Unanswered Questions in Blackwater Killings Persist
The FBI's investigation of a 2007 incident in which 17 Iraqis were killed has yielded some puzzling results.
On September 17, 2007, a Blackwater Worldwide (now Xe and pronounced “zee”) personal security detail escorting a U.S. State Department diplomatic team in a convoy opened fire in Baghdad’s crowded Nisoor Square, reportedly killing 17 Iraqi civilians without provocation.
Most witnesses agree on how the shooting started, when a car being slowly driven down the wrong side of the road refused to yield for Iraqi policemen and continued to drive towards the State Department convoy. Blackwater guards, fearing a potential vehicle-borne improvised explosive device (VBIED), fired warning shots, and when the driver of the vehicle failed to stop, they opened fire on the vehicle, killing both the driver and passenger.
From this point accounts from various witnesses and in some of the various investigations begin to diverge.
Some versions have claimed that the Blackwater guards — and one in particular — began to fire wildly into the crowded square after the car’s occupants were killed, though the convoy was not taking any incoming fire during any part of the firefight. Other versions, such as that released in the aftermath of the shooting by the State Department’s own Diplomatic Security Service, reported that the team was caught in an ambush involving 8-10 attackers wearing civilian clothes and Iraqi police uniforms. The DSS account reports that the convoy’s Bearcat Tactical Armored Vehicle was disabled during the ambush and had to be towed from the scene. Other accounts combine variations of the two examples above or insert fire from helicopters, Iraqi police, and muzzle flashes from inside buildings and vehicles around the square as part of a chaotic scene.
The firefight in Nisoor Square quickly bloomed into a full-scale diplomatic row between coalition military forces, the Iraqi government, and the State Department. Blackwater was temporarily blacklisted by the Iraqi government and eventually was pushed out of Iraq. The State Department is still trying to find replacement security contractors as Blackwater’s contract expires in May.
Five of the Blackwater guards in the Nisoor Square shooting face manslaughter charges brought by the U.S. Justice Department in December 2008 in what some critics call a purely political prosecution made to assuage the anger of Iraqi government officials.
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Bob Owens blogs at Confederate Yankee.
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25 Comments
1. Blackwater:Knowing the kind of people that join Blackwater I’m very hesitant to believe that they’d just randomly start shooting civilians for no reason. Especially when they’re escorting high ranking officials. What most likely happened is that they were returning fire and killed civilians on accident. This has pretty much become a witch hunt for the left who absolutely hate everything about Blackwater and constantly demonizes them as reckless cowboys who kill anyone for money. Blackwater is a great company who employs a lot of our finest Americans. They’re extremely competent at what they do and are doing some of the most dangerous work in the entire world. If these great American patriots end up in jail it will be a national disgrace and nothing more than creating sacrifical lambs for the anti-American global media. These guys are heroes not monsters. We need more of them.
Apr 6, 2009 - 2:38 am 2. Old Soldier:I’m starting to smell a Haditha here – a politically motivated witch hunt based on hearsay.
No way can the FBI not tell the difference between NATO and Russian 7.62. (Russian 7.62 x 54 sniper rounds might be tougher.) Did Blackwater guards shoot up their own vehicles?
Apr 6, 2009 - 4:21 am 3. ret7:Concur, Blackwater / Xee only hired the best from what I read, SF/Seal combat vets or equivalent. These are not the type to get rattled and spray an entire area.
Apr 6, 2009 - 5:01 am 4. Bruce:That the FBI could not determine the match is puzzling at the least. Were they able to determine probable type of weapon other than 30 cal?
Amen!
Apr 6, 2009 - 5:45 am 5. Jay Lee:The key phrase is “war zone.” Another is “fog of war.” Give these guys the benefit of the doubt. Does anyone really believe they were joyriding down the street shooting Iraq’s for sh*ts-n-giggles? Any Blackwater personnel that were there that day and are still here this day, did what was necessary.
Apr 6, 2009 - 6:06 am 6. Larry:Jenin, Gaza, Haditha all battles in which civilian casulties were grossly exaggerated or the circumstances distorted. The only reason the left/terrorists are considered to have any credibility at all is a testament to just how biased our MSM really is.
