Blackwater’s last day in Iraq
OPS_admin | May 07, 2009 | Comments 0
Blackwater’s last day in Iraq
Today is special. You’ll want to remember this day — May 7, 2009 — as the day when the second largest occupying force, the private army formerly known as Blackwater, finally left Iraq.
Triple Canopy, a Herndon, Virginia-based company, picks up the expiring contract of the security firm formerly known as Blackwater Worldwide, which changed its name to XE a few months ago. The U.S. State Department decided not to renew XE’s contract in January.
“When the U.S. government initially asked for our help to assist with an immediate need to protect Americans in Iraq, we answered that call and performed well,” XE spokeswoman Anne Tyrell said in a statement Wednesday. “But we always knew that, at some point, that work would come to a close.”
The end of the contract followed the Iraqi government’s refusal to renew the firm’s operating license because of a September 2007 shooting in which Baghdad says security guards — then employed by Blackwater — killed 17 Iraqi civilians.
That slaughter, and the indictments that followed, ended an era of complete impunity for the Blackwater mercenaries.
This is how it once was (big H/T to The Nation‘s Jeremy Scahill for his reporting on this group):
via The Raw Story » Blackwater’s last day in Iraq.
Filed Under: Military, War, Occupation,
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