I saw this on Mia Culpa but not on GMD so here goes. We all know Blackwater USA is a whore of the M-I complex, bilking billions of our taxpayer dollars to defend dignitaries and U.S. government officials while carusing in Iraq. Their only concern is making money and forget the welfare of those that they hire in the process.

A frenzied mob of insurgents ambushed Paauilo resident Wesley J.K. Batalona, Scott Helvenston, Jerko “Jerry” Zovko, and Michael R. Teague in March 2004 as they escorted a supply convoy through Fallujah, Iraq.

You also most likely remember the bridge outside Falluja on March 31, 2004. The story was shown all over the world and mortified the nation and most importantly the families of those contractors. The families sued Blackwater for not honoring an agreement to provide armored vehicles, resulting in a lawsuit that was stalled repeatedly with a resolution still undetermined.

Now Blackwater is filing a countersuit, but not against the families specifically.

Crossposted at Joshing Politics

From Mia Culpa:

Blackwater USA has filed a $10 million dollar lawsuit against the attorney representing the families of four American contractors who were killed, and hung from a bridge over the Euphrates River by insurgents in Fallujah, Iraq in March of 2004. Blackwater claims that the suit filed by the families of the deceased men for wrongful death in January of 2005 is a violation of the security guard’s contracts with the private military contractor and security firm.

Richard Nordan, the estates administrator who filed the suit against Blackwater is specifically named in the suit, and not the family members of the deceased, or their estates. Blackwater has also asked to have a federal court send the matter into arbitration, after failing to have the suits dismissed.

Even if their contracts had stipulated this the countersuit would still be a disgrace to those that lost their lives in such a graphic manner that day. Only their suit is far from being honest.

Investigations into the deaths revealed that it was small arms fire, not explosives as originally reported, that killed the men. Armored vehicles would have protected them, and their families and attorney believe that they would still be alive today had that original contractual obligation been met. The contracts also called for the men to travel in 6 person teams, and team leader Justin McQuown — who according to Scott Helvenston’s own emails had a rather adversarial relationship — decided to hold two men back for clerical duties, and sent just the four doomed contractors off to Fallujah, sans armored protection. In one of Helvenston’s last emails to Blackwater, he spoke of McQuown having a possible hidden agenda that he referred to as “Let’s see if we can screw with Scott.”

The legal battle for the family members seems to have begun with the Blackwater memorial service for the dead held at the Blackwater compound. Afterwards, while gathered in a conference room, when the relatives of Jerry Zovko asked to see the after-action report detailing the last moments of his life, Zovco’s mother Danica said the response was “that if we wanted to see the paperwork of how my son and his co-workers were killed that we’d have to sue them.”

Well the families did file a suit in court and Blackwater fought it.

From the CNN article:

Blackwater has filed a motion to dismiss the case, providing copies of contracts signed by the four saying they would assume any risks from working under “volatile, hostile and extremely dangerous circumstances.”

The only problem is that Blackwater did not show the agreement that the contractors should have been equipped with armored vehicles. Another issue with the dismissal and countersuit was that Blackwater USA did not want people knowing they were over-billing the U.S. government and then signed a sub-contract that deleted the word “armored” from the contract. Thankfully the judge reinstated the case in November, but Blackwater reacted with their countersuit.

The families see this as a shock and awe tactic:

“The $10 million is a scare tactic,” said Katy Helvenston, mother of Scott Helvenston. “I’m not concerned about that at all because the whole thing’s a farce. It’s just another excuse to delay.”

Of course we shouldn’t be surprised at this. Just move along, don’t look at the corruption and malfeasance. No one certainly did in Congress from 2004 to 2006. Now with our Democratic Congress, I pray that oversight and accountability finds that Blackwater USA is a disgusting war-profiteering outfit that needs serious investigations and justice for the families that have been affected by the company’s negligence.

Democrats.  It would seem even most people who identify, proudly, as being one are loath to much of what they actually do (and don’t do) while in power.  They are all over the spectrum, from the Lieberman’s to Clinton’s to the Kennedy’s to the Dean’s and Edwards’ and Kucinich’s, and hell, the countless who don’t even trust them or identify as one but insist on backing them (often, if not always) because really, what else can an American voter do to keep the regressive proto-fascist modern Republican Party out of power?  Nearly all of us, regardless of political values, parties, ideals, hopes, see the Orwellian horrors of what the GOP has done to this country and this planet not only since Regan, but as well at a frightening pace since taking complete power in 2000. 

