The private security force Blackwater USA is facing possible expulsion from its hosts in Iraq after employees of the firm were involved in an incident in which 11 people were killed in Iraq on Sunday.
Iraqi officials want to ban Blackwater from their country. The company, tasked by the State Department with protecting U.S. dignitaries in Iraq, contends that its employees were merely acting in self-defense.
Trouble is not new for Blackwater, which is just one of many contractors that have been dispatched to Iraq since the U.S. invasion in 2003. As U.S. News's Silla Brush reported in February, Congress was already investigating Blackwater and also its relationship with defense company Halliburton.
A 2005 U.S. News article indicated that overenthusiastic gun-handling private contractors have been a problem in Iraq in the past. On the infamous road that travels between Baghdad's Green Zone and the airport, military officials were concerned two years ago that the road's reputation of being "the road of death" was creating overzealous shooting. "As a result of its legend, civilian contractors fire indiscriminately," said Lt. Col. Geoffrey Slack, whose 1-69 Infantry from the New York National Guard patrolled the road.
—Nikki Schwab
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Ixnknugt of MA 11:21AM July 14, 2009