According to today's Los Angeles Times....The State Department, which is facing growing criticism of its policy on private security contractors, overlooked repeated warnings from U.S. diplomats in the field that guards were endangering Iraqi civilians and undermining U.S. efforts to win support from the population, according to current and former U.S. officials.Ever since the contractors were granted immunity from Iraqi courts in June 2004 by the U.S.-led occupation authority, diplomats have cautioned that the decision to do so was "a bomb that could go off at any time," said one former U.S. official.
On Friday, in a tacit acknowledgment of the policy's shortcomings, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice ordered drastic increases in supervision of the security contractors. Meanwhile, the House, flatly rejecting the current approach, on Thursday approved in a 389-30 vote legislation that would subject contractors to U.S. criminal law.
Athough appreciative of the new Bush administration outlook in regards to private contractors in Iraq, Congressional views of Blackwater and other security contractors are at odds with the descriptions in recent weeks from Rice and other top State Department officials, who have praised the guards as providing effective service under dangerous conditions.
What a shock. The Bush administration trying to put lipstick on what they knew was a pig from the start. Praising Blackwater guards for their effective service when they knew full well of the following incident...... "A Blackwater USA employee under investigation in the killing last December of an Iraqi bodyguard in an off-duty confrontation was so drunk after fleeing the shooting that another group of guards took away the loaded pistol he was fumbling with, a report to a House committee said Monday.
4 comments:
So one Blackwater employee under investigation means we should pull out 50,000 contractors? Because there are bad apples everywhere in society (for instance, do you not think a few of our G.I.'s raped women during WWII? The "New Liberals/Democrats" weren't around to write books about those actions yet) we should have pulled out of that war? It doesn't make sense Kimba.
Are you actually making an argument that the Bush Administration is more competent than another entity? A Bush supporter eh? So unlike you.
No, the contractors can stay, without immunity from the crimes they commit.
Do I know the crimes that are committed during wartime? Let's start here, NPR is reporting that female military personnel have a 23% chance of being raped while serving in Iraq.
Greetings from the left,
Kimba
I do not trust NPR Kimba, they have a very anti-Semitic strain in them for one, and the other is that they lean very left... on my dime of course.
I looked around and found “sexual assault,” in fact, let me quote NPR:
100 U.S. servicewomen in the Persian Gulf and Afghanistan say they were sexually assaulted or raped by fellow troops…”
Some of the stories that have been ingrained in the psyche of Americans have been stories later proven to be fraudulent. For instance:
The cover article in The Times Magazine on March 18 reported on women who served in Iraq, the sexual abuse that some of them endured and the struggle for all of them to reclaim their prewar lives. One of the servicewomen, Amorita Randall, a former naval construction worker, told The Times that she was in combat in Iraq in 2004 and that in one incident an explosive device blew up a Humvee she was riding in, killing the driver and leaving her with a brain injury. She also said she was raped twice while she was in the Navy.
...Based on the information that came to light after the article was printed, it is now clear that Ms. Randall did not serve in Iraq
Many of the sexual assaults, while still inexcusable, may also be blown out of proportion. The bottom line to me though would be to not have women in combat roles or military settings. Their natures are different than the men they serve with. That aside, many of the people supporting these women are what Rush calls “Femi-Nazi’s.” Why? I will let them speak for themselves:
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A Feminist Dictionary: Male: “... represents a variant of or deviation from the category of female. The first males were mutants... the male sex represents a degeneration and deformity of the female.” Man: “... an obsolete life form... an ordinary creature who needs to be watched ... a contradictory baby-man.” Testosterone Poisoning: “Until now it has been thought that the level of testosterone in men is normal simply because they have it. But if you consider how abnormal their behavior is, then you are led to the hypothesis that almost all men are suffering from ‘testosterone poisoning.’”
Feminist author Ti-Grace Atkinson shows her true autonomy when stating, “the institution of sexual intercourse is anti-feminist.”
Marilyn French, feminist author calls all men rapists: “All men are rapists and that's all they are. They rape us with their eyes, their laws, and their codes.”
Gloria Steinen, feminist extraordinaire, wrote the following about Andrea Dwarkin, a contemporary, “Every century, there are a handful of writers who help the human race to evolve. Andrea is one of them.” Wow, such high accolades from one of the most well-known activists in the feminist movement, so what does this Andrea Dworkin have to say about us men? “Heterosexual intercourse is the pure, formalized expression of contempt for women's bodies.”
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Unless I can see each of those “cases” of assault, ike the Duke Lacross Team, or the “Slap Butt Boys,” of whom I will leave a [partial commentary by Prager on… I just don’t trust these “cases” unless they are vetted out. Especially coming from NPR.
……. Two seventh-graders were read their Miranda rights for butt-swatting?
And hauled off to jail for butt-swatting?
And kept in jail for five days for butt-swatting?
This is worse than a bad joke; it is actually sick.
And it gets worse. The seventh-graders were not permitted contact with their parents for 24 hours, they were brought into court in shackles and jail garb, and they were strip-searched four times.
All because the Yamhill County District Attorney, Bradley Berry, brought felony sex charges against the two boys. When he finally explained himself under pressure from the media, Berry told The Oregonian, "From our perspective and the perspective of the victims, this was not just horseplay."
In fact, it turns out that the girls involved did regard it as horseplay. And they claimed from virtually the outset that they had been pressured into making a case against the boys.
The Oregonian has reported that listeners to my radio show across America provided nearly all of the more than $40,000 for defense costs for the two boys. But they have done more. They have also sent letters to the two boys assuring them it is not they, but Bradley Berry, who acted perversely. One of the boys' mothers, in tears, told me that these letters profoundly affected the boys, who were made to appear as perverts and sexual predators and who could have been placed on sexual predator lists for the rest of their lives. My listeners also reported that when they phoned the office of Bradley Berry, they were told that "there was more to the story," that more evidence would be forthcoming.
That was a lie. Berry had nothing more to reveal and did in fact drop the felony charges. The boys were then charged 'only' with sexual harassment……
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