Every article written about the Blackwater debacle in Iraq contains the following sentence nearly word for word:
The ministry has said that it would prosecute the participants in the shooting, but a law issued by the American occupation authority prior to the return of sovereignty to Iraq in 2004 grants American contractors, along with American military personnel, immunity from Iraqi prosecution.What's funny is that it turns out they're immune from American prosecution as well. Nice work if you can get it.
We all know of course that Iraqi sovereignty is a sham in fact, but it appears that we're now willing to acknowledge that it is a sham in law as well. How, otherwise, can you claim that the decisions of an occupation authority persist in an unoccupied territory? The answer is that the Iraqi government is not sovereign, or more particularly, that the government of Iraq is sovereign except where it is not--rather like an occupied country. Even were there no "private contractors," but only the American army blasting around the country shooting shit up and kicking down doors, that fact would be evident. The exemption of these contractors is a difference in degree. But what a degree!
6 comments:
"Let freedom reign!"
-W
I have been annoyed throughout this brave new war that everyone refused to call these fuckers by their real name: mercenaries. Then it occurred to me that back in the golden age of mercenaries, the Florentines and Milanese used to call them 'condotti,' which is to say--"contractors"!
Old euphemisms never die.
Check out Democracy Now today (9/18) - Jeremy Scahill makes the corporate shill for these 'contractors' look like an ass - I especially liked when the shill said they were not 'mercenaries'!
Methinks the mercenaries will be leaving Iraq pretty quickly. The Gang will need private enforcers once the US economy really tanks and things get Road Warrior nasty here. The Canadian Dollar is now worth more than the American dollar, the dollar has sunk to record lows against the Euro, and the Chinese are dumping greenbacks left and right. How are we going to finance the triple deficits now (government, trade and current account, and personal debt)?
The CPA did an untold amount of damage to any nominal notion that Iraq was soveriegn and in support of making Iraq a full-on Free Market Paradise. The mercenaries, freebooters, black marketeers, war profiteers couldn't operate if they didn't have immunity from prosecution.
Also, there's a federal statutory provision for private citizen suits against those committing fraud on the government called Qui Tam. The government has an opportunity to take the case from the private citizen and prosecute it on its own. Since 2003, the BushCo junta has refused to take a single case.
Additionally, judges hearing the cases are saying that there is no Qui Tam jurisdiction over the actions of the CPA because they are not a part of the federal government. Ergo, it is not a fraud against the federal governmnet. Despite it being common knowledge that the CPA was a US agency.
Prof.
War is a racket.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article4377.htm
Well, if the Iraqis really stand up, Blackwater will have to stand down. However, Bluewater will not be far behind.
There's an incredible amount of money floating around over there in the right arenas. The freebooter style has caused all sorts of problems, and the qui tam issue may rear its ugly head as soon as the congress shifts more exponentially in January 2009...unless it doesn't.
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