Blackwater License (Now With 30% More Update!)

For our regularly scheduled post on The Pinkerton Act (Part 2), click here.

BREAKING NEWS ALERT

Whoa, boy! Just a little Blackwater traffic this morning. The Google Alerts just about crashed our e-mail inbox. In fact, the lookeloos appear to actually have crashed the Blackwater website.

We don’t really follow the crowd, so we’re not just going to re-post the story for the 5,000th time. But we do have a domain name to uphold, so instead, let’s try some observations we aren’t seeing too much:

• It started with an IED blast and small arms ambush on the State motorcade in the middle of an urban neighborhood. And the PSC guys are the ones running amok?
• “Eight civilians dead and thirteen civilians wounded,” no mention whatsoever of even one dead insurgent, er, ‘freedom fighter.’ Let’s get this straight: six truckloads of former special ops guys and they didn’t even wing one attacker? How gullible are we?
• You know how long it takes a dead insurgent to become a dead civilian? About as long as it takes a bystander to pick-up an unattended AK-47 for a quick $200 USD later that day in an arms souk sale.
• Has everyone forgotten the stories earlier this year about how MoI licensure has been a soup sandwich and many companies, including Blackwater, were operating (reportedly) without licenses? So now they really no-kidding have no license. How do things change?
• There's the additional wrinkle of the Department of State as the customer. In terms of how this will ultimately affect Blackwater, you are halfway there in asking whether MoI licensure affects operation of a diplomatic post at all (Sharon Weinberger appears to be the only other person asking this. Good question. Still waiting on another puke-ray story, though.) Do you think that professionals, including armed guards, attached to the Iraqi, or any other, embassy in D.C. are subject to our licensing requirements? Not so much.

Embassy Security For Dummies

OK, this is put together on the fly, in about five minutes of internet research, but it is apparently necessary because the idea that there might be security personnel as part of a diplomatic mission and host nation security personnel as well is apparently quite a complex one. At least we make some effort to document our assertions of fact.

Yes, the U.S. Secret Service does provide some security, stationed outside embassies, for our foreign guests. Just like other nations provide external security for U.S. missions overseas.

But the diplomatic mission itself has its own inherent security force. (Some, e.g., Jamaica, probably not so much, mon. But a G8--you bet.) Whether those individuals are hired as employees or are provided to the embassy by a private security company, when the individuals are providing security services to the diplomatic mission, be it on embassy grounds or in embassy vehicles, our understanding is that the professional licensure requirements of the locality do not apply. Specifically, those places are islands of sovereign territory of the foreign power, and the applicability of licensure is at best quite unclear. If someone can document that it is otherwise, we'd genuinely be glad to know that. But we’ll put money that the answer is no.

And to put a point on it: Nobody's claiming that traveling through the Mansour district is like rolling Anacostia after dark. (Even if it sometimes seems close.) We're just saying that there is far more to this than: "Who has a license?" 'Course we're just dumb bunnies who don't bother to research facts before we speak.

• In terms of the ultimate effect on this specific company (i.e., the "Blackwater is going out of business!!!" riff), a better question than the diplomatic issue question is: What has Blackwater been doing while attention was myopically focused on Iraq? Washingtontechnology.com/online/1_1/31393-1.html. Wag the dog, indeed.
  
• IF Blackwater followed the U.S. government-issued Rules for Use of Force (and that is really the $800 million dollar question of the day--one to which we won't know the answer until DoS/MoI complete their investigation), then this is actually a dispute between the MoI and DoS over RUF. Because plugging in DynCorp or Triple Canopy won't change anything. So it will be interesting to see whether the two bureaucracies get together and throw Blackwater under the bus. Pinkertons, anyone?
• It's been fascinating to see how the hundreds of articles and blogs sort this out. We presume you can sort through the hyperbole and venom on your own. Thankfully the more thoughtful and insightful folks are starting to chime in. For example, here is one very interesting item (although they couldn't resist using the NOPD SWAT photo) that may be the best we've seen.
• We had vain hopes that this might actually spark some thoughtful, fact-based public policy debates about PSCs. As of now, this story has failed to blast O.J. off any of the cable news networks. (To be fair, it hasn't been all O.J.--Fox had a long segment on Paris Hilton.)
• There hasn't been an investigation, let alone a trial, yet the PSC is already convicted--good insight on this point from Peter Singer: "If [Maliki] is already describing this as a crime . . . we have a very interesting bridge to cross. Do we turn over American citizens to an Iraqi judicial system that is inept, corrupt and now politicized?"
  
• The Pilot is running a story about how security details work--somewhat interesting mainly because it's not just a re-hash of the same AP line running everywhere.
• AT LAST! Actual "hard" news on the subject--CNN has the Department of State initial incident report from that afternoon.
• We found this piece from the Village Voice interesting. What, you didn't hear about the investigations being launched into all those other deaths the same day? Or the thousands of others. Hmm, imagine that.
  
• Now that chief U.S. cheerleader Moqtada Al-Sadr has weighed in against the infidel Blackwater (Our fave: “Most of (Blackwater’s) members are criminals and those who have left American jails.”), it seems like the most likely, and least surprising, answer regarding what truly underlies this whole controversy is a potent mix of an internal Iraqi political powerplay and a tentative flexing of political muscle against the U.S. ‘supervision’ of the nation. And given the prominent nature of private actors to date in this saga, it is only fitting that one should play such a key role here as well.

Just some observations. No one really knows enough about the facts of that day to reach any meaningful conclusions—at least ones that aren’t firmly rooted in speculation. Not that it’ll stop the tidal wave. After all, this is one sexy (and salacious) story. As for us, we'll wait for the inevitable Congressional hearing circus. We thought they'd at least wait a day or two to call for the hearings. Guess this one's a big vote getter.