar H. Waso, one of the witnesses and a senior official at the party, which is called the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan. ?It is illegal. They used the law of the jungle.?
Many of the American soldiers were similarly appalled. While Blackwater has said its guards were attacked by automatic gunfire, the soldiers did not find any casings from the sort of guns typically used by insurgents or by Iraqi security forces, according to an American military official briefed on the findings of the unit that arrived at the scene about 20 minutes after the Blackwater convoy left. That analysis of forensic evidence at the scene was first reported Friday by The Washington Post.
The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak about the matter, added that soldiers had found clear evidence that the Blackwater guards were not been threatened and also opened fire on civilians who had tried to flee. ?The cartridges and casings we found were all associated with coalition forces and contractors,? the official said. ?The only brass we found where somebody fired weapons were ones from contractors.?
The case has angered many in the military who believe that the conduct of the security guards makes the troops? jobs harder. ?If our people had done this,? another American military official said, ?they would be court-martialed.?
The shooting, on Sept. 16, and the deaths of two Iraqi women in a shooting by a different security company on Tuesday, have provoked anger at politically potent levels of Iraqi society. In the holy cities of Karbala and Najaf, officials affiliated with Iraq?s most revered Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, called for sanctions against the companies.
In Karbala, a spokesman for the ayatollah inveighed against ?the cheapening of Iraqi blood? and called for Parliament to take action. In a legacy of orders handed down during post-invasion American rule here, Western contractors essentially have immunity to Iraqi law.
None of the roughly two dozen witnesses previously interviewed by Iraqi investigators said that they saw or heard anyone but the Blackwater guards fire during the shooting, which Iraq says killed 17 and wounded 27. Still, because nearly all of those witnesses were in the field of fire, their accounts could conceivably have been skewed by the terror and confusion of the moment.
The Kurdish witnesses on the rooftop said they had not been interviewed by Iraqi investigators. They said they had been visited by American investigators, but had not been fully interviewed.
After the shootings, American soldiers found plenty of empty bullet casings 7.62 millimeters in diameter. Had the 7.62-millimeter casings been from an AK-47 rifle, a common insurgent and Iraqi police weapon, they would have been 39 millimeters long. Had they been from a PKC machine gun, another common Iraqi weapon, they would have been 54 millimeters long. The soldiers did not find any of those, the military official said.
Instead, the official said, the casings were 51 millimeters long, the length used by NATO weapons, including the M-240 machine gun, a standard automatic weapon used by the America military and American security contractors, the official said. The soldiers also found empty 5.56-millimeter casings of the type used by the M-4 and M-16 rifles that American troops and contractors bear.
The F.B.I. has been interviewing soldiers from the unit that responded to the scene, the Third Battalion of the 82nd Field Artillery Regiment, which is part of the Second Brigade of the First Cavalry Division, to collect information in its investigation of the shooting, the official said.
Only one of the Kurdish witnesses, a guard who would give his name only as Sabah, saw the first shots fired by the Blackwater guards into a white sedan, killing a man and his mother and setting the events in motion.
Two others, Mr. Waso and his driver, Sirwan Ali, went to the roof after the shooting started and observed long enough to see the Blackwater vehicles leave the square. Eventually both went down to help the victims, they said. All three men have military backgrounds.
When asked if anything had occurred to provoke the initial shots from Blackwater, Sabah said: ?Nothing at all. No mortars. No shooting.?
All he saw, Sabah said, was that the white sedan ?moved a little bit and they started shooting.?
As events unfolded and the Blackwater guards unleashed a storm of gunfire into the crowded square, Mr. Waso and Mr. Ali both said, they could neither hear nor see any return fire. ?It was one-sided shooting from one direction,? Mr. Waso said. ?There wasn?t any return fire.?
Mr. Waso said that what he saw was not only disturbing, but also in some cases incomprehensible. He said that the guards kept firing long after it was clear that there was no resistance. People were shot while trying to flee, he said. One man ran from a Volkswagen and the guards shot him in the head from behind, Mr. Waso said.
Finally there was a pause of a few seconds in the shooting as the Blackwater convoy prepared to leave, he said. Then, Mr. Waso said with a look of disbelief on his face, at least one Blackwater guard began firing again, this time at a red bus full of people on the western rim of the square.
?The glass was all broken,? Mr. Waso said, struggling to describe the bus after the firing resumed. ?Women and children, all of them were shouting and crying.?
Some of the people who survived in the bus were tended to later at the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan building, he said.
After that last burst of gunfire in the square, Mr. Waso said, all four of the Blackwater vehicles left. As far as he could see, they drove away under their own power, he said.
In the end, Mr. Waso said, he went down and asked Iraqi national guard soldiers to chase the Blackwater team.
?Leave them and try to follow that company before they get away,? Mr. Waso said he told a soldier. ?They killed innocent people for no reason.?
