I've been reading accounts of the Blackwater shooting that happened in Mansour district of Baghdad on Sunday 9/16/07 - Something just doesn't sound right here.
Why would these people start firing on civilians unprovoked? Are we to assume that Blackwater hires monsters that love killing innocent civilians? From what I know, Blackwater hires former military personnel. These people are highly trained with clean records and clean military service. Why would they, all of a sudden turn into murderers? The didn't and they're not. What we are seeing here is a text book insurgency play. We've saw it last summer in the Israel Lebanon conflict. The terrorists hide in plain sight wearing civilian clothes. They fight from within crowds or women and children, they use them as shields. The when the soldiers return fire to defend themselves and a civilian is hit they point their fingers and say the soldiers (Israeli soldiers or Blackwater contractors in this cases) are targeting civilians. This is an old tactic and I'd be willing to bet, some of these "civilians" are actually terrorist/insurgents.
Like this guy, Hasan Jaber Salman (see picture above) he claims the contractors fired on civilian, unprovoked. He was shot in the back while he was fleeing in his car.
But Salman claims the attack was unprovoked.
"No one fired at them, they were not attacked by gunmen, they were not targeted by an explosion," he said.
Now he's suing Blackwater.
Okay here's where it gets weird. The same thing happened to his son in 2005.
The lawyer said he intends to sue Blackwater, which he already did in 2005 after his son was involved in a similar incident outside al-Muthana Air Base near Baghdad's international airport. That lawsuit has not yet been resolved, he said.
Here's the account of what allegedly happened to his son:
Laborer Abul-Raheem Amir said he was on his way to a job when the minibus he was in got caught in a traffic jam caused by an explosion.
"A security company called Blackwater, they got out and kept on firing randomly at people, starting with the people walking or working the street -- even the traffic policeman, even the people who work in the area," Amir said.
"People at first thought we were safe in the minibus, but when they realized they were not, they started getting out and went to other places to save themselves," he recounted. "Unfortunately that did not work. As they got out, people were shot and killed."
He said he tried to make a run for it after the driver and two women next to him on the minibus were shot.
"I ran about 50 meters [about 55 yards] and then was shot, the first bullet. Still I kept running, but the second bullet dropped me to the ground. ... It broke my bones, and the third one made me start crawling."
Some people helped get him off the street and away from the carnage. The shooting lasted for about a half-hour, and there were some 30 bodies in the street, he said.
"I remember people strewn on the streets, children, elderly, young men, elderly women. ... The street turned into the street of the dead, a graveyard," he said.
-link-
This Blackwater group must be a well honed civilian killing machine. They strike at kids, elderly and women with surgical precision. All that shooting and it's the only thing that they killed.
This little tid-bit screams of propaganda. If you listen to people like these guys Iraq is just a country full of innocent elderly women and children doing the right thing being all innocent and saving puppies puppies and crap.
By the way, for those of you that want to read the State Department's incident report on this, here is a link. I'll give you a quick rundown:
A Blackwater Security team was escorting a convoy of US State Department vehicles en route to a meeting in western Baghdad with United States Agency for International Development officials when a Vehicle Borne Improvised Explosive Device exploded close to the meeting point.[46] The security team then evacuated the officials, however as the convoy passed through Nissor Square, between the Sunni controlled al-Mansour and al-Yarmukh neighborhoods, it was attacked. According to Blackwater VP Marty Strong, it was hit with "a large explosive device" and "repeated small arms fire" disabling one of the vehicles.
I guess small arms fire isn't provoking enough for Mr. Salman. I wonder how Mr. Salman would explain the disabled Blackwater vehicle? I bet he'd claim the shot it up themselves.
The State Department report states that eight to ten attackers then opened fire "from multiple nearby locations, with some aggressors dressed in civilian apparel and others in Iraqi police uniforms".
Like I said, straight from the play book. dress in civilian clothes, or if you can get them, Iraqi military uniforms. These people are sub-human. Anyone who fights and uses civilians, women or children as shields doesn't deserve to breathe the same air as normal folks.
