The New York Times
October 3, 2007
Op-Ed Columnist
Sinking in a Swamp Full of Blackwater
By MAUREEN DOWD
Washington

“He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a
monster,” Nietzsche said. “And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the
abyss gazes also into you.”

We’re gazing into the abyss all right, and Blackwater is gazing back.

Besides having an army for hire, brave kids who are paid to fight so
that most Americans are not personally touched by war, we have the
real mercenaries. And they’re a spooky cadre, careening outside the
laws of Iraq, the United States and the military.

President Bush continues to preach that we must defeat the “dark
ideology” of extremists with “a more hopeful vision.”

But the compromises W. makes to slog on in Iraq, be it with warlords,
dictators or out-of-control contractors, are spreading a dark stain on
America’s image.

“Blackwater appears to have fostered a culture of shoot first and
sometimes kill, and then ask the questions,” said Representative
Elijah Cummings, a Democrat, yesterday at a House hearing.

The Times reports today that Blackwater’s explanation of an incident
in Baghdad on Sept. 16 that left 17 dead and 24 wounded is sketchy.

It seems as though a bullet struck an Iraqi man driving his mother to
pick up his father, a pathologist, at the hospital. The dead man’s
weight, The Times reports, “probably remained on the accelerator and
propelled the car forward” toward a Blackwater convoy.

Blackwater guards then unleashed a spray of gunfire and explosives,
even though witnesses did not see anyone shooting at the American
convoy and even though Iraqis were turning their cars around and
escaping the scene.

Newsweek quotes the Iraqi national police as saying that Blackwater
vehicles “opened fire crazily and randomly, without any reason.”

The Blackwater desperados are a sinister symbol of how little progress
we’ve made in Iraq, that V.I.P.’s — or “packages,” as the contractors
call them — can’t make a move in the country without the high-priced
hired guns of the State Department.

Americans have been antimercenary since the British sent 30,000 German
Hessians after George Washington in the Revolutionary War.

But W. outsourced his presidency to Cheney and Rummy, and Cheney and
Rummy went to war on the cheap and outsourced large chunks of the Iraq
occupation to Halliburton and Blackwater. The American taxpayer got
gouged, and so did the American reputation.

The mercenaries inflame Iraqis even as Gen. David Petraeus tries to
win their trust.

Henry Waxman, the chairman of the House Oversight and Government
Reform Committee, summoned the 38-year-old crew-cut chairman of
Blackwater, Erik Prince, to defend his private security company
yesterday.

Once there was the military-industrial complex. Now we have the
mercenary-evangelical complex.

Mr. Prince, a former intern to the first President Bush and a former
Navy Seal, is from a well-to-do and well-connected Republican family
from Michigan.

He and his father both have close ties to conservative Christian
groups. His sister was a Pioneer for W., raising $100,000 in 2004, and
Erik Prince has given more than $225,000 to Republicans.

Blackwater, in turn, has been the beneficiary of $1 billion in federal
contracts, including a no-bid contract with the State Department worth
hundreds of millions.

Mr. Waxman yesterday called the State Department “Blackwater’s
enabler.” His committee staff summarized State Department reports
revealing a cascade of Blackwater trouble.

“In a high-profile incident in December 2006, a drunken Blackwater
contractor killed the guard of Iraqi Vice President Adil Abdul Mahdi.
Within 36 hours after the shooting, the State Department had allowed
Blackwater to transport the Blackwater contractor out of Iraq.”

The State Department chargé d’affaires “suggested a $250,000 payment
to the guard’s family, but the Department’s Diplomatic Security
Service said this was too much and could cause Iraqis to ‘try to get
killed.’ ” In the end, they agreed on a $15,000 payment.

“The State Department took a similar approach,” the report stated,
“upon receiving reports that Blackwater shooters killed an innocent
Iraqi, except that in this case, the State Department requested only a
$5,000 payment to ‘put this unfortunate matter behind us quickly.’ ”

Mr. Prince was pressed by Representative Paul Hodes about the penalty
paid by the Blackwater employee who, while drunk and off-duty at a
Christmas party, killed the Iraqi guard.

The man was fired. And he had to pay his own airfare home and forfeit
his bonuses, amounting to a loss of about $14,697 — slightly less than
the amount paid to the family of the Iraqi he blew away.

--
"Now, by the way, any time you hear the United States government
talking
about wiretap, it requires -- a wiretap requires a court order.
Nothing has
changed, by the way. When we're talking about chasing down terrorists,
we're
talking about getting a court order before we do so"
-George W. Bush, April 20, 2004

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