Reporting was contributed by Wisam A. Habib, Ahmad Fadam, Qais Mizher and Alissa J. Rubin.
dualsmp
Golden Member
- Aug 16, 2003
- 1,627
- 45
- 91
New York Times? What a bunch of extreme left wing conspiracy theorists. How dare anyone question the freedom fighting mercenaries putting their life on the line for God, Country and Apple Pie. So what if they killed a bunch of Al Kayduh terrorist dirt bags. You'd have to be a bunch of freakin kooks to believe any left wing extremist story like this.
My original post about this was directed at The Yeti, who called the Colonel who reported the incident a "furious no named colonel" without knowing anything about either the incident or the Colonel he so cavalierly dismissed, and despite the fact that he doesn't have the courage to show his own name in his profile on a forum that's a lot less dangerous than Iraq, and despite the fact that, unlike the Colonel, disclosing his name wouldn't jeopardize his career.
If the story and the Colonel are for real, his service to the nation demands that he should be shown more respect than to be called a "furious no named colonel" by someone while he's too chickenshit to disclose his own name. Even (or especially) mindless neocon parrots who make such a point of proclaiming their pseudo-patriotism and faux respect for the armed forces should be able to comprehend that.
Then, some other jackass who only has the balls to disclose his first and middle initials, but not his name, then called me an "no name anonymous poster," presumably referring to my posts about General Petraeus, but completely igonring the fact that I'm hardly no name or anonymous. My profile is enabled, showing my full, real name and a real e-mail address, and I've posted more than enough info about myself that anyone who wants to find me can.
Now, that same initialed but nameless jackass thinks he can score points by ignoring his own bullshit because I criticized a well known General with enough well known baggage that it's made national news and been discussed by the media, by Congress and by high ranking members of the military, itself.
Are you always such a monumental jackoff, or do you just play one on AT? :roll:
And if you don't like me calling the current President TRAITOR IN CHIEF or a MURDERER of the 3,826 American troops killed in his WAR OF LIES as of 10/13/07 11:39 am EDT, you can explain it to all of their families and friends.
If you don't have time for that, you're welcome to :lips: my (_|_).
You can find a few bad apples in any bunch. When the bunch is as large as Blackwater, you're bound to find even more. What is ridiculous are the partisan hacks trying to paint the entire organization as evil based on the (alleged) conduct of a few. Not surprisingly, these same hacks do the same exact thing with the US Army and whatever other large group happens to be their talking points attack of the day. It's shameful, disgraceful, and disgusting. :thumbsdown: :| :thumbsdown:
- Sep 26, 2000
- 28,559
- 4
- 0
What is surprising is your opinon that most Blackwater mercs are ok, its just few bad apples. What do you base it on? Maybe most of the Blackwater guys are thugs and goons.
You seem to have recycled what you said back during Abu Ghraib. Don't you realize these guys are NOT the U.S. military. They deserve no "benefit of the doubt" that we should give the military.
Here's what we know: On at least a few occasions there is very strong evidence that Blackwater killed what were apparently innocent people. And that they operate above the law.
Until I have some evidence that most are ok, I don't give them the benefit of the doubt like I do the military.
Yes, they deserve the damn benefit of the doubt. Innocent until proven guilty. I base my opinion of Blackwater on the fact that - prior to this latest hubbub - not a word was spoken. And a look back at the track record reveals about 200 incidents over the last 4 years. I would have expected it to be much, much higher. I know you'd like to just hang them and shut the company down but that isn't how it works. Like it or not, these guys are operating in extremely dangerous conditions, where life or death is just a slip of the trigger finger away.
Until I have evidence that laws were broken, I will give them the benefit of the doubt. If you have qualms about the jurisdiction they operate under or anything else vis-a-vi accountability, that is a fair question, but it isn't Blackwater's responsibility to write those laws - nor should they be held accountable for them. (Or lack of.)
Lemon law
Lifer
- Nov 6, 2005
- 20,984
- 3
- 0
As Pabster does the catch 22 and says---Until I have evidence that laws were broken, I will give them the benefit of the doubt.
Well gee, private mercenaries are immune from laws because there are no laws. But if you want to post that what Blackwater has done does not violate morality, you Pabster are totally morally bankrupt. We are talking coldblooded murder here with even US military authorities agreeing that the videos prove the contention.
And when blackwater mercs hold US troops at gun point, they are a wee mite out of control. And as the past incidents come out of the woodwork, only a fool discounts all of them.
Well gee, private mercenaries are immune from laws because there are no laws. But if you want to post that what Blackwater has done does not violate morality, you Pabster are totally morally bankrupt. We are talking coldblooded murder here with even US military authorities agreeing that the videos prove the contention.
And when blackwater mercs hold US troops at gun point, they are a wee mite out of control. And as the past incidents come out of the woodwork, only a fool discounts all of them.
Only a "fool" or is it a "tool" would opine that we should call them guilty without it being proven. Or have you forgotten the basic tenets of the USA?
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