Apr 6, 2009 - 8:01 am 7. HonestJon:Something that I have not seen mentioned about this story is: If there were insurgents/terrorists firing at the Blackwater guards what happened to their shell casings? I feel quite confident that the terrorists didn’t stop to pick them up for reloading. It’s quite a lot easier to identify a spent shell than a bullet that has impacted a vehicle or other hard surface. So where are the spent shells? That would be the easiest proof of innocence. If muzzle flashes were seen coming from buildings, etc. did anybody go in the buildings and look around?
I would like to think that the Blackwater guys were completely in the right for what they did, but I’m just a little skeptical. Surely, these are some of the bravest and best-trained people in the world, but mistakes can and will be made in a warzone.
regards
Apr 6, 2009 - 9:09 am 8. Bob Owens:A quantity of 7.63×39 brass was recovered from the scene, but the claim that that since there had been fighting in that same square on earlier occasions, that there was no way to know if that brass came from the incident in question, or from previous fighting, so they decided not to take that into account.
Rather disingenuous, if you ask me.
Apr 6, 2009 - 9:25 am 9. Frank:Haditha, Jenin, this stuff never pans out. It’s all part of the Islamist propaganda effort.
Apr 6, 2009 - 10:24 am 10. robotech master:The simplest way to tell is to dig up the body and check their wounds…. o wait they don’t want to do that. The fact that they even filed charges in this case should be considered a hate crime against US soldiers. No court in the US would entertain this type of case if it was US police shooting civs or civs shooting police. The defense would demand the bodies be checked and once the other side said no the judge would throw the case out so fast that it would make a pro pitcher’s fast ball look like it was in slow mo.
Apr 6, 2009 - 11:10 am 11. HonestJon:8. Bob Owens: I’m no expert, but doesn’t brass weather rather rapidly when exposed to moisture, salt, etc? A new shell on the ground is going to look a lot different than one that has been there for a while, no? Unless the terrorists regularly use old bullets or something…
regards
Apr 6, 2009 - 12:02 pm 12. robotech master:To 11. HonestJon
Yes they use old ammo sometimes decades old.(the US does too)
Apr 6, 2009 - 12:55 pm 13. Federale:Blackwater guards are only armed with US weapons by DOS requirements, as they must be interchangeable with DSS weapons and training. Blackwater had only M4s and M60s. It should be easy to tell if a bullet was 5.56 and manufactured in the USA or NATO country. Also, the M60 fires the only 7.62 x 51 round and bullets from that should be easy to identify. You cannot confuse that with 7.62 x 39 or 7.62 x 54 either by size, manufacture or metallurgy. I don’t think that any of the Blackwater guards were using an M60. They all had M4s. So, that mystery 7.62 x ? round is most likely evidence that there was a real firefight. The DSS report should have been evidence enough. I see an aquital in the future.
Apr 6, 2009 - 2:46 pm 14. OmegaPaladin:Mr. Owens,
I remember thinking something similar, and I know very little about guns. I figured the bullet must have horribly deformed to prevent the FBI from telling the AK bullet from an M60 bullet.
Apr 6, 2009 - 3:26 pm 15. davod:“I see an aquital in the future.”
I wish I could agree with you. Look how long it took for the military to clear most (Some are still on the hook) of those invoved in the Haditha witch hunt. And that was in a military environment where the jury, if you will, quite likely has the benefit of being in the same situaton, or at least understands the rules involved during such action.
These guys will be crucified if they get anywhere near a DC courtroom.
Apr 6, 2009 - 3:29 pm 16. Bob Owens:Federale,
At least one BW contractor did use a SR-25 in Nisoor Square, and that is a 7.62×51, though I certainly agree that no competent lab should be able to confuse that with a 7.62×39 round.
Apr 6, 2009 - 4:01 pm 17. Brian:In regards to whether or not other casings could be found to prove or disprove an account, wasn’t it a couple of weeks before the FBI was even able to get to the scene?
