What and Who is Blackwater USA?

The company's self-description is as follows - "We are not simply a "private security company." We are a professional military, law enforcement, security, peacekeeping, and stability operations firm who provides turnkey solutions."

3.2. Signatories support effective legal accountability to relevant authorities for their actions and the actions of company employees. While minor infractions should be proactively addressed by companies themselves, Signatories pledge, to the extent possible and subject to contractual and legal limitations, to fully cooperate with official investigations into allegations of contractual violations and violations of international humanitarian law and human rights law. - From the International Peace Operations Association Code of Conduct.

When you click on the link *Code of Conduct* from BlackwaterUSA.com, you are taken to an outside site, Ipoaonline.org. I'm not sure if that fact is all significant, but in light of the news today that Blackwater employees in Iraq have been granted immunity by the US State Department, I found it to be an interesting tidbit.

Depending on who you ask, Blackwater employees are sometimes called *Mercenaries*, *Hired Killers*, *Guards*, *Contract Troops*, and all sorts of variations of *Security Guard*.

It is estimated that right now there are somewhere between 20,000 and 100,000 Blackwater employees, and somewhere around 1000-1500 are in Iraq. The company's website lists the pay of a *Premier Mobile Security Team Member* at $550.00 a day. However, the current Pentagon estimation is that each Blackwater Guard in Iraq costs the US taxpayers $445,000.00 a year.

There have been many criticisms and controversies surrounding this company, the biggest concern being that contracts awarded to Blackwater USA have generally been *No-Bid Contracts*. Some say this is a form of monopoly. Most *Premier* guards have backgrounds in the military, and many in the Special Forces. These jobs, guarding diplomats and high-profile visitors in and around Baghdad, are considered to be extremely dangerous. In fact, the *Battle of Fallujah*, in which George W. Bush ordered a Marine assault on the city was in response to 4 Blackwater Guards being kidnapped, killed and burned in the city.

Blackwater employees have been engaged in at least 200 shootings in Iraq since 2005. The fact that most of these shootings have taken place from a moving vehicle, where no one could see the extent of damage and/or body count, has caused investigations of Blackwater USA by the State Department and the FBI. The suggestion is that in many cases, shootings in which the company was involved, have been attempted to be *covered up* by officials within the company.

Iraqis are reported to see these contractors as mercenaries who have a shoot first attitude, and also that the employees are not held responsible for their actions. In fact, Iraq literally banned Blackwater USA from the country, which brings the question, why are they still there?

If the US has decided to ignore or override the decision made by the Iraqi Government, what does it say about the actual diplomatic relations between the US and Iraq? Most would agree that private contracts are absolutely necessary to provide security and protection to civilians traveling within the region, but when a sovereign country's Government makes a decision on who these employees are, most seem to agree that the decision should be abided by.

The most recent shooting incident involving Blackwater USA employees left 17 Iraqis dead. This particular incident is what brought the ban on Blackwater in Iraq and caused their license to be revoked. According to reports, within 4 days after the ban, Blackwater Guards had resumed *limited movement* and *pre-approved missions*. Later the Iraqi Government partially lifted the ban, saying that the ban was never intended to be permanent. It was also stated that Iraq's Government would investigate the immunity bestowed upon all private security firms operating within their borders.

Many US political leaders such as Barack Obama, Harry Reid, and Senator Dick Durbin have begun to question the secrecy by which these types of firms operate. This year, author Jeremy Scahill wrote "Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army.", which was at release date, #9 on The New York Times Bestseller List.

It seems that America is learning more and more about this *secret army* and how it all came about. And, it appears as though America is none too thrilled about the situation. Aside from the fact that Blackwater Employees are paid (in some cases) up to SIX TIMES what our uniformed servicemen are paid for their Iraq and Afghanistan tours, American Soldiers are held accountable for mistakes that are made in battle or elsewhere. The Abu-Ghraib prison scandal, for instance, resulted in 12 US Soldiers being convicted on various charges related to the incident.

It is likely that in the coming months we will be hearing quite a bit more about Blackwater. Unfortunately, under the shield of National Security, so much classified information would be hidden from American civilians, we will likely never know the depth of the involvement of this company, and many others, for that matter, in this War on Terrorism. The crazy world of War Profit is now being examined with a magnifying glass.