Brendan Calling

Maybe It’s Time to Bomb Blackwater?

fascism, war September 22nd, 2007

This is rich. While BushCo is frothing at the mouth to bomb Iran, lobbing accusations of interfering with our Glorious War in Iraq by smuggling arms, bombs, fighters, and more to the war ravaged country, it looks like our own private mercenary army Blackwater has been doing quite a bit of black market wheeling and dealing themselves. This would be the same Blackwater that’s been accused of firing on civilians unprovoked by the Iraqis and told to leave the country (fat chance).

Federal prosecutors are investigating whether employees of the private security firm Blackwater USA illegally smuggled into Iraq weapons that may have been sold on the black market and ended up in the hands of a U.S.-designated terrorist organization, officials said Friday.
[snip]
In the United States, officials in Washington said the smuggling investigation grew from internal Pentagon and State Department inquiries into U.S. weapons that had gone missing in Iraq. It gained steam after Turkish authorities protested to the U.S. in July that they had seized American arms from the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, rebels.

The Turks provided serial numbers of the weapons to U.S. investigators, said a Turkish official.

The Pentagon said in late July it was looking into the Turkish complaints and a U.S. official said FBI agents had traveled to Turkey in recent months to look into cases of missing U.S. weapons in Iraq.

Investigators are determining whether the alleged Blackwater weapons match those taken from the PKK.

It was not clear if Blackwater employees suspected of selling to the black market knew the weapons they allegedly sold to middlemen might wind up with the PKK. If they did, possible charges against them could be more serious than theft or illegal weapons sales, officials said.

The PKK, which is fighting for an independent Kurdistan, is banned in Turkey, which has a restive Kurdish population and is considered a “foreign terrorist organization” by the State Department. That designation bars U.S. citizens or those in U.S. jurisdictions from supporting the group in any way.

There have been stories ofBlackwater mercenaries deployed in New Orleans, with predictably ugly results. I say leave the motherfuckers in Iraq. Preferably Fallujah, where they know how to deal with mercenaries.