That seems to me like a long time and could allow a lot of the evidence to ‘change’.
Apr 7, 2009 - 12:35 am 18. Old Soldier:OmegaPaladin: Blackwater follows the DOD rules of using hard-nosed ammunition (full-metal-jacket) not softer lead tipped bullets. If they were really spraying bullets at a crowd, there would be plenty of bullets to be found that were not badly deformed.
Even if they are deformed, it would be easy to tell them apart just by weight. Nato 5.56 = 49 to 65 grains, Nato 7.62 = 150 grains, Russian 7.62 x 39 = 121-123 grains.
Apr 7, 2009 - 5:55 am 19. typos_R_us:Ah-yup. this whole thing is political.
President Bush should have wrote them a pardon, only that would have taken a pair and Condi would tell where she hid his.
Reading between the lines and having spent a decade working under Islamic ‘kulture’, I think Blak water pissed off a powerful Iraqi. That Iraqi VIP then set BW up for a good screwing. The Lace pants crowd is stoooooopid enough to go along with it. Once BW is out of the picture, you can expect some of the State Dept guys to get snatched. Count on it.
Apr 7, 2009 - 9:41 pm 20. Gunstar1:One of the terms for long convoluted plots used to day is ‘Byzantine’. The Byzantines never called them selves that, but the Muslims might have. Not sure if the Eastern Romans learned their plotting skills from the Muslims or vice versa. I tend to think the Muslims copied them from the Greeks ( what the Muslims of the Umayyad caliphs period called the Byzantines), sine the Eastern Roman Empire predates Islam by a few centuries.
So an intricate plot involving many peoples worked over a period of several years is par for the course in that part of the world.
What BW needs to do is go back and make a list of suspects as to who set them up, then send sniper teams out after them.
That is the sort of thing Islamic VIP’s understand and can deal with.
The FBI has abandoned bullet metal composition testing.
http://www.truthinjustice.org/FBI-ballistics2.htm
Apr 8, 2009 - 12:23 pm 21. Marc Malone:The slow-moving car driving on the wrong side of the road is a dead giveaway. Of course it was an ambush! The car was meant to get the convoy to stop in the kill zone. They thought the stupid Infidels would not dare open fire right away. Problem was, these guys were ex-Seals and such. Fire for effect! It then became a firefight.
This is why those fighting without uniforms should be treated as spies and saboteurs and shot upon capture. The purpose is to prevent just such a problem as this. After all, how many of the dead were actually civilians, as opposed to being actual un-uniformed combatants? When both sides use uniforms, it prevents shooting them all and letting God sort them out.
Apr 8, 2009 - 3:06 pm 22. typos_R_us:“This is why those fighting without uniforms should be treated as spies and saboteurs and shot upon capture.”
That is what the GCIV allows. Those famous war criminals of the Bush administration made the dubious decision to treat them otherwise.
Apr 9, 2009 - 6:19 am 23. Susan Katz Keating:On a personal note: when I did a training session at Blackwater, I found the entire staff, especially the weapons and range instructors, to be so attuned to proper procedure and safety that they bordered on the psychic. Suffice it to say that one of the range instructors saw a problem before I knew it existed, and literally saved me from severing my own thumb.
As for the incident in question… the sad thing is, the facts don’t seem to matter. Those of us who pay attention to this case know that something is amiss. The general public, meanwhile, accepts the charges without question. As I recently heard from a young adult: “Oh, yeah. They’re the people who shot up a bunch of people in Iraq.” Very sad.
Apr 9, 2009 - 10:38 am 24. Dan V.:“Very sad” indeed but if Keith Olberdork and his ilk at msnbc proclaims it as “fact” who is to argue?
Apr 9, 2009 - 2:24 pm 25. stanton:I re-read the various reports from different sources but as stated, if the vehicle in which the contractors were in, was diaabled, it would surely bring credence to the assertion that, under attck, BW had the right to respond as they did!
Sep 17, 2009 - 11:56 amI am sure even the unconcerned would realize that insurgents have been using, are using and will continue to use civilians as shields and they know that US and NATO usually follow that guideline.