One of Missouri’s Senators has had some personal experience with Blackwater USA, the American Security contractor that’s in hot water in Iraq.

Senator Claire McCaskill says Blackwater agents provided "aggressive" security when she was in Iraq earlier  this year. The detail was made up of former United States military personnel. She admits she felt "comforted" in their company. But she can see that Blackwater’s actions could be seen as "unseemly" if the agents were not accountable to anybody. She says it’s now apparent they should have been accountable to somebody and the country will be dealing with the fallout from that failure for some time.

McCaskill says she would have felt equally safe if she’d been surrounded by regular military personnel, but that’s not possible because of a shortage of military personnel. She says nobody wanted a draft before starting the war and she does not favor re-instituting it. But she says the military was sent into a war without enough soldiers to do everything the military should do. Because of that, she says, the military decided to have private contractors do everything but the mission itself. She says much of the cost of the war is the result of the country paying private companies to do things the military traditionally has done.

The House has approved a bill making all governme n t contractors accountable for their actions under U-S law, even if the actions take place outside the country. The bill passed 389-30 although it is strongly opposed by the Bush administration. The Senate will take up a similar bill soon.
Lawmakers say the bill should end confusion and close legal loopholes if U. S. contractors in Iraq are accused of committing crimes. The Reuters News Service says there are more than 160,000 U. S. contractors working in Iraq. Blackwater has about 1,000 staff in Iraq under a State Department contract to protect diplomats.
Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice on Friday ordered special agents from the State Department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security to accompany every convoy guarded by Blackwater in Baghdad. The Iraqi government says Blackwater guards protecting a U.S. convoy on September 16 killed 11 people. Blackwater says its personnel took appropriate actions to defend the convoy. The House Oversight Committee put out a report last week saying Blackwater employees had been involved in 195 shooting incidents since 2005, and fired first 80 percent of the time. The chairman of Blackwater has told a congressional hearing that reports his employees have behaved recklessly are "baseless."  

 

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