Blackwater Mercenary shooting spree leaves 17 dead

[CptStern]

It started out as a family errand: Ahmed Haithem Ahmed was driving his mother, Mohassin, to pick up his father from the hospital where he worked as a pathologist. As they approached Nisour Square at midday on Sept. 16, they did not know that a bomb had gone off nearby or that a convoy of four armored vehicles carrying Blackwater guards armed with automatic rifles was approaching.

Moments later a bullet tore through Mr. Ahmed?s head, he slumped, and the car rolled forward. Then Blackwater guards responded with a barrage of gunfire and explosive weapons, leaving 17 dead and 24 wounded ? a higher toll than previously thought, according to Iraqi investigators.

Interviews with 12 Iraqi witnesses, several Iraqi investigators and an American official familiar with an American investigation of the shootings offer new insights into the gravity of the episode in Nisour Square. And they are difficult to square with the explanation offered initially by Blackwater officials that their guards were responding proportionately to an attack on the streets around the square.

The new details include these:

A deadly cascade of events began when a single bullet apparently fired by a Blackwater guard killed an Iraqi man whose weight probably remained on the accelerator and propelled the car forward as the passenger, the man?s mother, clutched him and screamed.

The car continued to roll toward the convoy, which responded with an intense barrage of gunfire in several directions, striking Iraqis who were desperately trying to flee.

Minutes after that shooting stopped, a Blackwater convoy ? possibly the same one ? moved north from the square and opened fire on another line of traffic a few hundred yards away, in a previously unreported separate shooting, investigators and several witnesses say.

it's what happens when you put paid killers in the role of security

Accounts in the initial days after the event described Mrs. Kadhim as holding a baby in her arms. It now appears that those accounts were based on assumptions that the charred remains of Mrs. Kadhim?s son were mistaken for an infant.

By then cars were struggling to get out of the line of fire, and many people were abandoning their vehicles altogether. The scene turned hellish.

?The shooting started like rain; everyone escaped his car,? said Fareed Walid Hassan, a truck driver who hauls goods in his Hyundai minibus.

He saw a woman dragging her child. ?He was around 10 or 11,? he said. ?He was dead. She was pulling him by one hand to get him away. She hoped that he was still alive.?

As the shooting started in earnest Jabber Salman, a lawyer on his way to the Ministry of Justice for a noon meeting, described people crying and shouting. ?Some people were trying to escape by crawling,? he said. ?Some people were killed in front of me.?

As Mr. Salman tried to drive away from the shooting, bullets came one after another through his rear windshield, hitting his neck, shoulders, left forearm and lower back. ?I thought, ?I?m sorry they are going to kill me and I can do nothing.??

Iraqi investigators believe that during the shooting Blackwater helicopters flew overhead and fired into the cars from above. They say that at least one the car roofs had bullets through them. Blackwater has denied that its helicopters discharged any weapons.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/03/world/middleeast/03firefight.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2&hp

 

[Solaris]

And this is why the Iraqi resistance is justified.

 

[No Limit]

And our government trusts these guys so much the state departments actually let Blackwater write the report of this shooting for them. Yup, no conflict of interest at all, just the way we do business here in the U-S-A.

And this is why the Iraqi resistance is justified.

Resistance of what? They are mostly targeting each other.

 

[Tyguy]

They were recently banned from iraq, im guessing they were allowed back...

 

[No Limit]

They were recently banned from iraq, im guessing they were allowed back...

The Iraqi government went back on that threat as soon as americans told them too.

 

[Solaris]

There are many fighting groups in America. The ones that attack troops largely condemn all civilian attacks and are currently building a political organization.

 

[Atomic_Piggy]

How horrible. I hope they catch the people responsible and give em life.

 

[CptStern]

How horrible. I hope they catch the people responsible and give em life.

if by life you mean suspended for 4 days and then reinstated to active duty ..then yes

 

[Atomic_Piggy]

if by life you mean suspended for 4 days and then reinstated to active duty ..then yes

What the shit?

 

[Ennui]

God, shit like this makes me so unbelievably ****ing angry.

Not to mention frustrated because I can't do shit about it.

 

[PvtRyan]

Privatized war ftw. It's in the best interest of mercenaries to keep the conflict that pays them going on.

 

[W4d5Y]

It's disturbing to see events unfold that to this point only G. Orwell could have imagined. And now, they became real!

 

[Sparta]

So, what was their logic for killing all these people?

 

[Sloth]

Bored, Scared, Badly Trained, Only there for Kicks?

The US Army is badly trained yet those that get the training and are good soldiers go off to earn mega-bucks and end up shooting random people... There is no god.

 

[Mr-Fusion]

These guys are basically gun obsessed nutbars who're living out their Mad Max fantasies. Ordinarily, back in the good old U.S.A these kickass riding on trucks blowing shit up fantasies are quarantined to weekend visits to the forest where they can pretend to be commandos shooting bears and birds and shit.

They're paranoid as **** (with good reason i suppose). A fly buzzes and they unload their rounds into anything.

I think...

 

[CptStern]

So, what was their logic for killing all these people?

itchy trigger finger ..they're most likely in dangerous situations all the time and one persons overreaction to the situation led to a firefight that was completely one sided ....

or ...

These guys are basically gun obsessed nutbars who're living out their Mad Max fantasies. Ordinarily, back in the good old U.S.A these kickass riding on trucks blowing shit up fantasies are quarantined to weekend visits to the forest where they can pretend to be commandos shooting bears and birds and shit.

They're paranoid as **** (with good reason i suppose). A fly buzzes and they unload their rounds into anything.

I think...

sounds good to me

 

[Escaep]

I find it funny that the morons who post this shit dont live in America.

 

[CptStern]

I find it funny that the morons who dont post this shit live in America.

fixed

 

[DreamThrall]

Bored, Scared, Badly Trained, Only there for Kicks?

The US Army is badly trained yet those that get the training and are good soldiers go off to earn mega-bucks and end up shooting random people... There is no god.

No, no... this isn't the US Army that was involved in this. Blackwater USA is a group of highly trained mercenaries that the Bush White House/State Dept contracts for doing "security" in Iraq and other places. I believe they were also hired during the days following Katrina.

I've been hearing a lot of crap about these guys... its kinda scary.

 

[simonjedi]

when i read the title i thought it was going to be in America so i was going to reply "i blame violent videogames"

but it wasn't, and now im too annoyed to post anything decent