Today’s Must Read

The Iraqi Zapruder has arrived. Only his tape indicts Blackwater rather than absolves it.

Over the weekend, the Iraqi Interior Ministry released details of its investigation into the shooting incident last Sunday involving operatives of the private security firm. In addition to eyewitness testimony, the ministry says it has a videotape of Blackwater guards opening fire on civilians at Baghdad’s Nisour Square after a nearby car failed to heed a traffic policeman’s order to stop. The tape, recorded by cameras at the nearby National Police Command Center, is the first known documentation of the shooting, which resulted in the deaths of 11 Iraqis and threw gasoline on the explosive issue of legal immunity for U.S. security contractors.

As predicted, Iraqi officials have backed off their demand that the State Department expel Blackwater from Iraq. (Blackwater guards most U.S. civilian potentates, who don’t want to see their bodyguards kicked out of Iraq for protecting them.) But the Interior Ministry said it will refer the Blackwater case to Iraqi courts for criminal charges.

That creates another test for U.S.-Iraqi relations: before disbanding in 2004, the Coalition Provisional Authority passed an edict, known as Order 17, absolving U.S. security contractors from Iraqi prosecution, thereby depriving Iraq of any ability to rein in security firms accused of lawless behavior. If a Blackwater prosecution goes forward, the U.S. will be acknowledging that Order 17 is annulled, and security firms will be subject to prosecution from an Iraqi legal system that most outside observers acknowledge is, at best, in its infancy. To put the U.S.’s choice starkly, it’s this: either accept a kangaroo court or humiliate the U.S.’s alleged partners in the Iraqi government.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki certainly sees it that way. Yesterday, he framed the Blackwater incident in terms of national pride: “The Iraqi government is responsible for its citizens, and it cannot be accepted for a security company to carry out a killing. There are serious challenges to the sovereignty of Iraq.”

It’s not hard to understand why Maliki would say that. On at least six prior occasions, the Iraqi government complained to U.S. officials about Blackwater’s itchy trigger fingers, but the U.S. did next to nothing in response, The Washington Post reports. Some of the incidents resulted in deadly force being used.

Tensions escalated over a series of incidents beginning last Dec. 24, when a Blackwater employee allegedly shot and killed a bodyguard for Iraqi Vice President Adel Abdul Mahdi inside Baghdad’s Green Zone. It remains unclear how the Blackwater employee was able to leave Iraq after the incident, which triggered a Justice Department investigation. No charges have been filed.

On May 24, a Blackwater team shot and killed an Iraqi driver outside the Interior Ministry gate. The incident triggered an armed standoff between Interior Ministry commandos and the Blackwater guards, who later told U.S. Embassy officials that the driver had veered too close to their convoy. Blackwater refused to give the guards’ names or details of the incident to the Iraqis. The State Department said it planned to conduct an investigation, but no results have been announced.

Others were simply cases of flagrant disrespect, borne of the impunity that results from a blanket immunity to prosecution, according to Deputy Interior Minister Hussein Kamal:

Kamal said addressing Blackwater’s alleged actions was also a matter of preserving Iraq’s dignity and honor. Seated in his spacious office, he recalled an incident two months ago when Blackwater guards threw a water bottle at a traffic policeman. The officer was so furious that he submitted his resignation, but his superiors turned it down, Kamal said.

“This is a flagrant violation of the law,” Kamal said. “This guy is an officer with a rank of a brigadier general. He was standing in the street doing his job, regulating traffic. He represents the state and the law, and yet this happened.”

There is an ongoing joint U.S.-Iraqi inquiry into the Nisour Square incident, and U.S. officials and Blackwater spokespeople are urging public restraint until the outcome is completed. But if the police videotape shows what the Interior Ministry says it does — and since Maliki is calling the issue a matter of sovereignty for Iraq — it’ll be rather curious if somehow the inquiry finds evidence to absolve the security company of the civilian killings.