State Dep’t Hearts Trigger-Happy BlackwaterTo add one thing to what the Boss observed about Blackwater being involved in the most shooting incidents of any State Department contractor, consider these two excerpts from The New York Times‘ piece today. First:
The State Department keeps reports on each case in which weapons were fired by security personnel guarding American diplomats in Iraq. Officials familiar with the internal State Department reports would not provide the actual statistics, but they indicated that the records showed that Blackwater personnel were involved in dozens of episodes in which they had resorted to force.
The officials said that Blackwaterâs incident rate was at least twice that recorded by employees of DynCorp International and Triple Canopy, the two other United States-based security firms that have been contracted by the State Department to provide security for diplomats and other senior civilians in Iraq.
And then this:
Last year, the State Department gave Blackwater the lead role in diplomatic security in Iraq, reducing the roles of DynCorp and Triple Canopy.
Blackwater workers in Iraq outnumber those for the other two contractors by more than 2 to 1.
However aggressively Blackwater operates, the State Department clearly approves. No wonder experts consider pointing a finger exclusively at the company to be misleading.