I mean, my 88 year old, life-long Republican grandfather thinks Bush is the worst president in U.S. history and that my generation, and my children’s generation, are increasingly likely to live a miserable, poor, war-torn future, if the planet manages to survive the next few years at all.  The neo-Republicans are increasingly representative of pure Evil, but they speak clearly on distractions and they work with what must be the most talented and cunning team of PR people and social psychologists ever assembled.  But they have turned such a huge swath of the public (voting and non-voting alike) against them, and as such we arrive with seemingly our only other option: the Democrats.

But Democrats? We know we prefer them because we know they will not outlaw a woman’s right to have authority and choice over her own body and her own life.  They usually understand that a diversity of ideas, races, creeds, gender-identities, make life more enjoyable, not more Hell-like.  We prefer the D’s because they reject a nationalistic identity of overt aggression, of fiefdom-like tax codes, and outside the legal system domestic spying (they are smart enough to know that the laws allow them to spy on pretty much anyone they want to anyway, why draw attention to yourself by breaking the law needlessly?). 

Still, with control of Congress up until the 1994 GOP take-over, and with Bill Clinton in the White House, the Democrats brought us things like NAFTA, which have driven down real wages not only here but in fact globally; and which, along with the aggressive expansion of things like the IMF and WTO in the post-Cold War Era, is responsible for a shocking Chasm between the wealth and security of rich and poor, have and have-not.  Yes, even the Democrats are engaged in a class war that favors the rich and powerful over everyone else.  But we can say that they are in no way as ruthless and unforgiving and demonstrative as the GOP in how they go about their business (which is in fact big business).  And so we hope for their victory on election day.

But Democrats have not given us affordable, universal health care as a right of citizenship, as with the rest of the post/industrial West.  They have not provided the working person with all the possible luxuries of personal freedom and liberty, as the revolutionary government of “democracy” had promised it would.  There are no “livable wages” and therefore no “livable country”.  D’s can, when those of them choose to do so, speak out against war in Vietnam, Iran-Contra, or war in Iraq.  But they can’t really do anything about it, because it behooves them to allow the forces of State to play-out their economic rules of perpetual and unfettered expansion, development, and “progress”.

Just think of places the U.S. has bombed or gone to war with since WWII: China (1945-46, 1950-53), Korea (1950-53), Guatemala (1954, 1967-69), Indonesia (1958), Cuba (1959-60), Belgian Congo (1964), Peru (1965), Laos (1964-73), Vietnam (1961-73), Cambodia (1969-70), Grenada (1983), Libya (1986), El Salvador (1980’s), Nicaragua (1980’s), Panama (1989), Bosnia (1995), Sudan (1998), Yugoslavia (1999), Afghanistan (1998, 2001-present), and Iraq (1991-present, including the military enforcement of no-fly zones during Clinton).  Oh, and didn’t we just bomb Sedan again the other day, too?  Can you name a democratic, free society among the bunch?  We stay clear from the GOP because we know their vision for the best that human-kind can do in governing herself is not good enough.  We turn to the Democrats because to not is to assure the Bush’s and Rumsfield’s and Gingrich’s have the power.

Thus, the problem of the Democrats, and so likewise the challenge to them, is that they counter the GOP’s strong, healthy, organized, and passionate lesser-developed worldview with a weak, confused, unfocused, and overly-intellectualized insult to our common sense.  They declare they are going to take congress, work hard, and dissolve the growing divide of America.  Then they give themselves a long weekend after their first few days of work in order to have the day off for the college football championship game (a game that started in the evening, no less).  They give themselves raises at a pace only my property taxes, mortgage and health care premiums can keep up with.  And so, we should be careful not to fall for the weak knees of neo-liberalism.  As considerate, freedom-craving people, we must always be vigilant, weary, and critique-ing of those who would profess to be leading us for some greater good.  They may on occasion have our vote, but they should never have our trust.